---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Alessio Treglia" <alessio@debian.org>
Date: Oct 22, 2014 1:42 PM
Subject: Bits from the Debian Multimedia Maintainers
To: <debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org>
Cc:

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>
> Ciao!
>
> The Debian Multimedia Maintainers have been quite active since the
> Wheezy release, and have some interesting news to share for the Jessie
> release. Here we give you a brief update on what work has been done and
> work that is still ongoing.
>
> Let's see what's cooking for Jessie then.
>
>
> Frameworks and libraries
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>  * Support for many new media formats and codecs.
>
> The codec library libavcodec, which is used by popular media playback
> applications including vlc, mpv, totem (using gstreamer1.0-libav), xine,
> and many more, has been updated to the latest upstream release version
> 11 provided by Libav [libav]. This provides Debian users with HEVC
> playback, a native Opus decoder, Matroska 3D support, Apple ProRes, and
> much more. Please see [libav-changelog] for a full list of functionality
> additions and updates.
>
>  * libebur128
>
> libebur128 is a free implementation of the European Broadcasting Union
> Loudness Recommendation (EBU R128), which is essentially an alternative
> to ReplayGain. The library can be used to analyze audio perceived
> loudness and subsequentially normalize the volume during playback.
>
>  * libltc
>
> libltc provides functionalities to encode and decode Linear (or
> Longitudinal) Timecode (LTC) from/to SMPTE data timecode.
>
>  * libva
>
> libva and the driver for Intel GPUs has been updated to the 1.4.0
> release. Support for new GPUs has been added. libva now also supports
> Wayland.
>
>  * Pure Data
>
> A number of new additional libraries (externals) will appear in Jessie,
> including (among others) Eric Lyon's fftease and lyonpotpourrie, Thomas
> Musil's iemlib, the pdstring library for string manipulation and pd-lua
> that allows to write Pd-objects in the popular lua scripting language.
>
>
> JACK and LADI
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> LASH Audio Session Handler was abandoned upstream a long time ago in
> favor of the new session management system, called ladish (LADI Session
> Handler). ladish allows 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 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 easy-to-use graphical interface for the session
> handler.
>
> Note that ladish uses the D-Bus interface to the jack daemon, therefore
> only Jessie's jackd2 provides support for and also cooperates fine
> with it.
>
>
> Plugins: LV2 and LADSPA
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Debian Jessie will bring the newest 1.10.0 version of the LV2 technology
> [lv2]. Most changes affect the packaging of new plugins and extensions,
> a brief list of packaging guidelines is now available [lv2-packaging].
>
> A number of new plugins and development tools too have been made
> available during the Jessie development cycle:
>
>  * LV2 Toolkit
>
> LVTK provides libraries that wrap the LV2 C API and extensions into easy
> to use C++ classes. The original work for this
> was mostly done by Lars Luthman in lv2-c++-tools.
>
>  * Vee One Suite
>
> The whole suite by Rui Nuno Capela is now available in Jessie, and
> consists of three components:
>   drumkv1: old-school drum-kit sampler synthesizer
>   samplv1: polyphonic sampler
>   synthv1: analog-style 4-oscillator substractive synthesizer
> All three are provided in both forms of LV2 plugins and stand-alone JACK
> client. JACK session, JACK MIDI, and ALSA MIDI are supported too.
>
>  * x42-plugins and zam-plugins
>
> LV2 bundles containing many audio plugins for high quality processing.
>
>  * Fomp
>
> Fomp is an LV2 port of the MCP, VCO, FIL, and WAH plugins by Fons
> Adriaensen.
>
> Some other components have been upgraded to more recent upstream versions:
>
>  * ab2gate: 1.1.7
>  * calf: 0.0.19+git20140915+5de5da28
>  * eq10q: 2.0~beta5.1
>  * NASPRO: 0.5.1
>
> We've packaged ste-plugins, Fons Adriaensen's new stereo LADSPA plugins
> bundle.
> A major upgrade of frei0r [frei0r], namely the standard collection for
> the minimalistic plugin API for video effects, will be available in
> Jessie.
>
>
> New multimedia applications
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>  * Advene
>
> Advene (Annotate Digital Video, Exchange on the NEt) is a flexible video
> annotation application.
>
>  * Ardour3
>
> The new generation of the popular digital audio workstation will make
> its very first appearance in Debian Jessie.
>
>  * Cantata
>
> Qt4 front-end for the MPD daemon.
>
>  * Csound
>
> Csound for jessie will feature the new major series 6, with the improved
> IDE CsoundQT. This new csound supports improved array data type
> handling, multi-core rendering and debugging features.
