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1. Previous announcements
2. Bits from the Debian Multimedia Team
The Debian Multimedia Maintainers have been quite active since the Wheezy release, and have some interesting plans for the Jessie release cycle. Here we give you an update on what work has been done and work that is still ongoing.
3. What's cooking for Jessie
3.1. Frameworks and libraries
3.1.1. ffmpeg -> Libav
As you might have noticed, there have been some disruptive changes inside the FFmpeg project. In Debian, we are following the Libav fork, which has inherited most of the infrastructure (such as the FATE regression testsuite), the logo, and most of the former active developers. In many ways, Libav is the closer continuation of what used to be FFmpeg and fits Debian's needs much better. So far, the real winner of these events have been the users as important developments, such as frame based multi-threading (575600), have finally been merged.
3.1.2. lame
After many years of work with both the upstream developers and the FTP master team, one of the changes that are most visible for users of Debian regarding multimedia is the availability of the LAME MP3 encoder in the main distribution, without having to resort to unofficial repositories. Besides a command line utility, LAME is, perhaps, most used as a library by other packages, and this effort has already began occuring: libav/ffmpeg, audacity, the GStreamer framework and other applications are already being compiled to take advantage of a free, high quality MP3 encoding engine.
3.1.3. xvidcore
The xvidcore package, which provide MPEG-4 SP/ASP video codecs has been uploaded to Debian. It has already been integrated into Libav and mplayer, so you can now encode XViD streams.
3.1.4. x264
The x264 package, which provide H.264/MPEG-4 AVC compliant video codecs, have been added to the main distribution and already integrated into other applications.
3.2. New/upgraded applications
3.2.1. mplayer2
After years of parallel development, the mplayer2 fork of mplayer has matured a lot to the point of being a usable alternative. Currently, mplayer2 has been packaged and can already be found in wheezy. We are currently considering what to do with the old mplayer package as mplayer2 no longer provides mencoder, but offers a number of other promising features.
3.2.2. MPV
TODO
3.2.3. dvd-slideshow
dvd-slideshow consists of a suite of command line tools which come in handy to make slideshows from collections of pictures. Documentation is provided and available in `/usr/share/doc/dvd-slideshow/'.
3.2.4. dvdwizard
DVDwizard can fully automate the creation of DVD-Video filesystem. It supports graphical menus, chapters, multiple titlesets and multi-language streams. It supports both PAL and NTSC video modes too.
3.2.5. smtube
SMTube is a stand-alone graphical video browser and player, which makes ?YouTube's videos browsing, playing, and download such a piece of cake. It has so many features that, we are sure, will make ?YouTube lovers very, very happy.
3.2.6. lives
The latest upstream release of one of the most popular non-linear video editors for GNU/Linux is available. It supports all the latest standards, and thanks to its modular design it could be easily extended with custom plugins.
3.2.7. muse
TODO
3.2.8. mixxx
TODO
3.2.9. laborejo
TODO
3.2.10. rosegarden
TODO
3.2.11. forked-daapd
Forked-daapd switched to a new, active upstream again dropping Grand Central Dispatch in favor of libevent. The switch fixed several bugs and made forked-daapd available on all release architectures instead of shipping only on amd64 and i386. Now nothing prevents you from setting up a music streaming (DAAP/DACP) server on your favorite home server no matter if it is based on mips, arm or x86!
3.2.12. SuperCollider
The popular SuperCollider software synth has been uploaded to unstable. Go give it a try!
3.2.13. Ardour3
TODO
3.2.14. sonic-visualiser
TODO
3.2.15. zita-bls1
Binaural stereo signals converter made by Fons Adriaensen
3.2.16. zita-mu1
Stereo monitoring organiser for jackd made by Fons Adriaensen
3.2.17. zita-njbridge
Jack clients to transmit multichannel audio over a local IP network made by Fons Adriaensen
3.2.18. libltc
New timecode library made by Robin Gareus
3.2.19. jack-midi-clock
New jackd midiclock utility made by Robin Gareus
3.3. JACK, LADI, LV2, and audio plugins
3.3.1. LADSPA updates
3.3.1.1. ste-plugins
New stereo LADSPA plugins made by Fons Adriaensen
TODO
3.3.2. LV2 revision 1.10.0
Debian Jessie will bring the newest 1.10.0 of the LV2 technology. Most changes affect the packaging of new plugins and extensions, a brief list of packaging guidelines is now available.
3.3.3. lash -> ladish
LASH Audio Session Handler was abandoned upstream in favor of the new session management system, called ladish: LADI Session Handler.
ladish will allow users to run many JACK applications at once and save/restore their configuration with few mouse clicks.
The current status of the integration between the new session handler and JACK may be summarized as follows:
ladish provides the backend;
laditools contains a number of useful graphical tools to tune the session management system's whole configuration (including JACK);
gladish provides a graphical interface for the session handler, written with the GTK+2.0 libraries.
Note that ladish uses the D-Bus interface to the jack daemon. This means that jackd1 does not support it. The current jackd2 version available in Debian Jessie fully supports ladish and also cooperates fine with it.
3.3.4. Plugins
3.3.4.1. radium-compressor
3.3.4.2. vee one suite
New LV2 instruments kit made by Rui Nuno Capela
samplv1
drumkv1
synthv1
3.3.4.3. zam-plugins
New LV2 plugins bundle by Damien Zammit
3.3.4.4. x42-plugins
New LV2 plugins bundle made by Robin Gareus
TODO
4. Activity statistics
More information about team's activity are available at http://blends.alioth.debian.org/multimedia/.
5. Where to reach us
The Debian Multimedia Maintainers can be reached at pkg-multimedia-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org for packaging related topics, or at debian-multimedia@lists.debian.org for user and more general discussion. We would like to invite everyone interested in multimedia to join us there. Some of the team members are also in the #debian-multimedia channel on OFTC.