171–180 of 210 posts
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Empathy is really not that hard.
I've met plenty of engineers who would rather spend 2 weeks programming than spend 5 minutes talking to their users. I used to struggle a lot with this myself when I was younger. Social anxiety isn't easy to overcome.
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…
My ChatGPT history is full of conversations like this.
I have mixed feelings about using chatgpt to write code. But LLMs certainly make an excellent ffmpeg frontend. And you can even ask them to explain all the ffmpeg arguments they used and why they used them.
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Do most devs even look at the source code for packages they install? Or the compiled machine code? I think of this as just a higher level of abstraction. Confirm it works and not worry about the details of how it works
I don’t because I trust the process to get the artifacts. Why? Because it’s easy to replicate and verify. Just like how proof works in math. You can’t verify LLM’s output. And thus, any form of trust is faith, not rational logic.
Well, you can verify an LLM's output all sorts of ways.
But even if you couldn't, its still very rational to be judicious with how you use your time and attention. If I spent a few hours going through the ffmpeg documentation I could probably learn it better than chatgpt. But, its a judgement call whether its better to spend 5 minutes getting chatgpt to generate an ffmpeg command (with some error rate) or spend 2 hours doing it myself (with maybe a lower error rate).
Which is a better use of my time depends on lots of factors. How much I care. How important it is. How often that knowledge will be useful in the future. And so on. If I worked in a hollywood production studio, I'd probably spend the 2 hours (and many more). But if I just reach for ffmpeg once a year, the small% error rate from chatgpt's invocations might be fine.
Your time and attention are incredibly limited resources. Its very rational to spend them sparingly.
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…
As an occasional user this was a lot easier to use than having to remember all of the commands, and it did it all without hiding the complexity from the user.
Unfortunately it looks like they tried to monetize it but then later shut down. It doesn't look like they posted the source code anywhere.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230131140736/https://ffmpeg.gu...
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 was an ffmpeg drag-and-drop GUI that let you create ffmpeg commands visually instead of having to remember all the right arguments. Inputs, filters and outputs are all nodes in a graph, and then you connect them together. When done you would export it as an ffmpeg command to run. As an occasional user this was a lot easier to use than having to remember all of the commands, and it did it all without hiding the…
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 was an ffmpeg drag-and-drop GUI that let you create ffmpeg commands visually instead of having to remember all the right arguments. Inputs, filters and outputs are all nodes in a graph, and then you connect them together. When done you would export it as an ffmpeg command to run. As an occasional user this was a lot easier to use than having to remember all of the commands, and it did it all without hiding the…
Kills me that they didn't even bother open sourcing it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was an ffmpeg drag-and-drop GUI that let you create ffmpeg commands visually instead of having to remember all the right arguments. Inputs, filters and outputs are all nodes in a graph, and then you connect them together. When done you would export it as an ffmpeg command to run. As an occasional user this was a lot easier to use than having to remember all of the commands, and it did it all without hiding the…
Different project, but similar vibe. https://ffstudio.app/