Its a do-ocracy and if it took two or so years until Andreas packaged it up, I'm not thinking the claimed demand actually exists. All those devs going to all that work to compile ffmpeg, and yet none of them could be bothered to run dpkg-buildpackage... nah just not seeing it.
There's a relevant line from the post "No, there is no need to replace anything as long as it is maintained." This is why ffmpeg was gone for quite awhile, no one willing to maintain it.
(edited to add, if its not entirely clear, this was totally a bottom up decision not top down, at least as I see it. Not "Debian decided this and that" but individual devs didn't want to package ffmpeg, so it didn't get packaged. That simple. Of course there's social aspects so simple things are never entirely simple... If you want an example of something in Debian being forced top down via general resolution votes and the like, look no further than the systemd debacle)