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that's akin to making a "less confusing git" - the reason ffmpeg/git are so widely used is largely due to how powerful and fine-tunable they are. the learning c

• IshKebab 1y ago
  You could make both git and ffmpeg much less confusing without sacrificing their power and tunability.
  • BoredPositron 1y ago
    You could also write a wrapper for non technical users without a rewrite or comprising core functionality.
    • IshKebab 1y ago
      In my experience that never helps because the wrapper is never comprehensive or well documented enough that you can completely avoid dipping below it and as soon as that happens it's worse because you have to learn the original thing anyway plus some poorly documented wrapper.
  • Sesse__ 1y ago
    Case in point, git is already much less confusing than it was at 1.0 and nobody complains it has gotten less powerful. (“Less confusing” does not mean “not confusing”, of course.)
• whywhywhywhy 1y ago
  It's really not, things can be powerful and easy to use. I'd even say some parts of ffmpeg are well designed in this way like `ffmpeg -i ./video.mp4 ./video.wav` working is well designed. Think the fact all the commands are shorthand doesn't help because no matter how many ffmpeg commands you copy and paste in your life unless you put the effort in you're not going to begin to remember what -an means in the sea of all the other two letter switches and the copywriting in the output and error messages is very hard to tell whats going wrong for someone who hasn't used it a long time. Not saying it should all be super wordy just that it's difficult to pick up things though osmosis when the commands look like this -ss -t -rc:v, respect to anyone who actually learnt how this works so they could type it without sitting there with the documentation and hitting a wall for an hour. Will say though the raw tech inside ffmpeg has always meant figuring out getting it to do the thing has always been worth it because it's insanely powerful.
  • Sesse__ 1y ago
    > It's really not, things can be powerful and easy to use. I'd even say some parts of ffmpeg are well designed in this way like `ffmpeg -i ./video.mp4 ./video.wav` working is well designed. I'd argue that even this command line isn't well-designed at all; it should be `ffmpeg video.mp4 -o video.wav`. How is it sane that anything without an -i in front is an _output_ filename?
    • ycombiredd 1y ago
      It's not an output filename.. The -i is the input, the .wav is the output filename in that example.
      • Sesse__ 1y ago
        Yes? That's not in conflict with anything I said.
        • ycombiredd 1y ago
          You're right! I misread your "without" as "with". I need better glasses, or reading comprehension.