Comment 104 for bug 602934

The only point about backwards-compatibility as I see it is to save people
coming from 1.3.6 and 1.3.7 (which had our earliest version of FFmpeg) having
to get the latest FFmpeg when they upgrade Audacity. Even without this patch
those 1.3.6/1.3.7 users would have to upgrade to the current FFmpeg available
at Buanzo's site, so we are not making things any worse for them. And if this
patch was in 1.3.13 or 1.3.14, users upgrading from 1.3.8+ would be able to
carry on with their older FFmpeg 0.5 without having to update to our FFmpeg 0.6
when we release it, so it's better for them. But to answer the question, no the
1.3.6/1.3.7 FFmpeg (the October 2008 versions here):
http://lrn.mooo.com/other/gsoc/ffmpegcity/ffmpeg/distributable/

are rejected by 1.3.13 with this patch applied.

Yes the log messages are mainly for support workers. I'm +1 on leaving them in
until we are sure we have cracked all the issues with "other" versions of
FFmpeg on the system preventing "our" FFmpeg getting picked up. We can revert
the messages to "debug" then if we want.

Leland, do you think the reason LRN went for quality was because FFmpeg has a
problem if you simplistically specify the bit rate? Although users don't
like/understand those quality settings, they seem to be functional - higher
quality = higher bit rate. Can you see any magic to get around this? If not,
then quality settings (but also indicating the likely bit rate resulting) might
be a reasonable compromise (probably using a combo box, not a slider). And we
could leave that for now in the interests of applying this patch if Vaughan is
agreeable to it.