I was tired of FFmpeg, so I made FFmpeg for humans

3 points·alpbak··5 comments

FFmpeg is an amazing tool, but I kept re-Googling the same commands and copy-pasting things I didn’t want to remember again. I built a small, opinionated Rust CLI that lets me say what I want to do instead of how to say it to FFmpeg. This is the tool that worked for me. It may or may not work for everyone, and that’s okay.

Repo: https://github.com/alpbak/ffhuman

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FFmpeg is fantastic, and this doesn’t try to replace it. I built this after realizing I kept re-Googling the same commands even though I "already knew" FFmpeg. This just lets me express intent and get on with my work.

It’s intentionally opinionated and scoped to my own workflow, if you want full control, FFmpeg is still the right tool.

cool project, like the intentional scope and not trying to rewrite :) this seems super useful! all ffmpeg stuff i ever did was copy pasting because its so tedious (for someone not using it daily?)

Thanks, that was exactly my experience as well. FFmpeg is great, but if you’re not using it daily it’s easy to fall back into copy-paste mode, which is what pushed me to build this.

Cool, ffmpeg commands can definitely get thorny.

Since your README.md starts with an example of ffmpeg and gripes "This is not a normal sentence", it would be nice to simultaneously show the precise analogue as "ffhuman".

That way the reader immediately understands what your tool has to offer. Otherwise it can feel like we're learning two things instead of just one.

Good point, thanks for calling that out.

I’ve moved the ffhuman command right up before the FFmpeg example at the top so the before/after is immediately visible.

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