I think for what it is ffmpeg has about the best interface it possibly can. At least I find myself failing to imagine a better one. Complaining about it would be similar to complaining about jq IMO.
Whereas the git cli is very clearly suboptimal. Unrelated tradeoffs aside, spend a while using an alternative DVCS such as mercurial if you doubt this.
yeah jq was a good analogy. I tried so many times to like jq, but found the cli and syntax too complicated to use. But I only finally saw and appreciated how powerful it was when my agent started using it.
Same with ffmpeg. I recently built an entire video out of 3 other source videos, just talking to claude, and it did everything (including audio adjustments, EVERYTHING) with ffmpeg. It was unbelievably cool.
Whereas the git cli is very clearly suboptimal. Unrelated tradeoffs aside, spend a while using an alternative DVCS such as mercurial if you doubt this.