This hasn't solved the problem of sometimes needing to do new things, but it at least gives me a map to remind me of the parts of the rabbithole I've explored before.
`gst-launch-1.0 filesrc ! qt4demux ! matroskamux ! filesink...` people would be less frustrated maybe?
People would also learn a little more and be less frustrated when conversation about container/codec/colorspace etc... come up. Each have a dedicated element and you can better understand its I/O
Here making ffmpeg as "just another capability" allows it to be stitched together in workflows
The article states that whatever the article is trying to describe "Takes about ~20-30 mins. The cognitive load is high....". while their literal actual step of "Googling "ffmpeg combine static image and audio."" gives you the literal command you need to run from a known source (superuser.com sourced from ffmpeg wiki).
Anyone even slightly familiar with ffmpeg should be able to produce the same result in minutes. For someone who doesn't understand what ffmpeg is the article means absolutely nothing. How does a "no coder" understand what a "agent in a sandboxed container" is?
we have our designer/intern in our minds who creates shorts, adds subtiles, crops them,and merges the audio generated. He is aware of ffmpeg and prefers using a SaaS UI on top of it.
However, we see him hanging out on chatgpt, or gemini all the time. He is literally the no coder we have in mind.
We just combined his type what you want + ffmpeg workflows.
He does use davinci resolve but only for 2.
NLEs make ffmpeg a standalone yet easy to use tool.
Not denying that major heavy lifting is done by the NLE. We go a step ahead and make it embeddable in a larger workflow.
https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#toc-Filtergraph-synta...
"A special syntax implemented in the ffmpeg CLI tool allows loading option values from files. This is done be prepending a slash ’/’ to the option name, then the supplied value is interpreted as a path from which the actual value is loaded."
For how critical that was to getting over my ffmpeg hump, I wish it was not buried halfway through the documentation, but also, I don't know where else it would go.
And just because I am very proud of my accomplishment here is the ffmpeg side of my project, motion detection using mainly ffmpeg, there is some python glue logic to watch stdout for the events but all the tricky bits are internal to ffmpeg.
The filter(comments are added for audience understanding):
[0:v]
split #split the camera feed into two parts, passthrough and motion
[vis],
scale= #scale the motion feed way down, less cpu and it works better
w=iw/4:
h=-1,
format= #needed because blend did not work as expected with yuv
gbrp,
tmix= #temporial blur to reduce artifacts
frames=2,
[1:v] #the mask frame
blend= #mask the motion feed
all_mode=darken,
tblend= #motion detect actual, the difference from the last frame
all_mode=difference,
boxblur= #blur the hell out of it to increase the number of motion pixels
lr=20,
maskfun= #mask it to black and white
low=3:
high=3,
negate, #make the motion pixels black
blackframe= #puts events on stdout when too many black pixels are found
amount=1
[motion]; #motion output
[vis]
tpad= #delay pass through so you get the start of the event when notified
start=30
[original]; #passthrough output
ff_args = [
'ffmpeg',
'-nostats',
'-an',
'-i',
camera_loc, #a security camera
'-i',
'zone_all.png', # mask as to which parts are relavent for motion detection
'-/filter_complex',
'motion_display.filter', #the filter doing all the work
'-map', #sort out the outputs from the filter
'[original]',
'-f',
'mpegts', #I feel a little weied using mpegts but it was the best "streaming" of all the formats I tried
'udp://127.0.0.1:8888', #collect the full video from here
'-map',
'[motion]',
'-f',
'mpegts',
'udp:127.0.0.1:8889', #collect the motion output from here, mainly for debugging
]