How do you make use of static builds of ffmpeg?

[mikeslr]

From time to time I see references to downloadable static builds of ffmpeg. I've downloaded some, but they remain unused in storage. greengeek's post today about Qwinff reminded me that (a) I'm not sure how to deploy the ffmpeg files, or having done so, how to tell if I've actually done it right and (c) that my system is using those rather than the version which was "built in".
Qwinff is the front end (GUI) for ffmpeg. The "Q" in it's name stands of the Qt libs (specifically now Qt5) which are dependencies. There have been several GUI's to put ffmpeg to use: ffconvert and Winff being two I've used. And, of course, ffmpeg, itself, can be run from the command line with appropriate arguments if you know how.
pkgs.org has links to repos for recent Ubuntus --Fossa being the oldest, so thanks 666philb for including it in Bionicpup64-- and buster being the oldest debian linked to. If your 'recent' ubuntu or debian Puppy doesn't have it, obtaining it via Puppy Package Manager shouldn't be too daunting.
pkgs.org may, however, be misleading. The first version of Qwinff was published in 2011. So some version from here, https://qwinff.github.io/ may function under older Puppies provided suitable libraries can be found.
It was greengeek's mention of replacing [in this instance] tahrpup32 with the newer bionicpup64 which got me wondering if his success resulted from Bionicpup64's newer ffmpeg libraries; and thence, what to do with static ffmpeg builds.

[OscarTalks]

As I understand it, you can only make use of a static build of ffmpeg if the program you are using calls the executable (or as you say if running from command line). If the program you are using operates by depending on the ffmpeg shared libraries (like libavcodec, libavformat etc) then you would not be able to use a static build of ffmpeg, because when you compile a static build of ffmpeg, the shared libraries will not be built and the static versions of the libraries will be linked to (included in) the executables, which will be considerably bigger as a result.