Homebrew decided to break packages for end users. Maintainers decided that big packages like ffmpeg by default should contain only modules used by other Homebrew dependencies. e.g. in ffmpeg, they removed most of the codecs, you now must install ffmpeg-full and manually add it to PATH.

In my opinion, it is incorrect to treat packages that are largely used as CLI tools as something that can be broken into a minimal distribution. You don't treat CLI tools as libraries.

Additionally, the current suggested ffmpeg-full package replacement is not exposed as a CLI tool by default either.

So if you want to install ffmpeg for personal use, instead of the well-known

homebrew install ffmpeg

you now have to run

homebrew install ffmpeg-full

brew link --overwrite ffmpeg-full

I think maintainers could have added a new package and updated dependencies instead of confusing CLI users.

They are doing this to imagemagick too, by the way.