[FraKtus]

I use FFmpeg for many years, and I did wonder many times why isn't there a CLI that would be simpler to use but still useful for most tasks.

To my knowledge, no project succeeded in doing that. It's not difficult to code a simple reader and a basic encoder, but then you have many cases not supported correctly, as you wrote.

[Hello71]

IMO, the main problem with ffmpeg is that the official documentation is overly intimidating to newcomers. While the command syntax isn't great, it's not terrible either. Probably one of the contributing factors is overcomplicated poorly written internet tutorials copying out-of-date technical memes, like how people complain about tar -zxcvbnwhatever despite tar -xf file covering 99.9% of decompression cases.