This is really great. I wish I was reading this headline back in 2009 when I was working with video encoding.
If file size to download is an issue, why not build a "stripped down" version which works with just a couple of file format inputs and one output that uses a GPL codec?
I don't actually think file size to download is much of an issue - the current build is a little over 6mb gzipped, which isn't much bigger than most Youtube videos.
For building a "stripped down" version, there is a config flag "--disable-everything" that can be used, and I will investigate it a little more. We probably won't end up hosting the compiled file, just out of the interest of repo-size, but I can certainly build a "build-minimal" script.
If file size to download is an issue, why not build a "stripped down" version which works with just a couple of file format inputs and one output that uses a GPL codec?