Is there a tool that records the timestamp of each executed command during a build, and when you rebuild, it tells you how much time is left instead of "building obj 35 out of 1023" ?
Or (for cmake or ninja) use a CSV that says how long each object takes to build and use it to estimate how much is left ?
OP Here. Thats an interesting idea. What The Fork knows all the commands run, and every path they read/write, so I should be able to make it estimate build time just by looking at what files were touched.
"Assembly language of FFmpeg" leads me to think of -filter_complex. It's not for human consumption even once you know many of its gotchas (-ss and keyframes, PTS, labeling and using chain outputs, fading, mixing resolutions etc).
But then again no-one is adjusting timestamps manually in batch scripts, so a high-level script on top of filter_complex doesn't have much purpose.
For some reason, when ffmpeg reencodes from 23.97fps h264 to the same fps and codec, the result looks choppy, like the shutter speed was halved or something. The smart lossless encoding you mentioned helps a lot here.