1. Common questions

1.1. Who are you? What are your tasks?

See http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia. If it doesn't answer your questions, please help us to improve that page

2. Getting new software in Debian

2.1. I have packaged new software. Can you upload it for me?

In general, we of course care for new multimedia packages. However we cannot sponsor packages on a regular basis. Please see DebianMentorsNet for a service aiming at this.

2.2. Ok, but not all team members of pkg-multimedia seem to be DDs. You still sponsor them, no?

Yes, we do. Please keep in mind that signing and uploading is the least work that needs to be done for sponsoring. It causes much more work to actually review, improve and fix packages. That's why we maintain our packages in git. See also PackagingWithGit and ../DevelopPackaging.

2.3. Fair enough. I have my package in git. Can you now sponsor it?

First get the package in a good state, and get a team member to review it. Only then, integrate your work in our team repository, so that later on, any team member can look at, improve and fix it if necessary. See ../DevelopPackaging for a more detailed procedure.

The rationale is that we need someone in the team as contact person in case some action is needed for the package.

2.4. Nobody in your team seems interested!

Well, either your package does not really fit the team member's interest, or (more likely) we are overworked and don't find time to integrate your package. Please consider joining the team.

2.5. There is 'Debian Multimedia Maintainers' and 'deb-multimedia.org'. So what's the difference?

'Debian Multimedia Maintainers' is the team behind the packaging of multimedia related packages distributed with Debian. In other words, 'Debian Multimedia Maintainers' is us.

'deb-multimedia.org' (aka 'dmo' or 'd-m.o', formerly 'debian-multimedia.org') is a site that offers a repository of multimedia packages as well. That site is maintained by an individual that is not part of this team.

2.5.1. freedom

A key difference between the 'deb-multimedia.org' and our team is that we strive to maintain packages that are considered DFSG free or get them to a state where they become DFSG free. Moreover, we aim at proper integration of programs into the Debian system. In contrast to official Debian packages, many packages from 'deb-multimedia.org' are licensed under non-free terms that limit their use and are not freely redistributable.

2.5.2. versioning

To distinguish between our official packages and packages from d-m.o, d-m.o adds an 'epoch' to the version number and uses a specific revision counter. This means that once you installed a version from d-m.o, package management software will always consider that version newer than the official package - even when the official package is in actual fact a newer version (but without the epoch).

2.6. Does the team coordinate package maintenance with dmo?

No. There is no such coordination with the team and anyone in dmo. There have been attempts to coordinate package maintenance with dmo, but the maintainer of dmo has consistently expressed no interest in coordinating package maintenance with anyone in the team.

2.7. Does the team provide any kind of support with using packages from dmo?

No. There is no attempt to provide support with using packages from dmo.

2.8. Well, isn't deb-multimedia.org an official part of Debian?

This is a common misconception in regards to what deb-multimedia.org is. Although dmo is run by a Debian Developer and used to make use of the word "Debian" and the Debian trademark, dmo is in fact *not* a part of Debian or affiliated with Debian in any way. The fund-raising that happens there does not go towards Debian. As far as we understand it, dmo is maintained by only two people, neither of whom are a part of this team.

3. Common issues

3.1. A recent upgrade of ffmpeg/libav-related library packages (e.g. libavcodec) has broken related software (e.g. Totem, MPlayer, VLC, Xine)

This is probably caused by unofficial packages from third-party repositories, e.g. 'deb-multimedia.org' (formerly 'debian-multimedia.org'). These packages are known to not integrate well with other software packages in Debian and cause breakage regularly.

It is highly recommended to remove these unofficial packages from your system and replace them with the official ones provided by Debian instead. Please use apt-cache madison libavcodec* or similar tools to determine the version of the libavcodec library package installed on your system and compare it with the one provided by the official Debian mirrors. Unofficial packages are often identified by package revision numbers like -dmo1 (formerly -0.1).

Install the official package explicitely, e.g. via sudo apt-get install libavcodec53=4:0.7.2-1+b1. Usually, the official libavcodec package's dependency declarations should be sufficient to pull in the appropriate official packages for the other libraries as well. However, if needed, the aforementioned steps may be repeated to explicitely install the other library packages built from the official 'ffmpeg' or 'libav' source packages, respectively, too: libavformat, libavdevice, libavfilter, libavutil, libswscale, libpostproc.

Please do also consider to entirely remove unofficial third-party repositories from your /etc/apt/sources.list file. The few more features added to the packages provided there do often not compensate for the breakage they may cause.

4. Coexistence of official Debian repositories and deb-multimedia.org

The two repositories can coexist in such a way that the official Debian repository packages are installed by default, and deb-multimedia.org packages are installed when they are not available through the official Debian repository. This is done by specifying an apt preference order using the /etc/sources/preference file. Example preference file:

 ### Start of file 

 Package: *    Pin: origin *.debian.org   Pin-Priority: 1001  

 Package: *   Pin: origin *.deb-multimedia.org   Pin-Priority: 1 

 ### End of file 

The APT preferences manual (man apt_preferences), provides an explanation of the priorities and what they will do:

• How APT Interprets Priorities
  • Priorities (P) assigned in the APT preferences file must be positive or negative integers. They are interpreted as follows (roughly speaking):

    P > 1000

    • causes a version to be installed even if this constitutes a d.o.wngrade of the package
  • ..

    0 < P <=100

    • causes a version to be installed only if there is no installed version of the package

4.1. How to replace deb-multimedia packages with official Debian packages

After creating the above preferences file, run the following commands

 sudo apt-get clean 

 sudo apt-get update 

 sudo apt-get upgrade 

Credit to Alain Kelder http://giantdorks.org/alain/switching-from-debian-multimedia-org-packages-to-official-debian-versions/