ffmpeg-2 help request for dvbcut and best practices...

Hi, my package dvbcut relies on ffmpeg, and has hence needed a fairly solid hand to get compiling under ffmpeg-2. While it now builds locally and in the buildsys OK, my incomplete patches cause failures during the application runtime. This package provides multiple export capabilites; 2 via the authors own mpeg2 de/re multiplexing code, and 3 others using libav (ffmpeg). When the later is chosen, the application crashes. 1. What is the best practice regarding use of functions marked deprecated in libraries an application is using ? e.g. I was thinking to adjust the application code's conditional compilation based on ffmpeg library versions to use the newest version of each ffmpeg function that is available. At the moment, these #if defs rather point at the last version in which the function was still present. Since a function is often marked deprecated a long time before it is actually removed from the source, I am hoping that this might reduce the amount of #ifdef, #elif, #elif #else #endif type of construct that makes the source as it stands really messy to read. 2. In relation to (1), I'm also wanting to push the changes upstream to the dvbcut sources. If it was your upstream project, would you want to include changes as suggested ? Why/why not ? 3. I need some help in upgrading certain ffmpeg calls in the code, and welcome suggestion in tiding up my patches: http://cvs.rpmfusion.org/viewvc/rpms/dvbcut/devel/?root=free especially: http://cvs.rpmfusion.org/viewvc/rpms/dvbcut/devel/dvbcut-svn179-ffmpeg-0.... http://cvs.rpmfusion.org/viewvc/rpms/dvbcut/devel/dvbcut-svn179-ffmpeg-2.... You'll see the incomplete bits usually with a "todo". Thanks for any help you can give...