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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

#81

Post by kristopolous »

qbow883 wrote: post #78
kristopolous wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no the point is that there are some things I've done a hundred times and I never remember it because it's designed in a wildly bad way. ffmpeg, gpg, openssl and git has those things all over the place. Is it -c:v or -v:c? I don't know. used to be -vcodec so it's -v:c now? no it's -c:v I think because they swapped it? There isn't internal consistency to really hold on to ... it's just a bunch of seemingly independent…

> Is it -c:v or -v:c? Sure, I agree with all of this. Like I said above, the syntax (and, even more, the defaults) isn't great. I'm just arguing that "improving the syntax" should not mean "hiding complexity that should not be hidden", as the linked project does. An alternative ffmpeg frontend (i.e. a new CLI frontend using the libav* libraries like ffmpeg is, not a wrapper for the ffmpeg CLI program) with better syn…

ffmpeg doesn't go away. it's still there. people can use tig and git, having something that isn't insane can live in harmony with the other thing.

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

#82

Post by karmakaze »

I would definitely use an LLM, to see what the suggested options do and tweak them.

Using a different package name could be helpful. I searched for ezff docs and found a completely different Python library. Also ez-ffmpeg turns up a Rust lib which looks great if calling from Rust.

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

#83

Post by juujian »

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…

Yes, I use ffmpeg about once a year, in about 350 years I really ought to have all the syntax figure out.

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

#84

Post by WhitneyLand »

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?

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

#85

Post by foodevl »

hnarn wrote: post #65
Forgeties79 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people just want to use an intuitive tool with better QoL, even if it leads to compromises, to do a job swiftly without going over documentation/learning a ton of new things. Not everything has to be an educational experience. ffmpeg exists in its original form like you prefer, but some folks want to use lossless cut. Nothing wrong with that IMO. Personally I think it’s great that it’s such a universally useful…

> Some people just want to use a tool to do a job swiftly. Not everything has to be educational. > some folks want to use lossless cut In that case I would encourage you to ruminate on what the following in the post you're replying to means and what the implications are: > "ff convert video.mkv to mp4" (an extremely common usecase) maps to `ffmpeg -i video.mkv -y video.mp4` here, which does a full reencode (losing qu…

> > some folks want to use lossless cut > In that case I would encourage you to ruminate on what the following in the post you're replying to means and what the implications are:

You may have misunderstood the comment: "lossless cut" is the name of an ffmpeg GUI front end. They're not discussing which exact command line gives lossless results.

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

#86

Post by qbow883 »

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?

I'm not saying it couldn't be better (and I even gave examples), my point is that the drawbacks of such a wrapper outweigh the benefits, at least when it's such an oversimplified one. I've said in other replies how I'd be very interested in e.g. an alternative libav* frontend with better defaults and more consistent argument syntax, but I don't think that this invalidates my criticism of the linked project.

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

#87

Post by wpm »

hnarn wrote: post #65
Forgeties79 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people just want to use an intuitive tool with better QoL, even if it leads to compromises, to do a job swiftly without going over documentation/learning a ton of new things. Not everything has to be an educational experience. ffmpeg exists in its original form like you prefer, but some folks want to use lossless cut. Nothing wrong with that IMO. Personally I think it’s great that it’s such a universally useful…

> Some people just want to use a tool to do a job swiftly. Not everything has to be educational. > some folks want to use lossless cut In that case I would encourage you to ruminate on what the following in the post you're replying to means and what the implications are: > "ff convert video.mkv to mp4" (an extremely common usecase) maps to `ffmpeg -i video.mkv -y video.mp4` here, which does a full reencode (losing qu…

The thing is that when a video is being re-encoded, so long as I'm not trying to play games on my computer at the same time, I'm free to go do something else. It does not command any of my attention while its working, whereas sitting and reading the man pages commands my attention absolutely.

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

#89

Post by Tempest1981 »

kiicia wrote: post #22
Tempest1981 wrote: post #4

I was surprised that macOS (QuickTime/Preview, iMovie) can't read .mp4 files. Not sure if it was due to H.265 or the audio codec. I tried using ffmpeg to convert to .mov but that also failed to open, since I guess MOV is just another container format. Is there an easier way?

MP4 is container, not format, so if you have unsupported format packed into MP4 container it won’t be played. Example is trying to play AV1 video codec on devices with M2 chip or older. It won’t play. But it will play on devices with M3 chip and newer. Easiest solution is to use other player so that you can watch any MP4 file but with software decoding where hardware decoding is not available. Examples of such player…

Yes, VLC works fine for playing. The user wanted to edit some mp4 videos with iMovie (vs ffmpeg).

I think it was an M4 Mac. Does iMovie need a codec pack? I know some PC OEMs don't ship an h.265 codec, pointing users to a $0.99 download. Thought Mac would include it, being aimed at content creators. Hoping for a cheaper solution than Adobe Premiere.

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

#90

Post by Forgeties79 »

hnarn wrote: post #65
Forgeties79 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people just want to use an intuitive tool with better QoL, even if it leads to compromises, to do a job swiftly without going over documentation/learning a ton of new things. Not everything has to be an educational experience. ffmpeg exists in its original form like you prefer, but some folks want to use lossless cut. Nothing wrong with that IMO. Personally I think it’s great that it’s such a universally useful…

> Some people just want to use a tool to do a job swiftly. Not everything has to be educational. > some folks want to use lossless cut In that case I would encourage you to ruminate on what the following in the post you're replying to means and what the implications are: > "ff convert video.mkv to mp4" (an extremely common usecase) maps to `ffmpeg -i video.mkv -y video.mp4` here, which does a full reencode (losing qu…

As the other person said (and this is my mistake for not capitalizing), Lossless Cut is a popular CLI wrapper for ffmpeg with a (somewhat) intuitive interface. Someone is going to be able to pick up and use that a lot faster than they are ffmpeg. I think a lot of folks forget how daunting most people find using a terminal, yet a lot of those people still want something to do a simple lossless trim of an existing video or some other little tweak. It’s good that they have both options (and more).
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