Maintaining FFMPEG versioning on ROCK

[Oliver_Buxton]

Hello FFMPEG interested viewers!

I am running ROCK on a NUC and am very happy with its performance and reliability. As part of the initial setup, I copied ffmpeg to the correct location as per the ROCK installation instructions. So all well!

My question is around maintaining the latest version of ffmpeg from their site. Are there any considerations, or things to be aware of, if I update it periodically to maintain the latest version on the ROCK? As I type this post, it looks like we are on version 7.0.1.

Thanks in advance!

[Formula]

Codecs (ffmpeg) for ROCK

Hello Forum! I have questions about the codecs for ROCK. For the ffmpeg codecs there are new codecs from time to time. Is it necessary or useful to update them. If so, can I simply overwrite the old ones? One more question: Are there other codecs you can install? If so, which ones? Many greetings Dieter

[BrianW (Brian)]

As this thread

Is it necessary to update ffmpeg

It seems that the ffmpeg that I have installed is from 22th October 2019 [image] But there seems to be a never version from 10th September 2022 [image] Would it make sense to update to the new version? Torben

discusses, there is usually no need. However, for Live Radio it was recently realised that certain .m3u8 radio streams stopped if using old versions of ffmpeg.

Chunked M3U8 streams

Hello – Roon has Lithuanian National Radio with two stream links: lower quality: http://lrt-cast.lrt.lt:8000/lrt_radijas high quality: https://stream-audio.lrt.lt/radijas/320k/lrt_radijas.m3u8 A high-quality stream consists of ACC chunks, so Roon plays one of the chunks and then stops. Is there any way still to play this high-quality stream? On Sonos, this link works without any problems.

The latest version of 7.0.1 is OK.

[Oliver_Buxton]

In way of an update, I updated my NUC Rock instance using the latest ffmpeg file (simple copy across using file explorer, overwriting the older version). I then restarted the ROCK server using the local IP based web interface feature. Pleased to report all went well and it appears to be working absolutely fine. Hopefully that is useful for others considering doing the same.

[mjw]

There’s really no point updating at this time since the new features aren’t used by Roon. Roon uses ffmpeg for certain codecs and these are unchanged.

The old adage applies here: if it ain’t broken …

[Oliver_Buxton]

Useful to know, thanks. Do you have the details (link?) to support what ffmpeg does and does not affect in terms of Roon’s features?

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

The ffmpeg changelog is here. AAC and mp3 are old, so rarely anything happens there. Nearly every change is for newer audio codecs and video codecs.

FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/master/Changelog

[mjw]

Unless you have issues with (some) live radio, as mentioned above, older versions are just fine. I think this was resolved in an older release, too, and may only affect macOS that ships with a much older release.