FFMPEG / MPEG2 support cross-platform

Hello,

We are using VTK export video modules for a project.
On VTK < 8 we were using vtkMPEG2Writer on Windows and vtkFFMPEGWriter on Linux and OSX.

However, since VTK 8.2 vtkMPEG2Writer seems to be removed.

On the VTK website (https://vtk.org/download/ paragraph “Download additional components”), or the documentation, it’s not mentioned. The “additional components” still link to MPEG2.

Is the normal behavior on Windows to compile FFMPEG too for VTK 8 and above ? Is there any documentation about the changes?

Best regards

ffmpeg is bloated and messy, and has complicated licensing situation - depending on what components you enable, you may be able to use it without paying, but for example you would need to get a license for MPEG encoding; and you need to make sure you disable all GPL licensed parts if you want to ever consider commercial use.

If you want to do things legally and clearly, then I would recommend to use an open, cross-platform container, such as mkv, and a royalty-free codec, such as Google’s VP9. We have implemented all this and made it available in a small, freely usable library, IGSIO - see some more details here: How do I write animation video files in VP9 (libvpx) codec format using vtk ?