DaVinci resolve is on a completely different level to shotcut or kdenlive. None of them are totally intuitive, but the required learning on something like Shotcut essentially boils down to understanding that pretty much everything is a video filter, or basic track operation hotkeys (e.g S to split video segment at selected frame, X to delete selected segment).

For your use cases I’d suggest taking another look at either of those and ignoring “advanced” settings wherever possible, it’s really not that bad and you’re unlikely to find anything on either Linux or windows that is both lightweight & does all that

Oh they figured it out alright, that’s how the current players were handed the keys to the industry and why they take the more insidious DRM approach to controlling the content they own. They understand it’s less likely to cause customer to revolt than the fundamental problems with the movie/tv show distribution business model that came before. And tbh they’re right - yeah I pirate, but mostly because that’s what I’ve done for 30+ years at this point. People have been saying the most recent anti-consumer decision by Netflix will finally be their downfall for like a decade - their stock is now at all time highs.

You aren’t wrong that people will prioritise convenience/features highest but make no mistake, these companies are fully aware of the impact of their shitty practices. It’s all calculated.

A custom skin with widgets on the home screen pulling from Trakt, TMDB, IMDB etc lists - here I have the “New” category set to “Trending Recent Shows” from Trakt to highlight actually new stuff, whereas “Trending” category is set to “Trending This Week” from TMDB to cover returning shows. This approach inevitably leads to duplicates but at least covers everything important without the perpetual The Office, Breaking Bad etc results. When a title is highlighted, network badge is shown where available. The categories that point to individual episodes autoplay upon selection, the ones that point to series go to the ‘folder’ type browser

Search page overriding default kodi search, categorised by movie / tv show, also includes trakt lists.

Heaps of navigation and backend customisation, too much to show or mention but some notable things being the play next dialog including display prompt being based on end of subtitles track (with time-based backup), customised context menu including option to play trailer (displayed via long press on remote, requires youtube API key for HD trailer playback), codec prioritisation/blacklist, overriding local watched/unwatched status with trakt, partial playback resume including auto resume option

FWIW these examples are on a minimally configured proof of concept instance, when I set this up for family I need to test and tune it a bunch to ensure codec compatibility with the device/display, auto resume if that’s the behaviour they want etc. Base Kodi also allows to prefer non-hearing impaired subtitle tracks, audio tracks in a specific language or original language etc. The end result being they get what they want spoonfed to their home screen the vast majority of the time, and otherwise can find it easily with the search without hassling me lol. In the worst case scenario I need to show them how to rescrape/source select from the context menu, but that’s only happened once where an older title’s only cached release had russian-only audio. The rest of their time they can just choose an episode/movie without having to understand any specifics about whether the top result is the best stream or not. It’s enough that I’m still finding more UX improvements to add, years later.

I’d love to have this set up for usenet but don’t have any issues using torrent cache on torbox essential so just can’t really justify the cost difference

The Kodi add-on I’m using uses torrentio in the backend, but has way more customisation than the stremio app + trakt integration, autoplay using preset quality filters etc

Stremio app is more seamless experience when there’s no hits for the title already in debrid cache but that’s pretty rare these days even on torbox

The problem with a wrapper as you put it, specifically one running on Linux, is DRM. The only way I know of to achieve the desired Widevine encryption level is running the service in a tab in Chrome. Not any other browser, not even Chromium.

Of course you could just bypass all that nonsense by pirating your media, and have a nice easy interface consolidating titles from all streamers - even retaining a network badge so they can see where a given popular show is airing - like what I’ve set up in Kodi for myself as well as boomer relatives.

Other than that I’d recommend Flirc for input via remote (or LIRC if you have a supported remote already and don’t mind some extra configuration)

Thanks for your input. I agree with you that it is a labour and capitalism issue. This seems to be where your perspective differs from the OP.

I guess my fundamental disagreement is that we should deny ourselves technological advancement because we live under capitalism. Yes, that is the system we will live under for the foreseeable future. I don’t like it and don’t like how capital takes advantage of technology. The way capital takes advantage of AI isn’t unique. Generally, significant advancement will bring change and the biggest impact of that change will be felt by the proletariat. That sucks and we shouldn’t have to put up with it.

Circling back to the topic of the post, OP uses this negative impact as justification to disagree with the apparent use of AI in the community banner art. This is non-sequitur. No one is making a living off of designing Lemmy community banners. The people that run the community simply decided not to arbitrarily deny themselves what they felt to be the best tool for the task. What I’m defending isn’t necessarily the current AI landscape as such, just the technology part I’m interested in.

I don’t think my earlier reply came through. I’ll try rewriting it.

AI can add, remove, change or refine input, either text or image-based, either wholly or partially, which may or may not itself be AI-generated. That feature set certainly allows room for genuine, inspired artistic expression. The way you describe AI art is as though it is all created by asking ChatGPT to draw you something. This isn’t the case, and neglects to consider the litany of AI model types that are fundamentally different to LLM’s. Models which are operated by humans directly interacting with them in a range of ways.

Let’s say you’re a concept artist for a movie. After replacing you with AI, how does the company instruct the model in the concept to be represented? If they’re just asking ChatGPT to come up with something itself, then sure - your description applies. And the output will be shitty concept art, and the movie will shittier than it otherwise would be. People might consume it, but it would be a slippery slope towards failure either because a) people don’t like it, or don’t like it enough for it to reach the critical mass required to spread, or b) someone else does the same uninspired and easy job more cheaply or effectively. If you’re an AI-slop consumer, why watch AI slop movies when you can just watch AI slop Tiktoks?

Good art resonates with people not because humans are easily entertained by pretty flashing lights or whatever an AI can churn out, but because of their relationship to a piece of art which is derived from their human experience. Companies have tried to broaden appeal and lower costs by appealing to the lowest common denominator for centuries, but beyond a certain point it is a failing business model. In my opinion, if some companies want to try, let them find out why there are 1000s of AI-generated movie trailers but no movies.

I think that AI can be used for the concept art in a way that maintains artistic integrity and capacity for artistic expression by having someone skilled in representing visual concepts operate the AI tool. That someone would be for all intents and purposes an artist. In essence the artist position would not be redundant; the way their job is done would have changed.

actual artists are getting fired from their jobs, because the company replaces them with an AI, that was trained on their original art.

Are you sure that’s happening? Under the previous mode of capitalism, what kind of companies were hiring artists?

As I understand it, that isn’t the actual gripe from the general perspective of the artist. Instead it’s about copyright, a concept I fundamentally disagree with. I don’t think it’s necessary, and that the artist’s capacity for prosperity being tied to copyright is a symptom of a bigger problem than being usurped by software.

I think there is good art and bad art. I think there is good AI art (tbh I can’t think of any examples, I just think in principle AI art has the capacity to be good) and bad AI art. I think the relative ease of access skews people’s exposure towards slop. I use the term slop as a descriptor for AI art that is sloppy or wholly derivative; not to prejudge it.

I think perspectives like yours haven’t compelled me to think they are meaningfully different from that of the Luddites, or those opposed to implementing computers in the workplace, etc. I genuinely sympathise with those groups, but ultimately wouldn’t have us go back.