1. Helping to Maintain/Improve FFmpeg for Debian

1.1. Git usage

Here is how to get ffmpeg from both the Debian Multimedia team's git repository and from FFmpeg's official git repository.

Clone the repository.

git clone https://anonscm.debian.org/git/pkg-multimedia/ffmpeg.git

You may also want to checkout some important branches as well.

cd ffmpeg-debian
git checkout -b pristine-tar origin/pristine-tar
git checkout -b upstream origin/upstream
git checkout -b upstream.unstripped origin/upstream.unstripped
git checkout -b master.unstripped origin/master.unstripped

Next add the FFmpeg git repository to the list of tracked repositories

git remote add ffmpeg git://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg
git fetch ffmpeg

Create a branch for ffmpeg/master

git checkout -b upstream.official-ffmpeg ffmpeg/master

Finally, within this branch, clone libswscale. Note the '-o' option.

git clone -o ffmpeg git://git.ffmpeg.org/libswscale