For our purposes, Ffmpeg and Gstreamer both have enough capabilities. The reason why Gstreamer is the default is because most distributions won't support and/or distribute Ffmpeg. I don't think that will change any time soon.
That said, some people prefer Ffmpeg, mainly for better perceived performance. Bastiaan On Fri, 25 Sep 2009, Harley Peters wrote:
Well in the past the developers have all ways said that ffmpeg is less capable then gstreamer which is why gstreamer is the default. Don't know if that is still true any more are not ?
