Comment by Forgeties79
2 months ago
Some people just want to use an intuitive tool with better QoL, even if it leads to compromises, to do a job swiftly without going over documentation/learning a ton of new things. Not everything has to be an educational experience. ffmpeg exists in its original form like you prefer, but some folks want to use lossless cut. Nothing wrong with that IMO.
Personally I think it’s great that it’s such a universally useful tool that it has been deployed in so many different variations.
> Some people just want to use a tool to do a job swiftly. Not everything has to be educational.
> some folks want to use lossless cut
In that case I would encourage you to ruminate on what the following in the post you're replying to means and what the implications are:
> "ff convert video.mkv to mp4" (an extremely common usecase) maps to `ffmpeg -i video.mkv -y video.mp4` here, which does a full reencode (losing quality and wasting time) for what can usually just be a simple remux
Depending on the size of the video, the time it would take you to "do the job swiftly" (i.e. not caring about how the tools you are using actually work) might be more than just reading the ffmpeg manual, or at the very least searching for some command examples.
As the other person said (and this is my mistake for not capitalizing), Lossless Cut is a popular CLI wrapper for ffmpeg with a (somewhat) intuitive interface. Someone is going to be able to pick up and use that a lot faster than they are ffmpeg. I think a lot of folks forget how daunting most people find using a terminal, yet a lot of those people still want something to do a simple lossless trim of an existing video or some other little tweak. It’s good that they have both options (and more).
Looks like a GUI wrapper in fact, no?
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> > some folks want to use lossless cut > In that case I would encourage you to ruminate on what the following in the post you're replying to means and what the implications are:
You may have misunderstood the comment: "lossless cut" is the name of an ffmpeg GUI front end. They're not discussing which exact command line gives lossless results.
The thing is that when a video is being re-encoded, so long as I'm not trying to play games on my computer at the same time, I'm free to go do something else. It does not command any of my attention while its working, whereas sitting and reading the man pages commands my attention absolutely.
Yes, I am not opposed to ffmpeg wrappers in and of themselves. Some decent ffmpeg wrappers definitely exist. But I argue in my comment above that this specific tool does not have better QoL - again, since it reencodes unconditionally with quality settings that are usually not configurable.
> Days since last ffmpeg CLI wrapper: 0
>It's incredible what lengths people go to to avoid memorizing basic ffmpeg usage. It's really not that hard, and the (F.) manual explains the basic concepts fairly well.
Not really sure how else I was supposed to interpret your comment but clarification taken.
> But I argue in my comment above that this specific tool does not have better QoL
For some folks it may be better/more intuitive. It doesn’t hurt anybody by existing.
We all compromise with different tools in our lives in different ways. It just reads to me like an odd axe to grind.
Simply put: What is so bad about the existence of this project?
> Not really sure how else I was supposed to interpret your comment
Yes, that was a bit facetious of me, I apologize for that.
> What is so bad about the existence of this project?
Being very blunt: The fact that it reinforces the extremely common misconception that a) converting between containers like mkv and mp4 will always require reencoding and that b) there is a single way to reencode a video (hence suggesting that there is no "bad" way to reencode a video), seeing as next to no encoding settings are exposed.
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