New member, longtime lurker -- ffmpeg WMA lossless question

Hi,

I've noticed that the latest version of ffmpeg (0.11) now supports wma lossless.
Will wma lossless be available in future releases of xbmc?

The reason I'm asking is that I have a large collection of audio in wma lossless which I'd like to keep rather than transcoding it to other formats.

TIA

Mods: feel free to move this thread if this subforum is not appropriate for this question.

I'm not a dev, but I'd imagine that if support has made its way into ffmpeg, it will eventually make its way into xbmc once the new version of ffmpeg is pulled in. When this will happen is not so clear. Could be a long time.

@lloydsmart, thanks. I take it from your answer that new versions of ffmpeg are not merged with the xbmc codebase on a regular basis?

They are, but it can be a big undertaking sometimes, and we have to make sure everything works right. For example, some of our iOS builds are still having problems from our last FFmpeg bump that was pretty recent.

@BWNautilus

Unfortunately the xbmc.org release of xbmc contains an embedded/bundled/static copy of ffmpeg. The build included there is already rather dated. For example, it does not support multi-threaded decoding. This is true for both windows and linux releases.

The good news is, official ubuntu.com releases of xbmc are linked against the system ffmpeg library. The system library is kept more up to date, and for ubuntu 12.04, it already supports wmapro, multi-threaded decoding, etc.

So if you are running ubuntu, just install the ubuntu.com xbmc package.

@fd4ec3d7dc88

Thanks. Am I correct in assuming that XMCBbuntu is not the same as xmbc from ubuntu.com?

XBMCbuntu is XBMC + OS.

(2012-06-23 21:30)Ned Scott Wrote:  XBMCbuntu is XBMC + OS.

Yes, but does XMBCbuntu have the new ffmpeg library that fd4ec3d7dc88 mentioned?

(2012-06-24 15:04)BWNautilus Wrote:  Yes, but does XMBCbuntu have the new ffmpeg library that fd4ec3d7dc88 mentioned?

If it doesn't, it will be able to update it. It's basically a slimmed down install of Ubuntu, but it's totally possible to install the additional components and make it a full Ubuntu installation. XBMCbuntu even makes it pretty easy to do this via the GUI when you boot into the desktop.

@NedScott
Thanks!