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Old 7th January 2020, 00:34   #158  |  Link
manolito
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Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Berlin, Germany
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From trac.ffmpeg:
Quote:
The license of libfdk_aac is not compatible with GPL, so the GPL does not permit distribution of binaries containing incompatible code when GPL-licensed code is also included. Therefore this encoder have been designated as "non-free", and you cannot download a pre-built ffmpeg that supports it. This can be resolved by compiling ffmpeg yourself.
So there is no doubt that FFmpeg binaries with built-in libfdk_aac cannot be distributed without violating the GPL. For the devs who want lib_fdk support the solution is to compile FFmpeg with libfdk support enabled, but without actually including any libfdk code within the FFmpeg binary.

Legally this may be a grey area, I am no lawyer and have no substantiated opinion on this. To me it looks similar as when FFmpeg is used by some commercial software. Even if this commercial software does not work without the GPLed FFmpeg, the GPL is not violated as long as the FFmpeg code is not modified to accommodate the commercial software.

The 2 FFmpeg distributions I am aware of which do it this way are the one by Reino which I have linked to, and the other one is by Sherpya at
https://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer/


//EDIT//
To toggle the LibFDK option in the GUI automatically you could write a small batch file which checks if FFmpeg supports LibFDK (just run "ffmpeg.exe -buildconf", redirect the output to a temp file and search this file for the string "--enable-libfdk-aac") , then modifies dmMediaConverter.ini accordingly and finally calls dmMediaConverter.exe. Should be easy...

Last edited by manolito; 7th January 2020 at 07:15.
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