No Codecs found in CLI (most likely a local setup issue)

[SaTae66]

When printing the codecs using the example encoder/decoder app, I get this:

> ./heif-dec --list-decoders
AVC decoders:
AVIF decoders:
HEIC decoders:
JPEG decoders:
JPEG 2000 decoders:
JPEG 2000 (HT) decoders:
uncompressed:
- uncompressed = builtin
VVIC decoders:

I am prettey sure I correctly installed DAV1D, RAV1E, libde265 and x265 though. When setting up the Makefiles using CMake, it seems that they are found:

...
-- Found LIBDE265
-- Found LIBDE265: /usr/local/include (found version "1.0.15")
-- Found X265
-- Found X265: /usr/local/include (found version "212")
...
-- Found DAV1D
-- Found DAV1D: /usr/local/include
...
-- Found RAV1E
-- Found RAV1E: /usr/local/include/rav1e

I assume this output means the includes are found but not the libraries themselves and I really cannot figure out why that is. The libde265 and x265 libs are located in /usr/local/lib, their pkgconfig entries in /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig. For dav1d and rav1e, the live in usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu and the respective pkgconfig dir. I have tried clang as well as gcc and also ran ldconfig /usr/local/lib multiple times after installing the codecs. I also tried to explicitly set CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib but none of tries worked out. Now I am out of ideas, so I would appreciate any input. Thanks!

[bradh]

In your cmake output, do you get a table that looks like this:

=== Supported formats ===
format        decoding   encoding
AVC             YES        NO 
AVIF            YES        YES
HEIC            YES        YES
JPEG            YES        YES
JPEG2000        NO         NO 
JPEG2000-HT     NO         NO 
Uncompressed    YES        YES
VVC             NO         NO 

What does ./heif-info --version or ./heif-dec --version give you for the plugin path?

What is in that plugin path?

If all you want to do is to get an "all-in-one" build and not have to install to the plugin path, you can use the cmake options to not build as plugins. A quick way to do that is cmake --preset=develop ..

[SaTae66]

The table looks normal:

=== Supported formats ===
format        decoding   encoding
AVC             NO         NO
AVIF            YES        YES
HEIC            YES        YES
JPEG            YES        YES
JPEG2000        YES        YES
JPEG2000-HT     YES        NO
Uncompressed    YES        YES
VVC             NO         NO

The plugin path reported is /usr/local/lib/libheif, which is a bit odd since it does not exist. I have created it and added a symlink to the original .so. That seems to have helped somewhat, as I now at least have a proper error: dlsym: /usr/local/lib/libheif/librav1e.so: undefined symbol: plugin_info which I assume is due to incorrect configuration of the pkgconfig .pc file (?).

Besides that, your suggestion of building the dev version worked perfectly and I am able to use the sample programs now. Thank you! What I am wondering though, where does the dev version get the codec code/libs from?

[bradh]

The build can do each codec as linked into the library, or as a runtime loaded plugin. You can see this by using ccmake, or by looking at the differences in https://github.com/strukturag/libheif/blob/master/CMakePresets.json (note the _PLUGIN version).

I think you've probably linked the plugins incorrectly - you picked the underlying library (librav1e.so) rather than the libheif plugin (libheif-rav1e.so).

There is a discussion of this in the README. See https://github.com/strukturag/libheif?tab=readme-ov-file#cmake-configuration-variables

Also note the part about "...environment variable LIBHEIF_PLUGIN_PATH...", which you can use to specify a plugin path if you really do want to use plugins and not install them.

[SaTae66]

Yes, I just linked the lib but I understand how that is supposed to work now, thanks. What exactly is the difference between using the lib directly vs the plugin?

[farindk]

Plugins are there so that the codecs can be flexibly packaged and the user can decide which of them should be installed.
It also allows to write new plugins independently from libheif (even though I haven't seen any yet).
If you're building for your own closed system and can choose the codecs at compilation time, this is easier than using plugins.

[SaTae66]

Ah very well, that makes sense. Thanks the explanation.