Author here. This is the same journey I went through and I 100% agree! It can be intimidating at first, but FFmpeg is a a worthwhile utility to begin learning.
I've also added some shell functions[0] to my dotfiles to make it a bit easier to use when switching between several different machines.
[0] https://gist.github.com/devadvance/03d3c8f57b3e0254fb989e946...