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Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

vidstudio.app

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Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#62

Post by mbesto »

afavour wrote: post #44
mbesto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent commenter is making that comment because this is precisely the nature of why the GPL license exists. Most of the processing of this application is FFMPEG, so why should someone who has done zero development on that library commercialize it?

Most of the processing of the application is FFMPEG yes, but there's a whole lot of application outside of the processing. Video editors UIs that don't make you want to tear your hair out are a valuable commodity and I think OP has the right to commercialize that if they want to. They just need to use FFMPEG in the right way as they do it.

This application doesn't work without FFMPEG. I'm not arguing that the wrapper isn't valuable, I'm saying there is a significant chunk of it that is required for us to work is an open source library.

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#63

Post by maxloh »

noduerme wrote: post #43
mghackerlady wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew about the soft copyleft (the source code requirements) but didn't know there was the requirement to have libs be replaceable. Now I want to know how useful that would be in reverse engineering closed systems (particularly nintendos, since I've always had an interest in the homebrew scene there)

iirc, the video player application VLC used to come without any mpeg support, and you had to go through a process to download ffmpeg separately ...not sure how easy it made it to replace individual libs, but I'm also not sure the license requires you to make it easy .

VLC is GPL licensed and open source. Maybe that's enough since you could compile it yourself anyway?

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#64

Post by giancarlostoro »

I worked on something similar for a relative who wanted to know if I could build something like this for them using Claude, and sure enough you can, I wound up having to ditch ffmpeg wasm edition because of a lot of slowness, and when with ffmepg on the backend. Curious how this performs vs ffmpeg on the backend. I'm genuinely surprised there's not 100% browser native solution to this.

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#65

Post by senkora »

kreco wrote: post #38

Sorry for the significantly unrelated comment: Does anyone know if there is any limitation to create a "https-local://" or something like that, which guarantee that things are only downloaded, and never uploaded?

I don’t know, but I’ve thought for a while that a browser version of “pledge” to permanently restrict uploads from a webpage after it is called would be a great idea.

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#66

Post by giancarlostoro »

prhn wrote: post #7
elpocko wrote: post #2

> FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly handles final encode FFmpeg's license is the LGPL 2.1. VidStudio looks like closed source software, I couldn't see any indication that it's free software. You're distributing this software to run in the client's browser. I'm not a lawyer but I think you're in breach of the terms of the LGPL. https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html

Closed source is fine, but there are a few other things that are required of LGPL, some of which are - Provide links to the source of the version of ffmpeg you used in your code - User should be able to replace the ffmpeg libs with his own compatible builds if you're using dynamically linked libs. For statically linked libs, you need to provide the tools to re-link against a compatible build. I went through an LGPL r…

I think you're right, also an interesting aside: LGPL software is even trickier on the iOS app store, where its out of your control to "let the user link" the software. I guess in that case the only real way is to somehow give them access to the linkable files or allow them to pull in your copy of an LGPL library, but for them to run it on their device, good luck...

I'm slowly leaning towards eventually just adopting MPL which is kind of weaker than LGPL but more friendly for iOS, course I mostly just default to MIT license these days. I prefer to let my users use my software however they want without fear that if they someday overhaul my code and build something that works for them, that they would lose it.

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#67

Post by zenmac »

kolx wrote: post #12
elpocko wrote: post #2

> FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly handles final encode FFmpeg's license is the LGPL 2.1. VidStudio looks like closed source software, I couldn't see any indication that it's free software. You're distributing this software to run in the client's browser. I'm not a lawyer but I think you're in breach of the terms of the LGPL. https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html

Thank you for pointing this out, to be completely honest, I did not consider licensing because the website started as a collection of tools I built to run locally and get into video/audio codecs then I realised it is already a decent collection of tools that other people might want to use too. But I will be making the needed changes to comply fully tonight. At least I comply with this: `Do not misspell FFmpeg (two ca…

Wonder this guy is doing it? Or is it also not open sourced?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42207002

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#68

Post by jpc0 »

afavour wrote: post #44
mbesto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent commenter is making that comment because this is precisely the nature of why the GPL license exists. Most of the processing of this application is FFMPEG, so why should someone who has done zero development on that library commercialize it?

Most of the processing of the application is FFMPEG yes, but there's a whole lot of application outside of the processing. Video editors UIs that don't make you want to tear your hair out are a valuable commodity and I think OP has the right to commercialize that if they want to. They just need to use FFMPEG in the right way as they do it.

From what I understand about this application ffmpeg of only used for export? That is very little of the processing of true, they mentioned the webcodec is used extensively and likely the only real requirement on ffmpeg is muxing into mp4 which to be entirely honest isn't much processing.

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#70

Post by mankins »

I recently did something similar but as a Mac app.

It sounds like a similar stack, but distributed as an app. FFmpeg (LGPL compilation).

I haven't tried Pixi.js, looks interesting. I guess it was good for this.

Have you looked at remotion? I found them good for somethings, but ended up using Safari for rendering (instead of remotion's chrome-based rendering) because app packaging was easier that way.

https://www.loremlabs.com/cliproom if you're interested in comparing

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