Underworld

a long term geodynamics simulation platform

Libavcodec Download and Installation

What is libavcodec?

gLucifer requires a movie graphics library such as libavcodec in order to export image outputs to an mpeg file. Libavcodec is recommended over libfame from Underworld 1.5.0 (return to Movie Graphics Library Download and Installation for a list of movie graphics library alternatives).

Libavcodec downloads with ffmeg. Further information is available at http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/

Downloading and Installing libavcodec Manually

These instructions apply to any Linux, Unix or Mac operating system.

Go to http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/, click on the "Download and SVN" link and follow the instructions under the heading "FFmpeg SVN" to download the ffmpeg source code (a directory called "ffmpeg") using Subversion. If you require multiple users to have access to it, install it in a place like /usr/local (superuser or administrator access may be required).

Note: You will need to already have Subversion installed (see Downloading and Installing Subversion). If you have Subversion installed and you get a message that the svn command is not found, add Subversion to your path by adding the following to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.tcshrc file (where /usr/local/subversion is the directory in which you installed Subversion):

export PATH=/usr/local/subversion/bin:$PATH

Once you have downloaded the ffmpeg source, navigate into the ffmpeg directory and configure and install it into a suitably named directory, for example:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/libavcodec

and then type (root or administrator access may be required; on macs type "sudo make install" in place of the "make install" step):

make
make install

Downloading and Installing libavcodec Using Macports (mac only)

Note: If you intend to use Macports packages to install the dependencies required by Underworld and gLucifer, we recommend you use Macports for all dependencies (except PETSc). This will avoid problems of confusion between Macports-installed and default system libraries suchas X11, which can cause run-time issues. However, MacPorts does download and configure a lot of extra software with ffmpeg.

Type the following (from any directory, assuming you have MacPorts in your path):

port install xorg-server
port install xorg-libXmu
port install libxml2
sudo port install ffmpeg

Setting up Environment Variables Manually

Add the following environment variable to your ~/.bashrc (if you are using bash) or ~/.tcshrc (if you are using tcsh), where /usr/local is the directory in which you installed libtiff:

bash:

export LIBAVCODEC_DIR=/usr/local/libavcodec

tcsh:

setenv LIBAVCODEC_DIR /usr/local/libavcodec

The next time you configure Underworld, gLucifer will know where libavcodec is.

-- Wendy Mason - 28 October 2010
-- Patrick Sunter - 21 October 2010
-- Wendy Sharples - 21 October 2010
-- Owen Kaluza - 17 October 2010
-- Patrick Sunter - 05 October 2010
-- Alan Lo - 25 Jan 2006