libva vs ffmpeg

Hi Debian multimedia,

It's not my intention to start a heated debate here.

I notice that the versions of ffmpeg in the Debian repos has stagnated
around 0.7.2. Upon asking the debian multimedia maintainers, they
indirectly confirmed that they have switched to libav (ffmpeg's fork).

Does anyone know why did Debian chose libva over ffmpeg? I've read the
"history" behind the libva fork. It seems one of the main issues was
that to get patches and/or features into ffmpeg was very very hard.
They had to be the perfect solution or they would otherwise be
rejected by the project leader. It feels counter-intuitive now, with
the fork, that they release less often...meaning less features...

Don't get me wrong, from what I've read, I side more with the stance
of the libva developers (though I understand trying to keep the
quality of the code very high is a good thing), but Debian has always
been pragmatic about many of its decisions.

I agree version numbers mean very little, but what about number of
features? I'm not well versed in the many uses of ffmpeg/libav, so
when reading the changelogs between versions I get no feeling for how
their features compare. I'm asking the debian multimedia mailing list
for this, in view of the fact that ffmpeg is being used instead of
libav.

I understand the debian multimedia maintainers is probably a group
composed mainly of volunteers, and thus have very limited time to
package both ffmpeg and libav. Have you consider merging your work
into debian main? I've heard they've gotten relatively lax on the
patented code issue (e.g. mp3lame is now in the main repos and so is
libxvidcore4).

Thanks

Andres