The idea for calling it Video originated from it just being a library in Racket for editing videos. The name `video` fit the trend for packages in Racket at the time:
* `pict` - was an existing library for making pictures
* `slideshow` - was an existing library for making slideshows
* `math` - was an existing library for...well..math (beyond what the language natively provided)
* `web-server` - was an existing library for making webservers.
You get the idea, extending it:
* `video` - was a new (and thus far only in Racket) library for making videos. (note the lower case `v`)
Unfortunately video grew far beyond what I expected it to (yes still small, but I honestly expected to be the only user ever, rather then one of a dozen or so users). Unfortunately as mentioned in previous comments, I suck at naming things. But also unfortunately, no one else offered another name. So video just sort of...stuck. I eventually tacked `Lang` onto the end of it, and made the initial `V` uppercase in a desperate attempt to give it a slightly more unique name. But then that became too close to videolan...which...sigh...did I mention I fucking suck at naming things?
Ya...its a terrible name. Most of the people I work with tell me I shouldn't be allowed to name things. And frankly, I agree. I mean, for fuck sake, I named my latest project (hybrid visual-textual programming languages): VISr:
It was supposed to stand for visual and interactive syntax realized, buuuut....ya.
(For the record, I got started working on VISr because I wanted interactive code snippets in my Video programs. And while I 'technically' got a prototype of it, as documented in my dissertation, its very...lacking...)
Ya, I haven't updated video in years. I'm perfectly happy to do it, but I just haven't had a need, and no one asking for updates. :D
There is a lot of overlap between video and ffmpeg's filtergraph. The biggest difference, however, is that video tries to provide a full language on top of it, that tries to use NLVEs as an abstraction, rather than pure filters.
It worked out very well for lots of videos with very similar composites (in my case it was making conference recordings). But frankly, OBS also fit the bill almost as well so we started using that.
Author here. Yikes, I didn't realize that Racket's documentation builder broke. It looks like it has for some time. I'll fix that momentarily. In the meantime, you can look at the source for the documentation at:
Avisynth+ is awesome.
Interestingly enough, the first version of video was actually built on top of libmlt: https://www.mltframework.org/
I was just dissatisfied with it due to its lack of functions. I can't remember why I didn't just use avisynth as it does actually have functions.