New avconv instead of ffmpeg

[Jamie Nguyen]

On 04/06/13 08:26, Dario Lesca wrote:
> About ffmpeg, a Debian's user say:
> 
>> "This package contains the deprecated ffmpeg program. This package
>> also serves as a transitional package to libav-tools. Users are
>> advised to use avconv from the libav-tools package instead of ffmpeg.
>>
>> Libav is a complete, cross-platform solution to decode, encode,
>> record, convert and stream audio and video."

ffmpeg is not deprecated at all and is still being actively developed.
In fact, the upstream MPlayer tarball still contains ffmpeg, not libav.

Libav is a fork of ffmpeg that happened early 2011 as some were unhappy
with the project leader (Michael Niedermayer). Libav tried to take the
ffmpeg trademark/website for themselves, but the owner of the trademark
(Fabrice Bellard, original author of ffmpeg) intervened. The two
projects are now going their separate ways.

One of the members of the libav fork happens to be the maintainer of
ffmpeg on Debian/Ubuntu, so he "deprecated" ffmpeg and spread what some
might call misleading information about ffmpeg. Neither ffmpeg or libav
seem significantly better or worse than the other, either in features or
stability. Certainly neither of them can be considered deprecated
projects. I was under the impression that they stopped showing the
deprecation message, but it appears I may be wrong.

This gives a detailed look at what happened. The author claims
objectivity, but I'd take the facts and weigh things for yourself:
http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html


> I'm looking for a Fedora's package for libav-tools (or avcomv)

ffmpeg can be found in the RPMFusion repository: http://rpmfusion.org/
I don't think libav-tools is in any of our official repositories, though
I believe the gstreamer1-libav package uses libav instead of ffmpeg.
Most of our other media-related software is built with ffmpeg, not libav.


Kind regards,

-- 
Jamie Nguyen