[zinekeller]

Some might have commented that FFmpeg is a very complex software but in its defence codecs are complex - especially in the encoding side where you basically have the whole control on the parameters. If you somehow work at a media company (on the engineering side, not the creative side which usually does not know (and care) what is the difference between P and B frames) the switches are important especially in one-way broadcasting (where there is no way to basically go backward and you need to fit everything into a very constrained transmission, which as one of my friends say that engineers at YouTube has a much more easier job due to the two-way communication nature of the internet).

[dstick]

Complex is a boon in this case, is it not? It -can- do everything. You need to invest some time into understanding it. There’s no fancy UI, no modern branding. It’s a work horse. It’s so powerful, I love it! Amazing piece of software.

[georgiecasey]

Doesn't the H264 codec used by ffmpeg come from the VideoLan/VLC team?

[_Gyan_]

No. The h264 decoder is internal. The repo for the commonly used H.264 encoder x264, is hosted at Videolan but its developers were a separate group. VLC also hosts the ffmpeg repo.