GPU acceleration and much more modern UI design (no gradients, flat elements, no shadows and worse contrast). It also has a lot of limitations and deprecations compared to GTK3 but we're not talking about that. The app doesn't seem to use the official libadwaita theme though which is a shame because I love it
It basically converts videos between formats, standards of compression, encoders, subtitles, dimensions.... It's pretty useful for trimming the size of a video to fit a particular medium.
Meh, I use the UI for like ten minutes and let it transcode multiple collection of seasons over the course of a weekend.
It's a little nicer and a tad faster but it really doesn't make a big difference unless they improve transcoding speeds/quality. Otherwise I don't really touch it unless I buy a new box set or go to a garage sale.
If anyone's curious I rip full quality media with make mkv and point handbrake at the folder to compress it with hevc.
You don't have to be combative, all I was saying is the gui doesn't make much difference to me. It worked perfectly fine before and I'm sure it'll keep working just as well as before.
What would make a bigger difference is improvements to the backend seeing that it effects over 90% of the experience and usability of the app. I spend less time in the gui than I do renaming files in my file manager or even the make mkv app.
I've already said that but I guess you didn't read past the first line. I didn't say give up on development I said who cares about a change in graphics toolkit.