I got it, mostly... The various filter chains, not so much. But I can map input streams and set dispositions and metadata, and know a bunch of svtav1 passthru params by heart; with enough experience to set pretty decent crf/preset/filmgrain-synth settings by eyeballing the input (ofc specifics depends on the video encoder and whether or not I'm using something like the psyex/hdr fork...)

Some people look at this as wizardry, but it's really not too hard once to get the hang of ordered arguments... Like whether or not you put -ss before or after -i changes the seeking behavior.... Okay, it's a little wizardry.