ffmpeg needs updating.

[user.vdr]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 4:47 AM, Fabian Greffrath <greffrath at leat.rub.de> wrote:
> Reinhard Tartler schrieb:
>>
>> I don't understand this request:
>> Just a few weeks old should be new enough, no?
>
> I believe our anonymous friend complains about the snapshots in lenny and
> sid. Well, 50 weeks aren't just "a few", but i see zero chance to change
> this for Lenny.

Yes, the problem is both the lenny and sid packages are extremely
outdated.  This has become quite a problem for the many of us using
debian in a media pc/dvb/hdtv environment.  It was not exagerrated
when I said many new fixes/enhancements have been added since the last
time the packages were compiled.  And yes, I completely agree that 50
weeks is certainly not 'a few'!  :)

> All we can recommend you ist to (1) wait until Lenny is released and the
> snapshot that we maintain in experimental hits unstable or (2) use this
> snapshot nowand rebuild all your applications because of the soname bump in
> libavcodec.

I did try to compile the ffmpeg svn, which was successful but (of
course) the svn didn't come with debian/rules so the only way to
create a package out of it, that I'm aware of, was using checkinstall.
 This was the method recommended to me.  The problem is that for
everything that expects the '-dev' packages, it failed to detect them
even though the .so's were in the right place.

If I may ask, what's the reason for leaving heavily used packages such
as ffmpeg in such an old state when newer more capable source exists
that has proven to be stable?

Thanks guys,
-Anonymous friend... or Derek if you prefer ;)