I got into programming/software by encoding my cough well-sourced cough movies/TV shows to MP4 for my iPod video.
Far be it from me, maybe it's insufferably geeky detail, but the slow decade-long march described as "gee each movie is different" and "gee each scene is different" followed by Herculean work of FAANGers insufficiently appreciated by creative types was solved by VBR years upon years earlier. (VBR = variable bit rate)
Once you're getting to "we'll use ML as a VBR algorithm!", that's original, but the problems described and solution was understandable and solvable by a 18 year old non-programmer in 2007 with free software.
VBR wasn't some niche thing either, it's a very very obvious optimization I've never seen a codec miss, from MP3 audio to MP4 video. There's no caveats here or haughtiness or flippant "Dropbox is rsync + my weekend" dismissiveness on my part. It wasn't news to _anyone_, it's a very obvious optimization that was applied by everyone
I'd be veeeeery curious if there was much contribution here beyond using x264, occasionally with patches, and then engineering a pipeline around it