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When I was told that ffmpeg was deprecated by libav, I immediately checked whether this was the truth. It wasn't. Bye bye libav - forever. Don't ever lie to you

When I was told that ffmpeg was deprecated by libav, I immediately checked whether this was the truth. It wasn't. Bye bye libav - forever. Don't ever lie to your end users.

plorkyeran 11y ago
The libav version of the command line tool named "ffmpeg" was in fact deprecated and has since been removed entirely. The message was confusing due to that there are several different things named "ffmpeg", but it was not untrue.
- lukaslalinsky 11y ago
  I always thought the message was intentionally confusing.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    It was untrue. It was a fork and they acted like ffmpeg was no longer being developed. To me this was a horrible way to fork something.
    - acpmasquerade 11y ago
      This was what similar happened in our case as well. My fellow developer had convinced me that FFmpeg development was stopped libav was the successor. So, its time we need to study few more and determine what is better for a production, consumer centric application.
- dtech 11y ago
  An earlier version of the message stated that development on ffmpeg had stopped. How can you interpret this in any other way than an effort to spread FUD about ffmpeg by libav?...
- camperman 11y ago
  You're right but I was unaware of the fork. I installed Ubuntu 14.04 on my workstation, ran ffmpeg to do something and got a message which said: "This program is not developed anymore and is only provided for compatibility. Use avconv instead." Five minutes googling and I realized there had been a (somewhat acrimonious) fork. So my interpretation was quite natural: the libav developers and/or the Ubuntu maintainers were being dicks to the original project. If they really wanted to be clear they could have said something like: "This is a deprecated wrapper around avconv, part of libav. It is not part of the ffmpeg project. See <url> for details." How hard would that have been?
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    >How hard would that have been? Probably pretty rough on the ego.
  - mandelbulb 11y ago
    This. Ubuntu was the main reason why people assumed ffmpeg became deprecated, in other words libav just got more vocal PR/support. Gentoo initially followed the mainstream but changed the default flag to ffmpeg a few months ago.
  - roghummal 11y ago
    It's something in between. "The ffmpeg program is only provided for script compatibility and will be removed in a future release. It has been deprecated in the Libav project to allow for incompatible command line syntax improvements in its replacement called avconv (see Changelog for details). Please use avconv instead."
    - kierank 11y ago
      I won't take a position on this but the message you quote is a revised version that was put in place many years later after numerous user complaints about confusion.
      - roghummal 11y ago

When I was told that ffmpeg was deprecated by libav, I immediately checked whether this was the truth. It wasn't. Bye bye libav - forever. Don't ever lie to your end users.

plorkyeran 11y ago

The libav version of the command line tool named "ffmpeg" was in fact deprecated and has since been removed entirely. The message was confusing due to that there are several different things named "ffmpeg", but it was not untrue.

lukaslalinsky 11y ago
I always thought the message was intentionally confusing.
- baldfat 11y ago
  It was untrue. It was a fork and they acted like ffmpeg was no longer being developed. To me this was a horrible way to fork something.
  - acpmasquerade 11y ago
    This was what similar happened in our case as well. My fellow developer had convinced me that FFmpeg development was stopped libav was the successor. So, its time we need to study few more and determine what is better for a production, consumer centric application.
dtech 11y ago
An earlier version of the message stated that development on ffmpeg had stopped. How can you interpret this in any other way than an effort to spread FUD about ffmpeg by libav?...
camperman 11y ago
You're right but I was unaware of the fork. I installed Ubuntu 14.04 on my workstation, ran ffmpeg to do something and got a message which said: "This program is not developed anymore and is only provided for compatibility. Use avconv instead." Five minutes googling and I realized there had been a (somewhat acrimonious) fork. So my interpretation was quite natural: the libav developers and/or the Ubuntu maintainers were being dicks to the original project. If they really wanted to be clear they could have said something like: "This is a deprecated wrapper around avconv, part of libav. It is not part of the ffmpeg project. See <url> for details." How hard would that have been?
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  >How hard would that have been? Probably pretty rough on the ego.
- mandelbulb 11y ago
  This. Ubuntu was the main reason why people assumed ffmpeg became deprecated, in other words libav just got more vocal PR/support. Gentoo initially followed the mainstream but changed the default flag to ffmpeg a few months ago.
- roghummal 11y ago
  It's something in between. "The ffmpeg program is only provided for script compatibility and will be removed in a future release. It has been deprecated in the Libav project to allow for incompatible command line syntax improvements in its replacement called avconv (see Changelog for details). Please use avconv instead."
  - kierank 11y ago
    I won't take a position on this but the message you quote is a revised version that was put in place many years later after numerous user complaints about confusion.
    - roghummal 11y ago