Bit of an odd one here. I suspect I know the answer, but:
Is there a way to tell older versions of VLC not to quit on an un-recognised command line parameter, but merely to ignore it? I ask because it would be useful to be able to use the same command line strings across various versions of VLC, but some newer commands (such as ffmpeg-threads=1) cause VLC prior to 2.01 to die with an error...