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Show HN: CompressX, my FFmpeg wrapper for macOS

compressx.app

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Re: Show HN: CompressX, my FFmpeg wrapper for macOS

#151

Post by ranger_danger »

kergonath wrote: post #84
Solvency wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but anyone can create an electron app these days with total control over the UI polish with way less effort. in fact electron seems like the perfect use case here for a ffmpeg UI wrapper. surprised no one has done it.

> UI polish with way less effort. Clearly not. The least effort is to use the platform’s native widgets, or at least a decent toolkit. Those shiny web-based interfaces suck because the developer never put the effort to make the widgets behave as they should, and that’s because it’s actually very hard and expensive to build a UI framework from the ground up. Have a look at UITextField or NSTextField and what they do o…

The least effort would be to use Qt. It's way easier to use than the native toolkit(s), and already looks native on every platform.

Re: Show HN: CompressX, my FFmpeg wrapper for macOS

#152

Post by ranger_danger »

dotinvoke wrote: post #76
cjk2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron serves the developer not the user. It also looks shit on every platform then. And eats all your RAM

The complaint that Chrome eats all your RAM is because it starts a new process for each tab, with all the overhead that entails. You’re not using multiple tabs in an Electron app.

The overheard prevents any one tab from taking out the entire browser though.

Re: Show HN: CompressX, my FFmpeg wrapper for macOS

#153

Post by ranger_danger »

encom wrote: post #73
jjice wrote: post #23

I swear the best looking software like this is all built for MacOS. Maybe there's a lot of it on Windows as well, but I don't see a ton of it on HN (maybe just the demo?). Is the ecosystem part of this? Is it that the application demographic leans towards MacOS? Is the dev and monetization experience better? I'm really curious if anyone know why I see so much good native indie software for MacOS specifically.

Apple users are probably the only crowd that would pay money for a simplistic ffmpeg frontend.

What does it matter? He made $9,000 off of free labor and you didn't.

Re: Show HN: CompressX, my FFmpeg wrapper for macOS

#154

Post by icar »

jjice wrote: post #23

I swear the best looking software like this is all built for MacOS. Maybe there's a lot of it on Windows as well, but I don't see a ton of it on HN (maybe just the demo?). Is the ecosystem part of this? Is it that the application demographic leans towards MacOS? Is the dev and monetization experience better? I'm really curious if anyone know why I see so much good native indie software for MacOS specifically.

Linux apps following Gnome HIG look awesome as well.

Re: Show HN: CompressX, my FFmpeg wrapper for macOS

#155

Post by al_borland »

ranger_danger wrote: post #150
hbn wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really urge the author to rethink doing something like this at all. The app looks great but those stats on the front page were an immediate turn-off for me (not to mention how it pops up in what looks like an annoying cookie banner). You can talk about user activity on a web service where it makes sense to be hitting a server, but for a local app that should really just be a nice GUI for ffmpeg, I don't want my c…

I highly disagree. I think the majority of people who would pay money for a barebones ffmpeg wrapper don't care about telemetry.

Privacy should be the default, not something that is done only when users care enough to fight back.

Re: Show HN: CompressX, my FFmpeg wrapper for macOS

#156

Post by ta1243 »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #75
ta1243 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's exactly right, the extremely complex and clever code in ffmpeg that's understood by about 12 people in the world and is the basis for the entire media consumption in the world isn't where the value is, some gui frontend is. Do you work for microsoft?

I don't think ffmpeg is actually _extremely_ complex. A lot of the complexity (all the flags) you feel belonging to ffmpeg actually belongs to encoders (libx264, libx265, aomenc, libvpx, all the hardware encoders from each vendor). They each have various options meaning different things. ffmpeg is just an interface for them.

That's fair, although the stuff I can do with ffmpeg filters amazes me, and I barely scratch the surface

I tend to include the codec developers in the "ffmpeg developers" for simplicity as there are many that work in both areas.

The complexity in using those codecs isn't the ffmpeg command line, it's knowing which options to use.

Re: Show HN: CompressX, my FFmpeg wrapper for macOS

#157

Post by c0wb0yc0d3r »

Is it just me or is it deceptive to say that a person saves 50% when buying the "standard" license? Both Claude and Gemini seem to come up with a savings of almost 24%. The only way I can reach the 50% mark is by phrasing it as "buy 1 license and get a second license 50% off."

Also "testimonial" should be plural, and "spams" should be singular.

Re: Show HN: CompressX, my FFmpeg wrapper for macOS

#158

Post by CyberDildonics »

Solvency wrote: post #70
ericlewis wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it really matters I guess, but electron apps are chunky. Huge bin size and large memory usage.

were talking about a tiny desktop app that wraps ffmpeg CLI. this is the perfect use case for it, over, say, VISUAL STUDIO CODE.

Do you as a user seriously want a 400MB binary that takes up 1 GB of memory at least just to have a sluggish interface to run a command line program for you when it could be an instant GUI that takes up 1 MB of memory ?

Why would anyone want something taking up literally 1000x the resources it needs to?

Re: Show HN: CompressX, my FFmpeg wrapper for macOS

#160

Post by CyberDildonics »

greggsy wrote: post #69
Solvency wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but anyone can create an electron app these days with total control over the UI polish with way less effort. in fact electron seems like the perfect use case here for a ffmpeg UI wrapper. surprised no one has done it.

People rage about Electron being insecure and bloated, but by Jove it’s a godsend for consistency and portability.

I see people say this sometimes but I never see anyone who has used a regular GUI library like FLTK or Qt say this.

Most of the time it's people who only know javascript and have never even heard of GUI libraries that say this.

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