>
>  * din
>
> DIN Is Noise is a musical instrument and audio synthesizer that supports
> JACK audio output, MIDI, OSC, and IRC bot as input sources. It could be
> extended and customized with Tcl scripts too.
>
>  * 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/'.
>
>  * 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.
>
>  * flowblade
>
> Flowblade is a video editor - like the popular KDenlive based on the MLT
> engine, but more lightweight and with some difference in editing concepts.
>
>  * forked-daapd
>
> Forked-daapd switched [forked-daapd] 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!
>
>  * harvid
>
> HTTP Ardour Video Daemon decodes still images from movie files and
> serves them via HTTP. It provides frame-accurate decoding and is main
> use-case is to act as backend and second level cache for rendering the
> videotimeline in Ardour.
>
>  * Groove Basin
>
> Groove Basin is a music player server with a web-based user interface
> inspired by Amarok 1.4. It runs on a server optionally connected to
> speakers. Guests can control the music player by connecting with a
> laptop, tablet, or smart phone. Further, users can stream their music
> libraries remotely.
> It comes with a fast, responsive web interface that supports keyboard
> shortcuts and drag drop. It also provides the ability to upload songs,
> download songs, and import songs by URL, including YouTube URLs. Groove
> Basin supports Dynamic Mode which automatically queues random songs,
> favoring songs that have not been queued recently.
> It automatically performs ReplayGain scanning on every song using the
> EBU R128 loudness standard, and automatically switches between track and
> album mode. Groove Basin supports the MPD protocol, which means it is
> compatible with MPD clients. There is also a more powerful Groove Basin
> protocol which you can use if the MPD protocol does not meet your needs.
>
>  * HandBrake
>
> HandBrake, a versatile video transcoder, is now available for Jessie. It
> could convert video from nearly any format to a wide range of commonly
> supported codecs.
>
>  * jack-midi-clock
>
> New jackd midiclock utility made by Robin Gareus.
>
>  * laborejo
>
> Laborejo, Esperanto for "Workshop", is used to craft music through
> notation. It is a LilyPond GUI frontend, a MIDI creator and a tool
> collection to inspire and help music composers.
>
>  * mpv
>
> mpv [mpv] is a movie player based on MPlayer and mplayer2. It supports a
> wide variety of video file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle
> types. The project focuses mainly on modern systems and encourages
> developer activity. As such, large portions of outdated code originating
> from MPlayer have been removed, and many new features and improvements
> have been added [mpv-changelog]. Note that, although there are still
> some similarities to its predecessors, mpv should be considered a
> completely different program (e.g. lacking compatibility with both
> mplayer and mplayer2 in terms of command-line arguments and
> configuration).
>
>  * 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.
>
>  * sonic-visualiser
>
> Sonic Visualiser Application for viewing and analysing the contents of
> music audio files.
>
>  * SoundScapeRenderer
>
> SoundScapeRenderer (aka SSR) is a (rather) easy to use render engine for
> spatial audio, that provides a number of different rendering algorithms,
> ranging from binaural (headphone) playback via wave field synthesis to
> higher-order ambisonics.
>
>  * Videotrans
>
> videotrans is a set of scripts that allow its user to reformat existing
> movies into the VOB format that is used on DVDs.
>
>  * XBMC
>
> XBMC has been partially rebranded as "XBMC from Debian" [xbmc-debian] to
> make it clear that it is changed to conform to Debian's Policy. The
> latest stable release, 13.2 Gotham will be part of Jessie making Debian
> a good choice for HTPC-s.
>
>  * zita-bls1
>
> Binaural stereo signals converter made by Fons Adriaensen
>
>  * zita-mu1
>
> Stereo monitoring organiser for jackd made by Fons Adriaensen
>
>  * zita-njbridge
>
> Jack clients to transmit multichannel audio over a local IP network made
> by Fons Adriaensen
>
>  * radium-compressor
>
> Radium Compressor is the system compressor of the Radium suite. It is
> provided in the form of stand-alone JACK application.
>
>
> Multimedia Tasks
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> With Jessie we are shipping a set of multimedia related tasks [tasks].
> They include package lists for doing several multimedia related tasks.
> If you are interested in defining new tasks, or tweaking the current,
> existing ones, we are very much interested in hearing from you.
