Installing two configurations of one formula side-by-side

[RickyRomero]

ffmpeg will not encode 10-bit video unless x264 is compiled with 10-bit support. But, it doesn't encode 8-bit video with 10-bit x264. I don't want to lose the ability to encode 8-bit video.

This means that I need to have two copies of x264 installed, and switch between them using ffmpeg's LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable.

Ideally, what I'd like to do is have the vanilla 8-bit x264 be the canonical version (using brew install x264), but then have another version (brew install x264 --with-10-bit) with some unique name (like x264-10bit). brew would ideally know about both versions and would update both whenever I run brew upgrade.

I don't know how to accomplish this today, unless I missed something in the manual.

[tdsmith]

This isn't easy but one way to do this is to make a copy of the x264 formula with a different name; it might be easiest to set up a local tap, which is just a directory which is a git repository that contains a checked-in x264-10bit.rb. You can tap it like brew tap myname/secondx264 ~/homebrew/my_x264_tap and install your package like brew install x264-10bit.

[RickyRomero]

@tdsmith Thanks for the advice, I'll give that a try.

[retokromer]

If ffmpeg is linked to libx264 dynamically rather than statically, then it will adapt automatically to the bit depth supported by the run-time libx264, regardless of the version used at build time. This way it’s possible to work either 8-bit or 10-bit in each ffmpeg command. However you cannot combine 8-bit and 10-bit in the same command, you need two distinct commands.

[RickyRomero]

@retokromer Yep, I'm trying to do that right now. (following this advice on Stack Exchange under "Second Way")

[RickyRomero]

My solution to this problem is rather primitive, but it's easier to manage than a local tap.

#!/bin/bash

echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "-- Updating and upgrading brew... ------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
brew update
brew upgrade

echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "-- Installing x264 10-bit... -----------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
brew reinstall x264 --with-10-bit
X264_PATH=`brew ls --verbose x264 | sed -n 1p | grep -o "/usr/local/Cellar/x264/[^/]*/"`
cp -R $X264_PATH* /usr/local/lib/x264-10-bit

echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "-- Reinstalling vanilla x264... --------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
brew uninstall x264
brew install x264

echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "-- Installing x265 16-bit... -----------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
brew reinstall x265 --with-16-bit
X265_PATH=`brew ls --verbose x265 | sed -n 1p | grep -o "/usr/local/Cellar/x265/[^/]*/"`
cp -R $X265_PATH* /usr/local/lib/x265-16-bit

echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "-- Reinstalling vanilla x265... --------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
echo "----------------------------------------------------"
brew uninstall x265
brew install x265

[DomT4]

Let us know if there's anything we can practically do to help further here, Thanks! 😃

[ReaddyEddy]

The script above fails.