Show HN: FFmpeg UI | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: FFmpeg UI

ybouane.com

40 pointsybouane50 comments

A user interface to quickly and easily convert media files using FFMPEG behind the scenes.

"is damaged" on the MacOS DMG (M1 Macbook Pro) -so won't run.

I wanted to see if you offer an option to save the cmdline equivalent so I can use the UI to test drive, and then save a script to re-run in command shells

same here

i came here to say this (specifically saving cmd line equivalents)

FWIW, ffworks (about $20) provides just that, a UI where you can adjust all the knobs and then (optionally) view the resultant script. You can also make droplets with it, so if you have repetitive, specific and/or temporary workflows it’s very nice to have.

Tangentially, as a related example, the free MKV Toolnix suite has a well designed GUI that also provides commadline snippets ( for windows and *nix ) for any jobs you create.

While not as complex as the full FFmpeg CLI options, the MKVToolnix suite has a large option set and having the GUI create usable CLI snippets is very handy for setting up large batch jobs on hundreds and thousands of AV files.

https://mkvtoolnix.download/

Loving ffworks, been using it for many years.

Probably due to the binary not being Notarized or something of that affect. Here’s how to remove it:

`sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine $BINARY_NAME`

I know you are not telling people to run it, but probably running an unsigned, unnotarized binary from a random person (with 14 HN karma) is not a good idea.

Signed or unsigned, the only real difference is did they pay Apple $100

Just paid the 100$ and got it notarized. Still, you're downloading software from a total stranger :p .

There is a difference though. Apple does at least some amount of malware scanning during notarizarion and they have your credit card/some personalia on file, which means that they can go after you.

I know, stolen credit cards, etc. But at least it’s something (App Store would be better due to sandboxing).

If it’s from the App Store, it’s at least required to be sandboxed.

It's fixed now, thanks for reporting the issue.

Cool. Closed source though.

I'm curious, what is used as the UI toolkit.

Looking at the huge size, I will take a wild guess, and say it's an Electron app.

Or more likely, ffmpeg binary is embedded, considering that they don't provide instructions to download it on that page.

Yes, ffmpeg is included. It takes up 2.4MB. The rest is electron bloat.

That's not big enough to include even most native components. My essentials build with only common 3rd party libs (like libx264) compresses to 20MB with LZMA2.

I just looked inside the linux appimage. There's only a 2.4MB libffmpeg.so and it doesn't link against anything else than libc stuff.

You are all on point! Great analysis. - Yes, it's electron (didn't expect such a huge build for such a small app). - The bundled ffmpeg is probably a light version that comes from the underlying chrome. - The app detects if there's a ffmpeg available otherwise it downloads the binaries and uses them instead.

Nothing has come close to https://handbrake.fr/ for me.

Yes. Last I checked handbrake used FFmpeg in the background.

It does indeed!

It does use some parts of libavformat, libavfilters, libavcodec. But HandBrake it's not an FFmpeg cli UI and it's quite different.

handbrake is such an underrated tool! I've been using it for over a decade to compress and convert videos, and nothing comes close (except ffmpeg ofcourse)

Or Permute on MAS/Setapp

I've not found anything better than StaxRip if you want access to the deep guts of encoder options. It can use nVidia's nvEnc API either directly, or through ffmpeg; same for Intel's QuickSync and AMD's VCEEnc.

https://staxrip.readthedocs.io/generated/screenshots.html

`cannot execute binary file: Exec format error` on Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04

Same here on Debian 12, x64

Edit:

  file FFMPEG-UI.AppImage 
  FFMPEG-UI.AppImage: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-aarch64.so.1, for GNU/Linux 3.7.0, BuildID[sha1]=4b12022a0a60af0d4b7920deac219fcbd1d92080, stripped

It was compiled for 64 bit ARM...

Windows build was also compiled for arm64.

It should work fine now I rebuilt it to work for the x64 architecture.

ffmpeg is well suited to a graqh style interface like this:

https://ffmpeg.guide/graph/demo

A subscription service to generate ffmpeg prompts? I'm not a marketing person, but I'd wager it's a niche market.

Given that recent versions of Blender have an extensible node based UI framework and a video editing pipeline feature, I'm surprised there are no plugins that actually do this.

Why did they pick such an obnoxious color? Too bright to contrast well with the white font. Speaking of the font, why so squished, heavy and poorly readable? Why so much empty space everywhere? Why is the back button sometimes in the corner, and sometimes floating close to the control panel?

Operating system user interface guidelines exist for a reason. They make sure that software is accessible for users and consistent on the platform. Sure it's fine to get creative if you're making a game or something, but this thing is a tool.

And it's a proprietary app, so I can't change this stuff.

ChatGPT makes a wonderful natural language interface for ffmpeg. I like to ask for a bash script that uses ffmpeg to achieve my goal. Recent example output:

  #!/bin/bash

  # Set the input file name
  input_file="input.mp4"

  # Trim the videos
  ffmpeg -i $input_file -ss 00:01:08.5 -to 00:01:11.05 -c copy shot1.mp4
  ffmpeg -i $input_file -ss 00:01:13.3 -to 00:01:22 -c copy shot2.mp4
  ffmpeg -i $input_file -ss 00:01:24 -c copy shot3.mp4

  # Prepare the list of files to concatenate
  echo "file 'shot1.mp4'" > files.txt
  echo "file 'shot2.mp4'" >> files.txt
  echo "file 'shot3.mp4'" >> files.txt

  # Concatenate the video segments
  ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i files.txt -c copy output.mp4

Very interesting!

https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut is another great ffmpeg-based tool. For me it is a starting point for blocking videos out of fragments. It works immediately and has nice UI (not just "enter time into integer fields").

"You can’t open the application “FFMPEG UI” because this application is not supported on this Mac."

I use MacBook Air 2017 running Monterey. Hmmm...

Update: Just noticed the app name after running the dmg: "FFMPEG UI 1.0.0-arm64"

It's fixed now, you can download the Intel version.

It's only for Windows. (Would be good to mention that in the title?)

I see download for MacOS buttons. Do they not work?

Sorry for the issues, it's now fixed.

Landing page for an UI project should really have at least one screenshot.

And it's got five! Bask in the teal glory.

This is what I see - https://i.imgur.com/D5wqgR8.jpg

Are you perhaps blocking third-party requests? It looks like they’re hosted in S3.

can ffmpeg be implemented in WASM?

It is already https://github.com/ffmpegwasm/ffmpeg.wasm

Yes, initially, that was my goal (a web-app), but it's so slow that it's completely useless for converting videos.

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