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by oefrha 812 days ago
Basically no one rewrites FFmpeg in recent years, in any language, at least not in the open source scene (and judging from the known usage of FFmpeg in world’s premier providers of multimedia content, probably not in the commercial scene either). It’s both too good and too daunting.
2 comments

So, the next candidate for backdooring? :)
Bah, don't give them ideas! Honestly, codecs are a worrying target for supply chain attacks because they're complex and use a lot of memory-unsafe code. Just look at all the image format attacks throughout history (a memorable recent one being the libwebp vulnerability.)
I'm not sure I'd describe FFmpeg's CLI as "too good"
The parent comment was not referring to the CLI exclusively.
I’m talking about the underlying libav*. There are plenty of frontends in all sorts of languages, although ffmpeg(1) itself is obviously the most versatile. Also, CLI UX is highly subjective (hence all the different frontends by people with differing opinions), I personally find it more than acceptable for the immense complexity it encapsulates.
I'd say the fact that I can pass in multiple input sources, apply a complex chain of filters, set detailed rendering options, set output parameters, and have it all work flawlessly, and do all of the above in a single command line with consistent syntax, makes "too good" a very accurate description of the FFMpeg CLI.