FFmpeg May Be On Its Way To Returning To Debian

When FFmpeg was forked into Libav, Debian ended up taking the route of packaging and shipping Libav in place of FFmpeg. However, there's many people that prefer FFmpeg to Libav with FFmpeg's continued progress, and now this multimedia project may be on its way to finding itself in the Debian archive once again.

Going back several months there has been Debua Bug #729203 that's about bringing FFmpeg back into the Debian archive. There's many users preferring FFmpeg to Libav, some high-profile open-source projects depend upon FFmpeg, and features found in FFmpeg but not in Libav.

There's been nearly 600 comments to that bug report in the past few months, including some comments noting some early packaging work done on FFmpeg, etc. Several Phoronix readers have been writing in the past few days to note that while nothing has landed yet, it looks like FFmpeg is soon about to reach Debian experimental.

There's a new FFmpeg Debian package that's suitable for Debian and also allows Libav to coexist on the same system. The latest comment at the time of posting is calling for the FFmpeg Debian package to be uploaded to the "experimental" archive.

Stay tuned for more information to see if FFmpeg finally makes its way back into Debian experimental.