Bug#1056597: ffmpeg: drawtext filter missing from ffmpeg binaries

[Slim Joe <slimjoe2k8@gmail.com>]

Package: ffmpeg
Version: 7:6.1-4
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

The FFmpeg binaries (i.e. ffplay and ffmpeg) no longer
provides the drawtext filter, useful for embedding text (such
as subtitles and time codes) into a video.

Here's a simple test command using a legally available video.

$ ffplay -i https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/escape-to-freedom/videos/escape-to-freedom-720p.webm -vf "drawtext=x=20:y=20:fontsize=24:fontcolor=gold:text='%{localtime \: %T %Z%n(%F)}'"

The relevant portion of stderr from this command is this:

[AVFilterGraph @ 0x7f6ae4003e40] No such filter: 'drawtext'
[AVFilterGraph @ 0x7f6ae4003e40] Error processing filtergraph: Filter not found

A shallow search for a similar bug turns up the following link
from the ArchLinux bug tracker ("drawtext filter not available",
dated "Wednesday, 22 November 2023, 15:17 GMT"):

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/80327

The recommended solution is to recompile FFmpeg with the
"--enable-libharfbuzz" option. There is a libharfbuzz-dev
package in Debian, so this should not be a problem (assuming
the ArchLinux bug report is correct).

-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (900, 'testing'), (90, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Versions of packages ffmpeg depends on:
ii  libavcodec60    7:6.1-3
ii  libavdevice60   7:6.1-3
ii  libavfilter9    7:6.1-3
ii  libavformat60   7:6.1-3
ii  libavutil58     7:6.1-3
ii  libc6           2.37-12
ii  libpostproc57   7:6.1-3
ii  libsdl2-2.0-0   2.28.5+dfsg-2
ii  libswresample4  7:6.1-3
ii  libswscale7     7:6.1-3