[LAU] ffmpeg or libav

[Patrick Shirkey]

On Sat, January 12, 2013 8:40 pm, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas wrote:
> On Saturday 12 January 2013 10:19:59 Rustom Mody wrote:
>> Ive seen some postings here recently recommending ffmpeg, so I thought
>> I'd
>> ask this (somewhat political) question:
>> All that I know is that as an ordinary mostly-ignoramus user, Ive used
>> ffmpeg on and off and then one day my debian updates told me ffmpeg is
>> obsolete use libav.
>> Did that and have found that some things that used to work with ffmpeg
>> stopped with libav (dont exactly remember the details).
>> Currently it appears that for using ffmpeg one needs to compile from
>> source.
>>
>> Since people are recommending use of ffmpeg am I to understand that the
>> headache is worth it?
>>
>> http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html seems to say
>> that
>> ffmpeg is integrating libav patches and not vice versa
>>

ffmpeg has just reached a major milestone with a new version including
support for vector graphic formats and they are a very active project with
more daily patches than even the alsa project which I find impressive. I
have no idea why Debian has chosen to promote libav over ffmpeg. I
certainly don't appreciate them telling me that ffmpeg is deprecated.

libav has some extensions from some big players but ffmpeg integrates with
libav so you get the best of both.

IMO ffmpeg is similar to ecasound. It's a very useful utility in the
multimedia production toolkit.


>> [Sorry for asking a political question]
>
> Thanks for exposing this issue. I think that it is important, because it
> illustrates a negative and recurrent pattern from some Linux distros.
> Another
> example:
>
> CDRecord or Wodim?
> http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/linux-dist.html
>

It seems madness to me that cdrecord would be considered obsolete.


--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd