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I have a small YT channel [1] and I used to spend 30-40 mins recording and then 2-4 hrs editing to get a final 10-15 min video. Then I fully scripted my video

I have a small YT channel [1] and I used to spend 30-40 mins recording and then 2-4 hrs editing to get a final 10-15 min video. Then I fully scripted my video editing using Python+MoviePy [2]. The time savings are sweet. I just feed it my raw video and get the finished video a few minutes later. It cuts out all the dead air as well as the parts I don't want (which I indicate in-video). In general scripting video editing is faster and more scalable compared to mousing around and making tiny cuts in a graphical video editor. [1]: http://youtube.com/c/VivekHaldar http://youtube.com/c/VivekHaldar [2]: https://youtu.be/Bdoi7BDhrWc https://youtu.be/Bdoi7BDhrWc

flexd 5y ago
This is very cool!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ajonit 5y ago
Great idea! Develop this as a standalone solution. There is a huge market open for you.
cosmodisk 5y ago
I personally know a few people who could very likely be your customer,so I second other commenter: do release it as a product.
- gandalfgeek 5y ago
  Thanks for the kind words. Script is open for anyone to use or adapt. Credit and link back would be nice :-) https://gist.github.com/vivekhaldar/92368f35da2d8bb8f12734d840d11cfa https://gist.github.com/vivekhaldar/92368f35da2d8bb8f12734d8...
  - rolisz 5y ago
    I think they mean that you should make it into a standalone product that can be used by someone who doesn't know what Python or GitHub is. So if you are ever looking for a side hustle, you have a good candidate already.
    - umen 5y ago
      God help but even after the video i didnt understood what it does ... can some simplify it to me ?
      - tejtm 5y ago
        I have not watched the video but think I may be able to help with the comprehension aspect from reading, making videos of all sorts of stuff has been normalized To be less wasteful of your audiences time one edits the video to remove the lowest information content segments. When you are generating the video you may have some notion the last segment was subpar so you flash a red flag in front of the camera lens and start over, when you think it was good enough you flash a green flag. For post processing the software scans the video and edits out everything that is not the last interval before a green flag. I would not be surprised if it could not also recognize quiet periods with low visual activity and optionally edit those out as well. But as I have not watched the video... I dunno This is the sort of software that could help drag me and kicking & screaming into the current reality of sharing projects ... but really I would still rather someone else did it all.
- _benj 5y ago
  While I completely relate to the sentiment and, I'd say, similar to the usual HN crowd find products to be a goal, I've personally lost complete interest and even develop resentment/hate toward personal projects the moment I tried to make them into a product. I think the huge shift that happens from "this project is fun/useful for myself" to "I need to integrate payment/multi-user/backups/uptime/user requested features/random uses of the product that I never thought of" is wildly underestimated! But, that's just me, after killing more than a few projects that I enjoyed by trying to make them products...
blamazon 5y ago
That is amazing. I have wanted such a thing for recording videos at work but had no idea how to articulate the idea that was so clearly laid out for me in this 4 minute video.
bradbatt 5y ago
"as well as the parts I don't want (which I indicate in-video)" How do you indicate that in the video?
- gandalfgeek 5y ago
  Well, https://youtu.be/Bdoi7BDhrWc https://youtu.be/Bdoi7BDhrWc explains that with a demo. But tl;dr-- after a segment I want to keep, I switch my background to solid green; after a segment I want to drop, solid red. (Segment == clip between two solid red or green backgrounds)
  - jacobmischka 5y ago
    That's a really interesting and clever idea, well done.
pm 5y ago
Have you used a ffmpeg wrapper like ffmpeg-python for dealing with video? If so, how does it compare? I remember seeing MoviePy briefly in my research but found there wasn't a lot of documentation.
- gandalfgeek 5y ago
  I believe MoviePy uses ffmpeg underneath. Have not used ffmpeg-python, but MoviePy has nice higher-level abstractions like clips (both audio and video), time functions, transitions etc that you can then compose pretty elegantly. See some of the examples on their site: https://zulko.github.io/moviepy/gallery.html https://zulko.github.io/moviepy/gallery.html
tumidpandora 5y ago
Nice! I built something similar with automating a movie making process by pulling gifs from Giphy, convert them to mp4 with ffmpeg, stitch, add a sound track, opening sequence and credits and produce a movie, all with just a keyword. Check out my code here https://github.com/mohapsat/auto-giphy-movie https://github.com/mohapsat/auto-giphy-movie
kmstout 5y ago
As an oldies station DJ from back home would say, this is good stuff! The use of screen color as an in-band indicator for what segments to keep or toss is especially elegant. One question: If you find yourself silent for some period that you want to keep (maybe while something happens on the screen), how do/would you inhibit the dead air filtering?
- gandalfgeek 5y ago
  I've never thought about keeping silent parts in since that's just not my use case, but conceptually you could do that if you introduced a third marker (color other than red or green) to indicate "keep with silent parts".
dceddia 5y ago
I had this same problem with making screencasts! Ended up building a Mac app [0] to do basically this, find the silence and chop it out. I started off with a script too but realized I wanted more control over the timing, and the ability to manually designate some parts to keep/cut. Initially I only exported a cut list, so you could do the final tweaks in ScreenFlow or Final Cut or whatever. Now I’m slowly building out more in-app editing features and some other automations. 0: https://getrecut.com https://getrecut.com

flexd 5y ago

This is very cool!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ajonit 5y ago

