mpv-player / mpv-player/mpv

Show more information when mpv aborts because of ffmpeg version mismatch

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#9,528 3 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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meta:feature-request
Dominant language
C
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Description

Hey there mpv devs,

I do this:

mpv foobar.mp3

mpv then shows these two lines:

libavutil: 56.70.100 -> 56.22.100
Aborted

Exactly these two lines. The first one appears, I think, because I mix two ffmpeg
versions right now. I am about to fix this.

The second line is mpv simply showing "Aborted" and ending.

My suggestions:

(1) Make the error message a bit more verbose. Normal users don't have any clue
what is going on. I only know that error because I had problems with ffmpeg
versions and mpv before.

(2) Ideally show some more information and announce that, for instance, WHICH
PATHS did mpv search or use? This should not be too overly verbose either,
mind you, but it could show something like:

"The different ffmpeg versions were found at /usr/lib/ and at /usr/lib/x86" or something
like that. The idea is to quickly tell the user where the problem resides. I can figure
out on my own eventually, but this would be more convenient for me, as I have
to spend less time figuring this out.

(3) The "Aborted" message should be longer. Perhaps add a new sentence between
aka "mpv can not work with different ffmpeg version". (Although I don't understand
why mpv can not just pick one over the other IF it can find both and report the
wrong one on the commandline as-is, as seen above. But this is a separate
issue, for now my concern with this issue request is SOLELY to show more
helpful information to the user.

Thanks for reading and perhaps considering this.

Note this is just a suggestion - there are other ways to fix the above of course. I just
wanted to give a few pointers to see whether people may agree with any of these.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing mpv foobar.mp3 with mismatched ffmpeg versions and trace where the version mismatch produces the two reported lines. Define a concise diagnostic that explains the incompatibility and, if available, identifies the searched or loaded paths; done means users receive actionable information instead of only Aborted.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c
Domain
cli
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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