Bug#519025: [ffmpeg-debian] Please clarify which codec is included (and which isn't), and what exactly is ffmpeg-debian

[Fabian Greffrath]

Am Dienstag, den 10.03.2009, 14:50 -0400 schrieb Xavier Douville:
> I also understand that there is a formats.txt.gz file but it's a very
> long file and it's not clear that mpeg4 encoding was disabled because of
> patents and not because it's not supported by upstream. This is only a
> suggestion but since ffmpeg, especially the ffmpeg binary package, is
> commonly used to encode a video (as opposed to libavcodec which is used
> most of the time to decode videos), and that mpeg4 is one of the most

Heh? Sorry, but this is plain wrong. Libavcodec can be used for both
decoding and encoding likewise. The ffmpeg binary is simply a frontend
for the library.

> -Add something like "mpeg4 encoding disabled because of patents" in the
> description?

Hmm...

> -Add an other file in /usr/share/doc/ffmpeg which would only list
> disabled codecs, and suggest an alternative? Readme.Debian already does
> about half of that by saying that "mpeg encoders" are disabled. By the

So we could add an explicit list of codecs that have been removed, sure.
By the way, debian/strip.sh does this more or less. We could also add
this information to the package descriptions and replace the somehow
vague "Debian-specific" phrasing.

> way, this file may need an update since a lot of stuff written in 2006
> seems outdated. There is a patents.gz file but it doesn't talk about mpeg4.

About 3/4 of README.Debian have been added in 2008 and contain
up-to-date information. patents.txt is outdated with respect to MPEG4
encoding support, that's true. Maybe we should simply merge it into
README.Debian.


Cheers,
Fabian