Bits from the Debian Multimedia Maintainers

Fri Nov 12 23:00:19 UTC 2010

Hi!

Since there has been a lot happening in the Debian Multimedia world
during the Squeeze release, so we figured we should give you an update
on that.

Who are we?
~~~~~~~~~~

In the dark old ages, there were two teams involved in multimedia: the
Debian Multimedia and Debian Multimedia Packages teams. Please note that
neither of them is related to debian-multimedia.org[1]. During late
2008, both teams were merged into one, the Debian Multimedia Maintainers
team, to avoid effort fragmentation. Since then, there has been a lot of
work done:

Consumer Multimedia in Debian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Consumer Multimedia is about playing and, well, consuming multimedia.
Squeeze will feature:

 * FFmpeg 0.5.2, finally uncrippled thanks to zack! No mp3/h264
   encoder, though. (still in NEW).
 * mplayer 1.0rc3, finally with mencoder enabled.
 * VLC 1.1.3
 * VDPAU hardware acceleration in ffmpeg/mplayer (but feedback is
   welcome!)
 * Guayadeque 0.2.5
 * gmusicbrowser 1.0.2

Squeeze will not feature:

 * FFmpeg 0.6 (But already available in experimental)
 * Hardware acceleration with VA-API (packages also in experimental,
   for support on Intel hardware).

Producer Multimedia in Debian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Producer multimedia is software for producing multimedia. Squeeze will
feature:

End user applications:

 * Ardour 2.8
 * Audacity 1.3.12
 * Composite 0.006
 * Csound 5.12. The QuteCsound frontend is also available.
 * FluidSynth 1.1.1
 * Hydrogen 0.9.4.1
 * Internet DJ Console 0.8.3
 * Jokosher 0.11.5
 * LiVES 1.3.4
 * mhWaveEdit 1.4.20
 * morituri 0.1.1
 * QTractor 0.4.6
 * Rosegarden 10.04.2
 * SooperLooper 1.6.14
 * Traverso 0.49.1
 * X Jack Video Monitor 0.4.13
 * Yoshimi 0.058.1

Platforms and technologies:

 * JACK versions 0.118 and 1.9.6 (aka, jackd1 and jackd2). You can
   choose to install any of them (but only one at a time).
 * LV2 plugins are supported. Ardour has support for them, and there
   are a bunch of them provided in Debian.
 * LADSPA plugins are still supported.
 * DSSI updated to 1.0.0, many plugins are available.
 * FireWire sound devices are supported with libffado, and is supported
   by JACK.

Squeeze will not feature:

 * JACK session support.
 * Ardour 3 (it's not out yet, so it did not make it in time for
   squeeze).
 * SuperCollider. There is a package in the works, but did not make it
   to Squeeze.
 * Toonloop: This live stop-motion animation editor has been packaged
   only recently.
 * NASPRO: Convenient library to implement LV2 dynamic manifest
   plugins. It's available in Sid.
 * Mixxx: 1.7 series had RC bugs, and 1.8 was too late for squeeze.

Debian Multimedia Blend
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is also an effort to start a Debian Multimedia Blend to give a
better overview about what multimedia applications are available in
Debian. There is a short list[2] for a quick overview as well as a long
package list separated in sections to give a more detailed overview
(including translations, screenshots, popularity of package etc)[3]. You
are invited to help improving the tasks either directly in SVN[4] or by
sending patches to Andreas Tille <tille at debian.org> or
debian-multimedia at lists.debian.org (see below). Note that not all of the
packages listed in the tasks pages are maintained by the Debian
Multimedia team, since they are aimed at producing useful package sets
instead of showing only our own packages.

For those who want to squash some bugs in multimedia packages there is
also the bugs page generated by the Blends tools[5], or our team bug
page[6].

Other activity
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The team has seen a lot of growth since the merger. Of the current 52
members of the alioth team, 20 were added during 2009 and 18 in 2010,
many of whom are involved in upstream development as well as the debian
packaging. The number of packages has also grown, with 112 of the
current 205 git repositories in our team area having its first commit
during 2010.

Where to reach us
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Debian Multimedia Maintainers can be reached at
pkg-multimedia-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org, should you have any
questions. We have also decided to repurpose the old
debian-multimedia at lists.debian.org address for user and more general
discussion. We would like to invite everyone interested in multimedia to
join us there. Interested developers/packagers can also join us at the
first address. Some of the team members are also in the
#debian-multimedia channel on OFTC.

Saludos,
 Felipe Sateler on behalf of the Debian Multimedia Maintainers

[1] That site is maintained by Christian Marillat, and is known to break
    current ffmpeg-based applications (like mplayer and vlc) in Debian
    Squeeze.
[2] http://blends.alioth.debian.org/multimedia/tasks/packagelist
[3] http://blends.alioth.debian.org/multimedia/tasks
[4]
svn://svn.debian.org/svn/blends/projects/multimedia/trunk/debian-multimedia/tasks
[5] http://blends.alioth.debian.org/multimedia/bugs
[6]
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?maint=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org

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