cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/41813614
I’m currently working on a file converter app that lets you easily convert your files in bulk without needing to mess around with 500 settings or confusing command-line apps. It’s mostly a replacement for all those “convert X to Y” websites.
This is just a front-end for ffmpeg and imagemagick, but the goal is to make something so simple even my parents could use without uploading sensitive files to shady websites on the internet. I’ve looked around, and I found all the local GUI converters like Handbrake are unwieldy to use, especially if you just want to convert in bulk.
The project is still very early, but I’d like some feedback:
Does anyone think this project is worth finishing, or are there too many GUI file converters out there already?
What do you think about the UI so far?
Cheers.
Well for ffmpeg the best converor I know is shutter encoder written in java
You’ve taken an approach here where you intentionally hide the fact that a video file is (at least) 3 different technical formats that are independently variable. An “MP4” file can have a range of audio codecs, a range of video codecs, timed-text formats, additional audio, and so on. And there is no single standard composition that works everywhere.
When you simplify a matrix of user choices by making the vcodec, acodec, and timed text format choices on behalf of your users, you take on the burden of making sure those work everywhere the users want to playback. What you’ll find is that most devices on the market only support a very limited range of container+vcodec+acodec combinations, they are undocumented more often than not, and buggy as hell.
The oversimplification approach you’re taking is “ingesting anything, but output only ‘Value Meal #1’ for everybody.” This has value for some people, but it puts a big burden on you to make choices that playback mostly correctly on a wide variety of devices, and it mysteriously breaks things that don’t work everywhere (like surround sound, ambisonics, many timed text formats etc.). There’s a reason why all that choice exists, even if most people don’t, don’t want to, and shouldn’t need to understand it.
Not trying to dissuage you. Just sharing experience. :-)
Convert a CSV into a wmv.
Any reason not to use https://github.com/VERT-sh/VERT?
VERT is really close but not totally what I was looking for, it’s a web app rather than a local program and AFAIK can’t convert videos locally, you’d have to upload it to a server and download them again.
VERT is a file conversion utility that uses WebAssembly to convert files on your device instead of a cloud.
Doesn’t sound like you’re uploading to the server.
Video files are an exception since it would be too slow on WASM
Q: What happens with video files?
Video files get uploaded to our lightning-fast RTX 4000 Ada server. Your videos stay on there for an hour if you do not convert them. If you do convert the file, the video will stay on the server for an hour, or until it is downloaded. The file will then be deleted from our server.
You can run it all locally if you want…. They’re just docker containers. Set up a docker compose and
docker compose up
I wish I had something to convert vector image formats to dxf. That’s probably beyond the scope of this.
Can it convert flac to wavpack?
This looks great so far! I love the concept of an app that makes conversions easy for the most typical use cases.
It looks like you’re still early in the UI phase, so you probably have plans for this already, but I feel like the progress screen could use more feedback than only two progress bars.
Overall though, this looks like it could be solid! Good luck!