Great idea! Develop this as a standalone solution. There is a huge market open for you.

cosmodisk 5y ago

I personally know a few people who could very likely be your customer,so I second other commenter: do release it as a product.

gandalfgeek 5y ago
Thanks for the kind words. Script is open for anyone to use or adapt. Credit and link back would be nice :-) https://gist.github.com/vivekhaldar/92368f35da2d8bb8f12734d840d11cfa https://gist.github.com/vivekhaldar/92368f35da2d8bb8f12734d8...
- rolisz 5y ago
  I think they mean that you should make it into a standalone product that can be used by someone who doesn't know what Python or GitHub is. So if you are ever looking for a side hustle, you have a good candidate already.
  - umen 5y ago
    God help but even after the video i didnt understood what it does ... can some simplify it to me ?
    - tejtm 5y ago
      I have not watched the video but think I may be able to help with the comprehension aspect from reading, making videos of all sorts of stuff has been normalized To be less wasteful of your audiences time one edits the video to remove the lowest information content segments. When you are generating the video you may have some notion the last segment was subpar so you flash a red flag in front of the camera lens and start over, when you think it was good enough you flash a green flag. For post processing the software scans the video and edits out everything that is not the last interval before a green flag. I would not be surprised if it could not also recognize quiet periods with low visual activity and optionally edit those out as well. But as I have not watched the video... I dunno This is the sort of software that could help drag me and kicking & screaming into the current reality of sharing projects ... but really I would still rather someone else did it all.
_benj 5y ago
While I completely relate to the sentiment and, I'd say, similar to the usual HN crowd find products to be a goal, I've personally lost complete interest and even develop resentment/hate toward personal projects the moment I tried to make them into a product. I think the huge shift that happens from "this project is fun/useful for myself" to "I need to integrate payment/multi-user/backups/uptime/user requested features/random uses of the product that I never thought of" is wildly underestimated! But, that's just me, after killing more than a few projects that I enjoyed by trying to make them products...

blamazon 5y ago

That is amazing. I have wanted such a thing for recording videos at work but had no idea how to articulate the idea that was so clearly laid out for me in this 4 minute video.

bradbatt 5y ago

"as well as the parts I don't want (which I indicate in-video)" How do you indicate that in the video?

gandalfgeek 5y ago
Well, https://youtu.be/Bdoi7BDhrWc https://youtu.be/Bdoi7BDhrWc explains that with a demo. But tl;dr-- after a segment I want to keep, I switch my background to solid green; after a segment I want to drop, solid red. (Segment == clip between two solid red or green backgrounds)
- jacobmischka 5y ago
  That's a really interesting and clever idea, well done.

pm 5y ago

Have you used a ffmpeg wrapper like ffmpeg-python for dealing with video? If so, how does it compare? I remember seeing MoviePy briefly in my research but found there wasn't a lot of documentation.

gandalfgeek 5y ago
I believe MoviePy uses ffmpeg underneath. Have not used ffmpeg-python, but MoviePy has nice higher-level abstractions like clips (both audio and video), time functions, transitions etc that you can then compose pretty elegantly. See some of the examples on their site: https://zulko.github.io/moviepy/gallery.html https://zulko.github.io/moviepy/gallery.html

tumidpandora 5y ago

Nice! I built something similar with automating a movie making process by pulling gifs from Giphy, convert them to mp4 with ffmpeg, stitch, add a sound track, opening sequence and credits and produce a movie, all with just a keyword. Check out my code here https://github.com/mohapsat/auto-giphy-movie https://github.com/mohapsat/auto-giphy-movie

kmstout 5y ago

As an oldies station DJ from back home would say, this is good stuff! The use of screen color as an in-band indicator for what segments to keep or toss is especially elegant. One question: If you find yourself silent for some period that you want to keep (maybe while something happens on the screen), how do/would you inhibit the dead air filtering?

gandalfgeek 5y ago
I've never thought about keeping silent parts in since that's just not my use case, but conceptually you could do that if you introduced a third marker (color other than red or green) to indicate "keep with silent parts".

dceddia 5y ago

I had this same problem with making screencasts! Ended up building a Mac app [0] to do basically this, find the silence and chop it out. I started off with a script too but realized I wanted more control over the timing, and the ability to manually designate some parts to keep/cut. Initially I only exported a cut list, so you could do the final tweaks in ScreenFlow or Final Cut or whatever. Now I’m slowly building out more in-app editing features and some other automations. 0: https://getrecut.com https://getrecut.com