Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

npmjs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 210 posts

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

#121

Post by Gud »

andyfilms1 wrote: post #110
two_handfuls wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but also there is value in a tool that will behave the same way consistently and has been vetted. I wouldn't be so down on this work.

It is a bit of a catch-22, a plain english wrapper opens up the tool to be more widely used by novices, but also prevents those novices from actually learning the tool.

Not really, how are they prevented from using the manual or the copious amounts of examples out there?

Memorising command line options beyond the absolute basics has rarely been helpful to me. And I use FreeBSD, where arcane commands are plentiful.

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

#122

Post by Workaccount2 »

two_handfuls wrote: post #109
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.

You're not wrong, but also there is value in a tool that will behave the same way consistently and has been vetted. I wouldn't be so down on this work.

It's not so much being down on the work, as it is being down on 30 years of keyboard junkies proclaiming "Plain English" interfaces.

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

#123

Post by skydhash »

eviks wrote: post #107
skydhash wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the reward for trivializing real issues and coming up with broken "solutions" Then any solutions is broken in this way. Even my bluetooth speaker comes with a manual. Not reading it and saying the speaker is broken, because you can't figure how to connect is pure delusion. Same as not reading ffmpeg manual and expecting to know how to use it. > First, that's not a Windows command, so right off the bat you've…

> Then any solutions is broken in this way. Nope, you're just doing the same thing - purposefully ignoring the issue to make your non-solution comparable... > Even my bluetooth speaker comes with a manual. ... in this case - the length and scope of the manual. First, you can operate the speaker without the manual or with just a single read of the manual- so spend a few seconds to learn how to pair (but you might not…

If you take the set of possible ffmpeg invocations, it's very huge. Yes, it's possible to create some kind of wrapper that serve some common cases. And there are many of such wrappers or alternative tools like Xld (macOS) or Handbrake. But when you do need to use ffmpeg, that means that such wrapper is unfit for some reason or another. And in that case, it's not that much of an effort to read the manual which is very comprehensive.

It's the same with video viewers or music players. Often the default app of the OS is enough and they are very intuitive. But sometimes you need a bit more control and that's when using something like vlc or mpv which their extensive filter capabilities (which requires to have the doc at hand) is mandatory.

ffmpeg interface is ok for what it does. Any of your suggestion would be complex to implement if it aims to support the whole feature set of ffmpeg.

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

#125

Post by BeetleB »

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 incredible what lengths people go to to avoid memorizing basic ffmpeg usage. It's really not that hard

It's not hard - just not a good use of our time. For 99% of HN users, ffmpeg is not a vital tool.

I have to use it less than twice a year. Now I just go and get an LLM to tell me the command I need.

And BTW, I spend a lot of time memorizing things (using spaced repetition). So I'm not averse to memorizing. ffmpeg simply doesn't warrant a place in my head.

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

#127

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#128

Post by dheera »

phil294 wrote: post #111

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 1a4d…

See my more generalized CLI helper which does exactly this:

https://github.com/dheera/scripts/blob/master/helpme

Example usage:

    helpme ffmpeg assemble all the .jpg files into an .mp4 timelapse video at 8fps
    helpme zip my-folder into my-zip.tar with compression level 9
    helpme git delete commit 1a4db4c
    ...
This originated from an ffmpeg wrapper I wrote but then realized it could be used for all commands:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40410637

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

#129

Post by larodi »

ninalanyon wrote: post #104
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, if you are doing it often that's true. But for people like me who do it once every month or two it really is hard to memorize, especially if it's not exactly the same task. What I would love would be an interactive script that asked me what I was trying to do and constructed a command line for me while explaining what it would do and the meaning of each argument. And of course it should f…

Indeed why not have —tui option and some basic menu? Even a simplified scripting with reasonable API would be better.

I find myself bothering exactly zero times to memorise this obnoxiously long command line. Claude fills in, and I can explore features better. What’s not to like? That I’m getting dumber for not memorising pages of cli args?

Love the project, but as with every Swiss knife this conversation is a thing and relevant. We had similar one reg JQ syntax and I’m truly convinced JQ is wonderful and useful tool. But I’m not gonna bother learning more DSLs…

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

#130

Post by lukeschlather »

left-struck wrote: post #19
Terr_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As pessimistic about it as I am, I do think LLMs have a place in helping people turn their text description into formal directives. (Search terms, command-line, SQL, etc.) ... Provided that the user sees what's being made for them and can confirm it and (hopefully) learn the target "language." Tutor, not a do-for-you assistant.

I agree apart from the learning part. The thing is unless you have some very specific needs where you need to use ffmpeg a lot, there’s just no need to learn this stuff. If I have to touch it once a year I have much better things to spend my time learning than ffmpeg command

The thing about ffmpeg is there's no substitute for learning. It's pretty common that something simple like "ff convert" simply doesn't work and you have to learn about resolution, color space, profiles, or container formats. An LLM can help but earlier this year I spent a lot of time looking at these sorts of edge cases, and I can easily make any LLM wildly hallucinate by asking questions about how to use ffmpeg to handle particular files.
Post reply on HN