Did it get replaced with this one from Doug McMahon or this one from Sam Rog?
Personal Package Archives (PPA) are independent of each other, so (ignoring what a user does to their own system) one PPA does not really replace another.
I visit the releases page for ffmpeg, and there seems to be simultaneous development of releases
Releases are maintained for downstream distributors, such as various Linux distros. A release branch will be maintained and supported as long as it is being used by the downstream user; such as until the EOL of a distro version. You can see a list of some downstream users to see who uses what.
Jon Severinsson's PPA used older branches to correlate with the version of the Libav fork that Ubuntu offered. Since FFmpeg is API compatible with Libav, and because his PPA also provided the binaries and libraries, this generally allowed other repository packages to use FFmpeg instead of the Libav stuff.
Doug's PPA (for 14.04 users) provides static builds, from the most recent release, of the FFmpeg cli tools. It also provides support for libfdk_aac (an excellent, but "non-free" AAC encoder), and 8-bit/10-bit x264. It should not interfere with official repository packages.
So, which version should I download, now that the PPA is gone?
FFmpeg recommends that general users use the latest code available. FFmpeg development is very active, and using "git master" will have more bug fixes and features than any release. Also, if you need help or experience a bug it is requested that you test git master for those same reasons (often users find that their issue is resolved when they try a recent version).
Does it depend on the distribution I'm using?
Looks like you're using Mint? That's basically Ubuntu, so no, in this case it does not matter. Just make sure the PPA is compatible by correlating your Mint version with whatever Ubuntu version it was derived from.
Getting FFmpeg
You have four main options that all provide recent FFmpeg:
Compile. You can follow a step-by-step guide. It will not interfere with the system or repository packages. You can customize the build. However, it can take some time (15 mins or less?). If you can copy and paste you can compile.
Static build. Just a binary you can download, extract, and run. Put it somewhere in your PATH
, or provide the full path to it (such as /home/cxrodgers/ffmpeg
), or navigate to its directory and run ./ffmpeg
. Easy, but no support for non-free encoders or x11grab (a screen grabber).
PPA. Doug's PPA is good and he's active on Ubuntuforums if you need help, or contact him via Launchpad. For Ubuntu Trusty 14.04 users.
Wait for Ubuntu Vivid 15.04 when FFmpeg returns to Ubuntu.