Database

Commander One (from apple's AppStore) developed by Eltima, is a very good (dual panel) FILE-MANAGER (kinda like old Norton Commander / nc or MidnightComander / mc) , it can show preview of photos & videos, etc etc, and can be customized in many ways.

Free version can also be obtained from here.

Another cost-free FILE-MANAGER for macOS is Marta.

If your video or photo file's icons are not showing-up in apple macOS's own/builtin file-manager app "Finder",

Then load this addon to view (most of the) video file's preview based icons in "Finder",

its known QLVideo (QuickLook Video).

GUI frontend for SQLite3 database can be these (3rd-party apps/solutions):

DBeaver (their community edition is free).

Adminer.

Open-source & free software LibreOffice's "BASE" component, is alternative for FileMaker Pro, and "BASE" is also alternative for Microsoft Access. LibreOffice's "base" is a good database feature-full app.

Free & open-source Photo Manager aka: Photo Files Manager:

digiKam Photo Manager.

By the way, i think you meant "File Library" by using the word "Database" , am i right to assume that ?

because photo collection files and video collection files , what you are referring as "my cooks" & "photo collections" are more commonly known as "Video Library", "Audio Library", "Photo Library", or "Multi-Media Library".

So i suggested in above, based on that.

And i agree it is hard to find a single app that can handle all very smoothly,

frequent update/upgrade etc are needed, as devs are adding/removing/changing various formats/codecs, etc.

Photos does a good enough job for my photo collection.

What are your "cooks?"

Sqlite3 is a good enough database to manage whatever you need to manage, but it has no GUI. Most "good" to "excellent" databases work that way. The GUI is a separate layer.

I don't know of anything that provides both in a single package except the aforementioned FileMaker Pro.

The 800 lb gorilla is FileMaker Pro.

It's not cheap.