People like to say that ffmpeg is complicated but when you make it into a nice gui it doesn't get any easier -- it is video compression itself that is complicated. No software could make it easier without making the decisions for you, like handbrake or some other click-through interface.
I'm not certain, but I highly suspect that if I sat down and learned about digital video encoding and compression on a granular enough level then figuring out how to do things in ffmpeg would be rather intuitive. Does anyone have experience doing this?
I've written DirectShow filters around 17 years back for WindowsMobile (not Windows Phone) so I've a decent understanding of codecs and containers.
Formats like mkv or codecs like HEVC didn't exist back then but the concept of manipulating audio/video through a bunch of filters is a wonderful one and most (all?) a/v transforming software does it. When I started looking into FFmpeg's man pages I could connect the dots and start using it after a day of fooling around.
I'm a CLI lover and man page reader so perhaps it worked to my advantage.
I'm not certain, but I highly suspect that if I sat down and learned about digital video encoding and compression on a granular enough level then figuring out how to do things in ffmpeg would be rather intuitive. Does anyone have experience doing this?