There's no question that ffmpeg set itself a very difficult problem, and largely succeeds. But it does so in a way that is brittle and (whether purposefully or

There's no question that ffmpeg set itself a very difficult problem, and largely succeeds. But it does so in a way that is brittle and (whether purposefully or simply out of lack of knowledge) learnt nothing from e.g. QuickTime or DirectShow. The problem as I see it is that media manipulation is not really suitable for a one-size-fits-all command-line solution, and the API was slave to the command-line tools. This may have changed recently, which would be great.