qeustions about ffmpeg slim down

[Bz16]

I collapsed my `brew config` and `brew doctor` outputs since I don't think they are too relevant for this question.

Output of brew config

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 5.0.10
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: d5856148ee2fdd810dd864f27297d53509860050
Last commit: 4 days ago
Branch: stable
Core tap JSON: 16 Jan 10:36 UTC
Core cask tap JSON: 16 Jan 10:36 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_DISPLAY: /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.Bxq63PBEaI/org.xquartz:0
HOMEBREW_DOWNLOAD_CONCURRENCY: 20
HOMEBREW_EDITOR: nano
HOMEBREW_FORBID_PACKAGES_FROM_PATHS: set
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 10
Homebrew Ruby: 3.4.8 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/3.4.8/bin/ruby
CPU: deca-core 64-bit arm_firestorm_icestorm
Clang: 17.0.0 build 1700
Git: 2.50.1 => /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/git
Curl: 8.7.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 15.7.2-arm64
CLT: 26.0
Xcode: 26.2
Metal Toolchain: N/A
Rosetta 2: false

Output of brew doctor

Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
with debugging if you file an issue. If everything you use Homebrew for is
working fine: please don't worry or file an issue; just ignore this. Thanks!

Warning: Some installed casks are deprecated or disabled.
You should find replacements for the following casks:
  gstreamer-runtime
  wine-stable

Warning: A newer Command Line Tools release is available.
Update them from Software Update in System Settings.

If that doesn't show you any updates, run:
  sudo rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
  sudo xcode-select --install

Alternatively, manually download them from:
  https://developer.apple.com/download/all/.
You should download the Command Line Tools for Xcode 16.4.



This is a Tier 2 configuration:
  https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers#tier-2
You can report Tier 2 unrelated issues to Homebrew/* repositories!
Read the above document before opening any issues or PRs.


Warning: Some installed formulae are deprecated or disabled.
You should find replacements for the following formulae:
  icu4c@77
  neofetch
  python@3.9

Warning: Unbrewed dylibs were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected dylibs:
  /usr/local/lib/libMuseSamplerCoreLib.dylib

Description of issue

Change related to this question: Homebrew/homebrew-core@c51934c

Hi, sorry if this is not the best place to ask questions, but it seems to me to be the best fit. I wasn't able to find a discussion already on this topic, so here it goes.

A very recent update to the primary ffmpeg formula slimmed down the formula considerably – by the description, I assume that the slim-down kept only libraries that's already dependencies to other homebrew-core formulae. However, this can be a pretty disruptive breaking change for existing ffmpeg users, especially since we wouldn't know that this is happening if we are just running brew update and brew upgrade – to be honest, even though there's a long list of formulae autoremoved, I didn't realize something was wrong until I wasn't able to encode with libx265 (which is not included despite its popularity as a video codec).

It looks like that if users are not following all changes to formula configurations, we can only infer that we need to do something by noticing this line:

==> New Formulae
......
ffmpeg-full: Play, record, convert, and stream audio and video

But, to be honest, I still don't think that the description is adequate for telling me that I should switch to ffmpeg-full if I want to retain exactly the same functionality as I had before. (It's also mildly annoying that I need additional configuration to make it work in place of the primary ffmpeg formula, but it's just a mild annoyance only.)

Now, I'm only a recreational ffmpeg user and would not call myself versed at all in video and audio codecs, but the primary ffmpeg formula as it is now seems crippled. The exclusion of x265, av1 (dav1d), vp8/9/webp (libvpx), vorbis libraries seems unjustified to me – I'm fairly sure that these codecs are both encountered commonly and used widely!

I hope someone more well versed on the usage of these libraries can provide some feedback. While I understand the removal of some of the less-used libraries (I don't think anyone's encoding and decoding Theora much nowadays?), I think we should at the very least reinstate the above 5 libraries and discuss if any other libraries might be widely used enough to be kept in the primary ffmpeg configuration.

[Bz16]

I've now found extended discussions on the connected pull request Homebrew/homebrew-core#261303 so I'll close this discussion.