mencoder dependency missing for core script Movie_Figure.py

[RichardJActon]

Replicating the issue

Selecting an image with a z-stack in omero web clicking 'publishing options' and 'make movie' then 'create movie' results in an error in the logs: sh: line 1: mencoder: command not found (I used MPEG format and have not tested the other formats)

Proposed Solution:

mencoder seems not to be in the main or expended repos for rocky but is in rpmfusion (free) so can be installed from there.

RUN dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/el/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %rhel).noarch.rpm -y
RUN dnf config-manager --set-disabled rpmfusion-free-updates
RUN dnf --enablerepo rpmfusion-free-updates install -y mencoder

This approach adds the rpmfusion free repo but disables it by default which should prevent conflicts with any duplicates in rpmfusion and other repos.

I'm happy to open a PR adding this commit RichardJActon@11cccb7 if this approach to installing mencoder is acceptable.

[imagesc-bot]

This issue has been mentioned on Image.sc Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://forum.image.sc/t/omere-figure-export-pdf-does-not-work/39573/32

[RichardJActon]

Are there any objections to my proposed solution to this or should I just open a PR?

[jburel]

Sorry @RichardJActon for not replying.
I have not checked the status/reliability of rpmfusion

[RichardJActon]

No problem @jburel, I did a little checking up and here's what I found hope this helps.

It's a set community maintained repos for the fedora project that are not in core fedora for various reasons, in the case of mencoder I'd hazard a guess this is because there may be video codec stuff with US patent encumbrances that keeps it out of the core repos officially distributed by redhat as they are very conservative about this.

From the rpmfusion FAQ: "The contributors also do their best to maintain a the same quality as official Fedora packages.". They are somewhat analogous to universe and multiverse for Ubuntu - well maintained but not officially supported.

mencoder it appears is co-developed with Mplayer and they are generally distributed together this is their site: https://mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html and their recommended source for downloading pre-built .rpms is rpmfusion.

The approach I've taken to adding the RPM free software repo is to disable it by default (line 2) so that to install software from it you must manually enable it (line 3). From the rpmfusion site: "repositories contain only add-on packages and not replacements in relation to the base package set" so even if the repos were enabled by default there shouldn't be issues with it breaking dependencies.

There is still some scope for this to result in a build error if rpmfusion is down or if the version of mencoder in rpmfusion somehow ended up with incompatible dependencies with what is in the rocky core packages but it appears that they actively try to avoid this.