Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
fileconverter.tommyjepsen.com
Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
1–10 of 24 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
#2This is a great tool and you should consider converting it to a PWA so it can be installed in addition to bookmarked.
Uploaded five files ~86 mb each (opus > wav). 3 files get converted ok. Two stops at 97% in brave/win11. DevTools reports: RangeError: Array buffer allocation failed
Firefox/win 11 converted all files.
Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
#3Major thumbs up on the idea and the simple interface, though some feedback:
If everything is local, using “Download” and “Upload” doesn’t seem like the proper choice of words.
It’s confusing that the Download button is on a table which shows the name of the file we “uploaded”, making it look like we’ll get the same file and not the conversion.
It might be worth considering some basic options to determine quality. Nothing too fancy, but at least an idea of what the quality/size ratio will be. For testing purposes I converted an MP4 to WebM which reduced it to less than one sixth of the size but the quality was so destroyed that the time and resources it took were a waste, the file went straight into the bin.
Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
#4This is a great tool and you should consider converting it to a PWA so it can be installed in addition to bookmarked. Uploaded five files ~86 mb each (opus > wav). 3 files get converted ok. Two stops at 97% in brave/win11. DevTools reports: RangeError: Array buffer allocation failed Firefox/win 11 converted all files.
Firefox does file conversions?
Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
#5Major thumbs up on the idea and the simple interface, though some feedback: If everything is local, using “Download” and “Upload” doesn’t seem like the proper choice of words. It’s confusing that the Download button is on a table which shows the name of the file we “uploaded”, making it look like we’ll get the same file and not the conversion. It might be worth considering some basic options to determine quality. Not…
Hey, thanks for the feedback.
Yea makes sense with file naming and button. Let me try to iterate on that.
The mp4 to webm was actually the hardest to get working. Seemed like FFmpeg-wasm would stall at different times with some settings. I've updated it now to produce a bit better quality, but will definitely keep improving on this.
Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
#6Congrats on the tool/release.
I was slightly confused at the start, as I didn't know exactly what it converts the image/audio/video into? I thought, based on the title, that it can convert image to video for example, or video to audio. Can it? Or is it more of a format/encoding converter?
Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
#7Congrats on the tool/release. I was slightly confused at the start, as I didn't know exactly what it converts the image/audio/video into? I thought, based on the title, that it can convert image to video for example, or video to audio. Can it? Or is it more of a format/encoding converter?
It's a format/encoding converter, if you upload an image filetype you will only be able to select image filetypes as output.
Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
#8I wish pages like this had a way to specify, in the HEAD tag, that they are to be run in an additional sandbox with zero network access. That way, the user agent could render them in a special way to indicate to the user that it is safe to share data with the app.
Because nothing is stopping this app from updating its code after a few weeks in order to begin shipping data.
Of course, you can download the page and then use it off-line. Sure. But it'd be nice for a page author to communicate "I'm good, this page is self-contained and doesn't need any further access to the network, please let the user know."
Allowing a user to "pin" that status would similarly be great. Oh, and apply that or make it available to browser extensions.
Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
#9I dig the simplicity, but "mp4" for example is just a container format. Even if you don't make the codecs user-configurable, it'd be nice to know which codecs are being used e.g. "mp4 (h264 + AAC)".
Question, does it strip metadata? Because ideally that's what I'd expect from a "privacy-friendly" tool.
I let it "convert" one mp4 file into another, and it's taking a while, which makes me think it's doing a full re-encode. It might be worth adding logic to merely remux i.e. "-vcodec copy" where possible, as an optimisation.
Consider adding HEIC/HEIF image support, as well as JXL. Slightly less common, but all the more reason why someone would want to convert.
Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-friendly and free image, audio and video converter
#10I wish pages like this had a way to specify, in the HEAD tag, that they are to be run in an additional sandbox with zero network access. That way, the user agent could render them in a special way to indicate to the user that it is safe to share data with the app. Because nothing is stopping this app from updating its code after a few weeks in order to begin shipping data. Of course, you can download the page and the…
I agree. This mode could even be enabled (but never disabled) via a javascript call. Once done, the browser could relax certain restrictions that are designed to prevent fingerprinting, since without network access I think most fingerprinting-related attacks become impossible