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Comment by Forgeties79 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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?

Yes thank you I can get a little clumsy with my acronyms. Downside of not being a proper coder/engineer!

No problem. I only asked because if there were a CLI version I wanted to know about it.

> > 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.

I get what you’re saying but at the end of the day you just need to think about how most people use a tool like this. They’re looking for a simple solution to some specific problem and then they’re likely never using it again. They don’t want to deal with a full-on NLE and iMovie or whatever they have stocked is not cutting it. It’s not worth getting bent out of shape about it ultimately. There are tons of people who use ffmpeg as intended in its original form and more or less understand everything that is going on. The reason we have so many wrappers and variations all centered around ffmpeg is because of how useful it is, so it’s clearly here to stay.

I personally use lossless cut more than ffmpeg in the terminal just because I don’t have to really think about it and it can do most of what I need, which is simply removing or attaching things together without re-encoding. I use it maybe once every month or two, because it’s just not something I need to use a ton, so it doesn’t make sense for me to get down and dirty with the original. Ultimately I get what I need and I’m happy!

You are overthinking this way too much, to the point that it is sounding like you are purposefully creating out-of-context problems to justify your way too long rant.

As the kids these days say: just take the L, man.

I completely disagree. The rant is a problem but the complaint about reencoding is quite valid.

It’s a classic “forest for the trees” scenario. The use case 90% of the time for these tools is “I have a format problem and I need something to solve it quickly.” Rarely do they care if it’s lossless or not.

Anyone who knows what lossless vs. lossy means and when it matters knows what tools to look for and what the limitations of each tool are.

The average person can easily understand "the copy looks worse when it could look identical". The issue is not even thinking to check.

And I bet most of them do care, even if it's not caring a lot.

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