>
>
> Upgraded applications and libraries
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>  * Aeolus: 0.9.0
>  * Aliki: 0.3.0
>  * Ams: 2.1.1
>  * amsynth: 1.4.2
>  * Audacious: 3.5.2
>  * Audacity: 2.0.5
>  * Audio File Library: 0.3.6
>  * Blender: 2.72b
>  * Bristol: 0.60.11f
>  * C* Audio Plugin Suite: 0.9.23
>  * Cecilia: 5.0.9
>  * cmus: 2.5.0
>  * DeVeDe: 3.23.0-13-gbfd73f3
>  * DRC: 3.2.1
>  * EasyTag: 2.2.2
>  * ebumeter: 0.2.0
>  * faustworks: 0.5
>  * ffDiaporama: 1.5
>  * ffms: 2.20
>  * gmusicbrowser: 1.1.13
>  * Hydrogen: 0.9.6.1
>  * IDJC: 0.8.14
>  * jack-tools: 20131226
>  * LiVES: 2.2.6
>  * mhWaveEdit: 1.4.23
>  * Mixxx: 1.11.0
>  * mp3fs: 0.91
>  * MusE: 2.1.2
>  * Petri-Foo: 0.1.87
>  * PHASEX: 0.14.97
>  * QjackCtl: 0.3.12
>  * Qtractor: 0.6.3
>  * rtaudio: 4.1.1
>  * Rosegarden: 14.02
>  * rtmidi: 2.1.0
>  * SoundTouch: 1.8.0
>  * stk: 4.4.4
>  * streamtuner2: 2.1.3
>  * SuperCollider: 3.6.6
>  * Synfig Studio: 0.64.1
>  * TerminatorX: 3.90
>  * tsdecrypt: 10.0
>  * Vamp Plugins SDK: 2.5
>  * VLC: Jessie will release with the 2.2.x series of VLC
>  * XCFA: 4.3.8
>  * xwax: 1.5
>  * xjadeo: 0.8.0
>  * x264: 0.142.2431+gita5831aa
>  * zynaddsubfx: 2.4.3
>
>
> What's not going to be in Jessie
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> with the aim to improve the overall quality of the multimedia software
> available in Debian, we have dropped a number of packages which were
> abandoned upstream:
>
>  * beast
>  * flumotion
>  * jack-rack
>  * jokosher
>  * lv2fil (suggested replacement for users is eq10q or calf eq)
>  * phat
>  * plotmm
>  * specimen (suggested replacement for users is petri-foo - fork of
> specimen)
>  * zynjacku (suggested replacement for users is jalv)
>
> We've also dropped mplayer, presently nobody seems interested in
> maintaining it.
> The suggested replacements for users are mplayer2 or mpv. Whilst the
> former is mostly compatible with mplayer in terms of command-line
> arguments and configuration (and adds a few new features too), the
> latter adds a lot of new features and improvements, and it is actively
> maintained upstream.
>
> Please note that although the mencoder package is no longer available
> anymore, avconv and mpv do provide encoding functionality. For more
> information see [avconv-man], [avconv-documentation] and [mpv-encoding].
>
>
> Broken functionalities
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> rtkit under systemd is broken at the moment. [bug747568]
>
>
> Activity statistics
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> More information about team's activity are available at [team-stats].
>
>
> Where to reach us
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> The Debian Multimedia Maintainers can be reached at
> pkg-multimedia-maintainers AT lists.alioth.debian.org for packaging
> related topics, or at debian-multimedia AT 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.
>
>
> Cheers!
>
>
>    Alessio Treglia
>         on behalf of the Debian Multimedia Maintainers
>
>
>
> [bug747568] https://bugs.debian.org/747568
> [forked-daapd] http://bit.ly/1rqwAW1
> [frei0r] http://frei0r.dyne.org/
> [libav] http://libav.org
> [libav-changelog] http://bit.ly/1DB3MTo
> [lv2] http://lv2plug.in/
> [lv2-packaging] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/Policy/LV2
> [mpv] http://mpv.io/
> [mpv-changelog] http://bit.ly/1tLqV4i
> [mpv-encoding] http://bit.ly/1tcgE0f
> [avconv-man] http://bit.ly/1s8QKE5
> [avconv-documentation] https://libav.org/avconv.html
> [tasks] http://blends.debian.org/multimedia/tasks/index
> [team-stats] http://blends.debian.org/multimedia/
> [xbmc-debian] http://balintreczey.hu/blog/introducing-xbmc-from-debian/
>
>
> - --
> Alessio Treglia          | www.alessiotreglia.com
> Debian Developer         |     alessio@debian.org
> Ubuntu Core Developer    |  quadrispro@ubuntu.com
> 0416 0004 A827 6E40 BB98 90FB E8A4 8AE5 311D 765A
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>
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