Show HN: FileFlows – file processing Docker application | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: FileFlows – file processing Docker application

fileflows.com

37 pointsthe_reven14 comments

Docker application (working on Windows install now) that lets you process files using a simple flow based rule system. Similar to node-red but for files.

The reason I created this was to process videos into a standard format that all the devices in my house could playback (H265/AC3).

I tried unmaniac and tdarr but didn't really like those interfaces and they didn't do exactly what I wanted.

There's a cut-down demo available on the website. The demo doesn't connect to a backend so it doesn't include all the features.

After feedback/suggestions of features to add. Its quite powerful being so flexible, and not limited to just processing video files. It has a plugin based system and I've so far got 3 plugins. Basic (basic file processing/generic nodes), Videos (for video encoding/processing), Meta (for metadata, currently only TheMovieDb). The basic plugin also includes a "Executor" which lets you run any process against a file and use the exit code in the flow. So you could automically have it convert all you pictures to some format, or FLAC audio to MP3 or something.

I find the amount of polish on the homepage for this project interesting, while the page it self does not have a lot of info, you seem to be all in on the projects communications side.

* Is this a personal passion project? or something you plan to monetize? * Are you using the discord/sub reddit for motivation? or as a precursor to moving to a paid model, with patron as a way to test the waters on commercial interest?

Ive been doing this kinda work professional now for 15 years now Which has all the PM and corporate stuff that goes along with professional software delveopment. ie it gets tiring at times. So this is purely a passion project.

It would be nice one day to make a few hundred or something a month as bonus play money. Not going to lie, it would be nice. But its not a requirement for me. I built this for me to use at first, I figured I use a bunch of free software others make, I should pay it forward.

But it will likely always be free in one shape or form. Maybe if there were ever a commerical application for it I could do a commerical licensing or something. Tdarr does this something like this. The motivation for that would be to devote more time/money into making it better. I want to get Intel Hardware encoding working. But my unRAID server is running an intel cpu from 2013 so doesn't support it. My dev box is a AMD cpu. I'll be upgrading my server in the not too distant future, but sure patreons or something help that to be sooner rather than later would be nice. But totally not necassary.

But for the average user, I'd like to keep it free. Properly free, not really limited free.

Also I'm not convinced there is a market for it beyond tech nerds like myself.

I also kinda treat it as an only CV/showcase.

regarding the communications side. I'm just to get the app noticed. I want more people using it, so I can get more ideas feedback to drive it forward. I don't want this just drying up and dying due to lack of interest.

I enjoy programming, and this is a fun project. And it's something I find useful. It lets me play with new tech.

Before this I hadn't really used docker (as one could probably tell by my poor dockerfile).

But I have been using Blazor for about 2 years now, I like webdev cos it always has new tech to play with.

There's a top comment here by the_reven that I somehow cannot reply to?

Anyway, just wanted to mention that make and ruby's rake are text-based systems for doing exactly this kind of thing if you prefer not to use GUIs and would rather avoid Docker.

This has been noticed a few times today—is this a new HN feature, where the submitter’s first comment is unreplyable (and pinned)?

yes there are others out there. for video specifically theres unmaniac and tdarr. but personally I wanted a easy to use (ok, im biased on this, but thats what I'm trying to achieve) UI to make this simple but powerful. Like I said, its very much inspired by node-red, which is brilliant.

its only docker atm, as I was making it for unRAID. But I'm working on a windows installer. and I'll provide linux builds if theres demand for it.

I'm just working on making it a server/node system, where you can have multiple processing computers and one server. The server itself will have a built in node so if you just want the one app, you wont need to install both a server and a node. Thats probably a few days away. Its not that complicated to do.

Looks pretty cool! However I'm not able to find any instructions about how to build the project (sorry I've never done any professional Windows development) or download a prebuilt. It will be great to see one in the README or wiki.

theres a build.ps1 file which I use to build. But to build .net all you really need to do is run a "dotnet build" within the project directory. Easy way to play is to download visual studio 2022 community and fire it up that way. However I do have some VSCode tasks.proj committed if you want to use VSCode instead. I was using VSCode for a while, but debugging in VSCode isn't the best.

The UI looks very polished. What's it built with?

Thanks! its Blazor. The UI I did all myself. Maybe a template here or there for basic layout/style of toggle switches to get started. But its not using anything like bootstrap or anything.

This looks really cool. Can you deploy it as part of an application to transcode videos or audio files in bulk?

Yes. Thats basically the reason I made it. I wanted it to be a middle man between sonarr and sabnzbd. where sabnzbd would downlaod videos, FileFlows will convert them, then sonarr would import the converted videos. I also just ran my entire tv/movie library (around 5000 files) through it to convert everything to h265/AC3.

You can do schedules aswell, so I made it convert them between 10pm and 7am. My server is in my office, its summer time in New Zealand, didnt want my server heating up my office more than it needed too :)

Windows builds now available on fileflows.com.

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