151–160 of 210 posts
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…
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…
I would prefer not to change the technical aspects of Linux. I actually cherish it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
I swear I want this as a general tool for all command-line tools. Start the tool, and just list all of the options in order of usage popularity to toggle on as desired, with a brief explanation, and a field to paste in arguments like filenames or values when needed. If an option is commonly used with another (or requires it), provide those hints (or automatically add the necessary values). If a value itself has struc…
Or if no telemetry but based on local usage, it would promote/reinforce the options you already can recall and do use, hiding the ones you can’t/don’t?
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…
There. I've debunked Java, Python, PHP, Perl, and Rust.
(Or maybe, just maybe, tools should make our lives easier.)
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…
You're getting a lot of flak due to how you started off your comment, but I mostly agree with you. In my opinion there are two kinds of users: 1. Users who use FFmpeg regularly enough to know/understand the parameters. 2. Users who only use FFmpeg once in a while to do something specific. This wrapper is superfluous for users in group number 1. But group number 2 does not really get much out of it either, for the rea…
> ff slow down video.mp4 by 2x
How do you slow something down by 2x? x is a multiplier. 2 is a number greater than 1. Multiplying by a number greater than 1 makes the result LARGER.
If you’re talking about “stretch movie duration to 2x”, say that instead.
Saying something is 2x smaller or 2x shorter or 2x cheaper doesn’t make sense. 2x what? What is the unit of “cheap” or “short” or “small”?
How much is “1 slow down”? How many “slow down” are in the movie where you want twice as many of them? Doesn’t make sense does it? So how can something be slowed by 2x? That also doesn’t make sense.
I know what is trying to be said. I know what is meant. Please just say it right. Things like throw us autistic people for a freaking loop, man. This really rustles our jimmies.
Language is for communicating. If we aren’t all on the same page about how to say stuff, you spend time typing and talking and writing and reading and your message doesn’t make it across the interpersonal language barrier.
I don’t want to see people wasting their time trying to communicate good ideas with bad phrasing. I want people to be able to say what they mean and move on.
I also don’t want to nitpick things like this, but I don’t want phrases like “slow down by 2x” to be considered normal English, either, because they aren’t.
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…
sure here's a command that a program I wrote to record my practicing and produce different mixes uses /usr/bin/ffmpeg -i "/path/to/musicfile.mp3" -i "/path/to/covertune.mp3" \ -filter_complex [1:a]volume=1[track1];[0a][track1]amix=normalize=false[output] \ -map [output] -b:a 192k -metadata title=15:17:01 -metadata "artist=Me, 2025" \ -metadata album=2025-12-23 "/path/to/file.mix.mp3" chance of my coming up with that…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I swear I want this as a general tool for all command-line tools. Start the tool, and just list all of the options in order of usage popularity to toggle on as desired, with a brief explanation, and a field to paste in arguments like filenames or values when needed. If an option is commonly used with another (or requires it), provide those hints (or automatically add the necessary values). If a value itself has struc…
I’m trying to understand the “In order of usage popularity” thing — this implies telemetry in CLIs, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t the order of options change/fluctuate over time? Or if no telemetry but based on local usage, it would promote/reinforce the options you already can recall and do use, hiding the ones you can’t/don’t?
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've learned not to say this. Different things are easy/hard for each of us. Reminds me of a discussion where someone argued, "why don't all the poor/homeless people just go get good jobs?" Edit: I know your comment was meant to inspire/motivate us to try harder. Maybe it's easier than it appears.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because FFmpeg is a swiss army knife with a million blades and I don't think any easy interface is really going to do the job well. It's a great LLM use case.
I know everybody uses a subscription for these things, but doesn't it at least feel expensive to use an LLM like this? Like turning on the oven to heat up a single slice of pizza.