FFmpeg and libav

[Jonas Smedegaard]

[keeping Rogério cc; dropping Romain now warned on posting style]

Quoting Rogério Theodoro de Brito (2013-09-26 17:49:13)
> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> 
> wrote:
>> Quoting Romain Bouqueau (2013-09-25 14:23:46)
>>> We would need you to provide both FFmpeg and libav as separate 
>>> packages in Debian. However the libraries/headers in the packages 
>>> have the same names. AFAIU this makes our request impossible to 
>>> fulfill.
>>
>> Not impossible, but very difficult: Those actually doing the work in 
>> Debian consider it too much work for too little gain.
>
> I support having ffmpeg in Debian.

If you mean "me too" then that doesn't help: Current package maintainers 
of libav believe that to be the best to use for Debian, and "voting" 
won't change that.

Someone needs to step up and technically demonstrate the feasability of 
packaging and maintinaing ffmpeg, either done so that it does not clash 
with existing libav packages or (quite unlikely!) convince current libav 
package maintainers that it makes sense to abandon libav.




>>> However FFmpeg works better: it is more stable, the maintainers are 
>>> more reactive, the APIs are more stable and consistent.
>>
>> Above seems subjective.  It will help the discussion tremendously if 
>> is supported by some factual non-biased comparison.
>
> I have taken the time to look at the commits some months ago. ffmpeg 
> received support for video stabilization via libvidstab (which 
> transcode has embedded, but transcode has some very serious 
> limitations), which libav didn't, ffmpeg had support for OpenCL, which 
> libav didn't, essentially, and ffmpeg had *many* features more, which 
> I needed, but which libav lacked.
> 
> Also, essentially all (perhaps even all?) commits from libav were 
> imported into ffmpeg, but the converse is not true (see my coments 
> above).

IMO above is not an unbiased comparison.  But I am not interested in 
discussing this, just tried point out what might help support a fruitful 
discussion.

What could help, I believe - is to include both sides of the fence, and 
to compare not only amount of features and commits, but also the quality 
of the included features.


> Also, the upstream ffmpeg developers are highly annoyed with the 
> message that Debian's and Ubuntu's ffmpeg program emits:
> 
> | *** THIS PROGRAM IS DEPRECATED ***
> | This program is only provided for compatibility and will be removed
> in a future release. Please use avconv instead.
> 
> I understand their position and the wording is harming to their 
> project: the ffmpeg program that Debian *packages* may be deprecated, 
> but the context that this is a Debian decision is not clear and many 
> users understand, essentially, in absolute terms that ffmpeg is 
> something that they should not use (even if ffmpeg's upstream is 
> active).

That message will soon be gone, together with the ffmpeg transitional 
package.


>>> Note that it was not an issue until the last year because they were
>>> still fairly compatible. The Debian package maintainers also seem to
>>> have kept this issue away by installing old libav versions.
>>
>> Above seems misguided.  If you compare "released code" then beware 
>> that what Debian calls "stable" others might call "too boring", and 
>> what others call "stable Debian might call "testing" or "unstable".
>
> Even unstable has a libav that is behind ffmpeg in terms of 
> functionality that the users (read: "me") may need.

Above does not compare the two upstreams, but libav packaging and libav 
upstream!


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 490 bytes
Desc: signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/attachments/20130926/48a4e3ea/attachment.sig>