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

[Reinhard Tartler]

Xavier Douville <debian at douville.org> writes:

> Fabian Greffrath a écrit :
>> Xavier Douville schrieb:
>>> I think that would help answer many "can't play video" questions.
>>
>> In Debian's ffmpeg version no codecs were stripped that would be
>> required for playback of video, only *encoders* have been removed.
>>
>>
> Right, thanks for this clarification.

> I also understand that there is a formats.txt.gz file but it's a very
> long file

How is that a problem? You asked for clarification, didn't you?

> and it's not clear that mpeg4 encoding was disabled because of patents
> and not because it's not supported by upstream.

You're wrong, ffmpeg does *not* feature neither an h264 encoder nor one
for vc1.

FFmpeg *does* provide an wrapper for libx264, but that cannot be used in
debian because of
http://packages.qa.debian.org/x/x264/news/20070513T170746Z.html

> 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),

Wrong again, as Fabian pointed out.

> -Add an other file in /usr/share/doc/ffmpeg which would only list
> disabled codecs, and suggest an alternative?

Feel free to propose alternative wordings to README.Debian, I'll happily
review your suggestions.

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4