FFmpeg version 0.01
====================
FFmpeg (in this module, referred to here as FFmpeg-Perl) is a Perl
interface to the base project FFmpeg (referred to here as FFmpeg-C).
From the FFmpeg-C homepage:

FFmpeg-C is a complete solution to record, convert and stream audio and
video. It includes libavcodec, the leading audio/video codec library.
FFmpeg-C is developed under Linux, but it can compiled under most OSes,
including Windows.

FFmpeg-Perl currently only supports the functionality of the ffmpeg and
libavformat components  of the FFmpeg-C suite.  That is, functions
exist for extracting metadata from media streams and transforming one
media stream format to another, but no effort is (yet) made to port
HTTP broadcasting or playback functionality (provided by the ffserver
and ffplay components, respectively).

PREREQUISITES

Download and install the CVS version of FFmpeg.  The installation must
be configured with shared library support so libavformat and libavcodec
can be dynamically linked.  Make sure the install path of the shared
libraries is in the dynamic link path.  In Linux, this means locating
the libavformat.so and libavcodec.so files, and making sure their path
is specified in ld.so.conf.  Be sure to run "ldconfig" *twice* after
editing ld.so.conf.

FFmpeg is under active development.  This library was developed and 
tested on the FFmpeg CVS HEAD tag as of Mon Apr 26 01:18:46 PDT 2004.
FFmpeg was configured and installed using the options:

configure \
  --enable-pthreads \
  --enable-mp3lame \
  --enable-shared \
  --enable-vorbis

Note that this requires libmp3lame, libvorbis, and libpthreads to be
installed.  FFmpeg's "make test" failed for me with this configuration
because the regression test suite doesn't like having shared libraries
enabled.  If you experience problems with FFmpeg-perl or FFmpeg-C, try
recompiling without the shared library support to see if regression
tests pass.

My build corresponds roughly to FFmpeg version 0.4.8.  A tarball made
from a CVS snapshot on this date is available from:

http://www.wooly.org/~allenday/images/tar/ffmpeg-0.4.8-040426cvshead.tar.gz

although I recommend you use the latest in FFmpeg's CVS.

INSTALLATION

To install this module type the following:

   perl Makefile.PL FFMPEG_ROOT=/path/to/ffmpeg/source
   make
   make test

It is critical to pass the FFMPEG_ROOT argument to Makefile.PL, so that
The Perl/C interface code is able to correctly bind to ffmpeg functions.

Then as a user with install privileges:

   make install

DEPENDENCIES

This module requires these other modules and libraries:

   Inline::C,     tested with version 0.44
   Time::Piece,   tested with version 1.08

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (c) 2003-2004 by Allen Day

This library is released under GPL, the Gnu Public License