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Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

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Re: Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

#111

Post by phil294 »

I like it and would like to see an entire Linux OS being done in a similar manner. Or shell / wrapper / whatever.

A sane homogeneous cli for once, that treats its user as a human instead of forcing them to remember the incompatible invocation options of `tar` and `dd` for absolutely no reason.

    zip my-folder into my-zip.tar with compression level 9
    write my-iso ./zip.zip onto external hard drive
    git delete commit 1a4db4c
    convert ./video.mp4 and ./audio.mp3 into ./out.mp4
    merge ./video.mp4 and ./audio.mp3 to ./out.mp4 without re-encoding
And add amazing autocomplete, while allowing as many wordings as possible. No need for LLMs.

One can dream.

Re: Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

#112

Post by stackedinserter »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #101
andrewf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try something like: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -c:v h264 -c:a aac out.mp4 To re-encode the content into H.264+AAC, rather than simply "muxing" the encoded bitstreams from the MP4 container into a new MOV container.

Thanks, I can even somewhat remember that. AI gave me args like -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset medium -crf 18 \ -c:a aac -b:a 192k \

"-c:v h264_videotoolbox -b:v 5000k" on macos, it will use hardware encoder.

Re: Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

#113

Post by christstopit »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #99

The total upheaval of the current computing paradigm that AI will bring, if nothing else, is "Hey computer, can you convert that funny kitchen cooking scene in this movie to a .gif I can share online?" You're wasting your time on a dead man walking paradigm doing anything else. "Plain English" actually means plain English now.

If you think a developer creating something /they/ thought would be useful (or even just a fun exercise) is a waste of time because there are “better” options already available, then you really are so out of touch with what developing software means that you are in absolutely no position to make such judgment.

Re: Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

#114

Post by christstopit »

qbow883 wrote: post #57

Days since last ffmpeg CLI wrapper: 0 It's incredible what lengths people go to to avoid memorizing basic ffmpeg usage. It's really not that hard, and the (F.) manual explains the basic concepts fairly well. Now, granted, ffmpeg's defaults (reencoding by default and only keeping one stream of each type unless otherwise specified) aren't great, which can create some footguns, but as long as you remember to pass `-c co…

[dead]

Re: Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

#115

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

LLMs are a great interface for ffmpeg. Sometimes it takes 2-3 attempts/fixes ("The subtitles in the video your command generated are offset: i see the subtitles from the beginning of the movie but the video is cut from the middle of the movie as requested, fix the command") but it generally creates complex commands much more quickly than manual work (reading the man page, crafting the command, debugging it) would.

Re: Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

#116

Post by christstopit »

qbow883 wrote: post #100
Forgeties79 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Days since last ffmpeg CLI wrapper: 0 >It's incredible what lengths people go to to avoid memorizing basic ffmpeg usage. It's really not that hard, and the (F.) manual explains the basic concepts fairly well. Not really sure how else I was supposed to interpret your comment but clarification taken. > But I argue in my comment above that this specific tool does not have better QoL For some folks it may be better/mor…

> Not really sure how else I was supposed to interpret your comment Yes, that was a bit facetious of me, I apologize for that. > What is so bad about the existence of this project? Being very blunt: The fact that it reinforces the extremely common misconception that a) converting between containers like mkv and mp4 will always require reencoding and that b) there is a single way to reencode a video (hence suggesting…

You are overthinking this way too much, to the point that it is sounding like you are purposefully creating out-of-context problems to justify your way too long rant.

As the kids these days say: just take the L, man.

Re: Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

#117

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

dllu wrote: post #9

When converting video to gif, I always use palettegen, e.g. ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex "fps=15,scale=640:-2:flags=lanczos,split[a][b];[a]palettegen=reserve_transparent=off[p];[b][p]paletteuse=dither=sierra2_4a" -loop 0 output.gif See also: this blog post from 10 years ago [1] [1] https://blog.pkh.me/p/21-high-quality-gif-with-ffmpeg.html

I use `split[s0][s1];[s0]palettegen=max_colors=64[p];[s1][p]paletteuse=dither=bayer` personally, limiting the number of colors is a great way to transparently (to a certain point, try with different values) improve compression, as is bayer (ordered) dithering which is almost mandatory to not explode output filesizes.

Re: Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

#118

Post by christstopit »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #84
qbow883 wrote: post #57

Days since last ffmpeg CLI wrapper: 0 It's incredible what lengths people go to to avoid memorizing basic ffmpeg usage. It's really not that hard, and the (F.) manual explains the basic concepts fairly well. Now, granted, ffmpeg's defaults (reencoding by default and only keeping one stream of each type unless otherwise specified) aren't great, which can create some footguns, but as long as you remember to pass `-c co…

“It's really not that hard” I’m going to guess your job does not involve much UX design?

[dead]

Re: Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

#119

Post by Gud »

qbow883 wrote: post #57

Days since last ffmpeg CLI wrapper: 0 It's incredible what lengths people go to to avoid memorizing basic ffmpeg usage. It's really not that hard, and the (F.) manual explains the basic concepts fairly well. Now, granted, ffmpeg's defaults (reencoding by default and only keeping one stream of each type unless otherwise specified) aren't great, which can create some footguns, but as long as you remember to pass `-c co…

“It’s really not that hard”, well a lot of people have better things to do than remember parameters to commands we barely use.
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