Maybe I'm just dumb and not in the domain enough to get a decent handle but everytime I use ffmpeg I feel like a Norse Shaman trying through trial and error to locate the correct orientation of runes for the blessing.
the second problem is that ffmpeg has a lot of features, and nobody wants to go through and fully document hundreds of formats, codecs, and filters.
Ffmpeg does a great job of guessing _what_ you want. But as soon as you're outside of those guesses you need to know _a lot_ to get things working.
It used scripts, and it required external tools to do the encoding but despite the complexity, I found it less arcane than ffmpeg command lines for similar operations.
Once I got better at understanding FFmpeg's filters there really was no looking back.
Disclosure: FFmpeg contributor and Vimeo employee.