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by DistractionRect 805 days ago
I agree with the GP here. Yes, you can do all this with just FFMPEG, but now you have to wade through all the docs, flags, values to craft your CLI args with a bit of trial and error. The value add here is a coherent front-end that abstracts away all the complexity and lets you cut right to what you want. Further, if it's something you do infrequently, or your workflow changes, you have to rerun the gaunlet of figuring out what flags/values you need. FFMPEG can do a ton, but most people just need to crunch the file size, transcode, and occasionally convert a snippet into a gif
2 comments

> …you can do all this with just FFMPEG, but now you have to wade through all the docs, flags, values to craft your CLI args with a bit of trial and error. The value add here is a coherent front-end that abstracts away all the complexity and lets you cut right to what you want.

Very true, but just want to note that ChatGPT is also great at creating CLI input for ffmpeg, yt-dlp, etc. And of course, Handbrake remains the O.G. for open source, cross-platform video encoding.

I had to transcode some files recently. I’m extremely proficient with the ClI, but I would have loved to have a GUI version.
Handbrake...