5 ms·

Ffmpeg 5.0

115 points by LeoPanthera 5y ago

jgehrcke 5y ago
I keep being impressed by this project. Has served me so well over the years, and the depth of the technologies is so exciting. Assembling ffmpeg command line arguments is a meditative exercise, with almost arbitrarily deep research allowed.
- azinman2 5y ago
  I do wish there was an official complementary UI that would make all the options explicit.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I would be very afraid of what that UI would look like. I have a feeling it would be more difficult than a Sony camera menu system.
    - icelancer 5y ago
      They exist for Windows (bulk ffmpeg encoder is popular) and they look horrible, probably because they just have to. Handbrake is the best frontend for it and "works fine" on basic settings and looks OK. But try to do anything advanced and.... Video processing is just really, really complicated when it involves compression/transcoding. There's no other way around it. And that's alright!
      - AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
        Yeah, I think a more workable "interface" to the complexities of FFmpeg would be some sort of terminal "shell" application that allows the user to easily tab-complete their command and visually separate out the command's various parts (i.e., input opts and output opts on separate parts of screen; each track in the container tabbed out and line-returned from the last track; etc.) Also some users may benefit from a program that can identify what the particulars are about the input file(s) to help them make better commands. Or even ask them first what kind of result they want and work backwards from there. If the user knows they want multiple PNGs and then the input file is an MPEG-4 container with an x265 video bytestream, it's pretty clear what the user may want to do. But unless you're quite initiated, today's FFmpeg still really makes the average user work for it.
        MrWiffles 5y ago
        > Yeah, I think a more workable "interface" to the complexities of FFmpeg would be some sort of terminal "shell" application [...] I was thinking something similar, but hadn't thought about tab completion - interesting idea! I was picturing something with a nano-like interface. Run the program from your terminal, get a simple set of menus you can navigate with a keyboard, tick off boxes for options, etc., then have an auto-updating command example output in a bottom "pane" showing you in real time what the cli args would be for what you specified. In C* land I think they use ncurses to build those, if memory serves, but I probably wouldn't write it in C myself just since I'm not very well versed in it. Probably Go or Rust... Anyway, good idea. If I hack on this I may see about implementing something like that, some day!
  - fortysixdegrees 5y ago
    VLC is pretty close
    - AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
      Perhaps as an interface to `ffplay`, but it's certainly not complete enough to be the GUI for `ffmpeg`.
CharlesW 5y ago
Sweet! Very excited to do quality benchmarks with this: https://ffmpeg.org/#aac_encoder_stable https://ffmpeg.org/#aac_encoder_stable
- Youden 5y ago
  I'm curious, how do you intend to benchmark it? Do you have some metric for audio quality or do you just mean blind listening tests?
  - CharlesW 5y ago
    There is PEAQ[1], so I suppose I should try implementations like GstPEAQ, Peaqb, and PQevalAudio. If anyone reading along has tried these and has thoughts on them or implementations I'm unaware of, I'd appreciate hearing about them. Typically I just do informal listening tests, in this case against Apple's AAC encoder (the gold standard). You're right that ideally, I'd do something more formal like double-blind ABX testing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_Evaluation_of_Audio_Quality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_Evaluation_of_Audio...
tschellenbach 5y ago
quietly powering video literally everywhere. such an amazing project
dylan604 5y ago
YAPE: yet another prores encoder
eatonphil 5y ago
I always thought ffmpeg was a massive, impossible-to-use library that solved all cases under the sun. Well regardless of the latter, I learned the former was not true as I was looking for a way to turn an mp4 into a gif without some silly desktop app. ffmpeg -i in.mp4 out.gif That's it! Incredibly easy to use after all.
- freedomben 5y ago
  It's incredibly easy to use as long as you are happy with the default settings. The hard part comes in when you want to apply some sort of transformation but you don't know what a lot of the technical terms mean.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Maybe it should come with a sticker "No user servicable parts inside". If you don't know what you're doing, don't take the cover off and start poking with metal objects. /s There's no better way to learn than to face something you don't know. 99/100 things you don't know or can't figure out, someone on the internet as been there done that. Come across enough of these things, and you start to think like ffmpeg!
- tombert 5y ago
  Ffmpeg is one of those things that I repeatedly find replaces other tools. It can convert video, it can deinterlace it, it can apply effect filters, etc. It’s one of those products that has effectively replaced everything else I use video/audio related because ffmpeg is free and does everything.
- dylan604 5y ago
  FFMPEG comes with a lot of training wheels, and it tends to make the right "guesses" the majority of the time. That is meant as a HUGE compliment. Edit: maybe not training wheels. more like gutter bumpers in bowling. no matter what you do, you're going to hit some pins (make a playable output). with just a little trying, you can easily roll strikes
- TT-392 5y ago
anon_123g987 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29939789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29939789 FFmpeg 5.0 (https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/release/5.0/Changelog https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/release/5.0/Changelog) 113 points|_Gyan_|3 days ago|27 comments
devadvance 5y ago
I'm perpetually impressed by the value FFmpeg adds to society. I imagine an accurate tally of all the places it's used would be impossible, but I can't help but imagine it would be eye-opening in it's breadth. Two noteworthy items that stand out to me: > AV1 Low overhead bitstream format muxer > speex decoder Congrats on the 5.0 milestone to all contributors!
- gilmore606 5y ago
  On a current project I needed to get RMS volume of the mids of an audio file in 1-second isolated segments. I wrote a bunch of code to do just that...and was floored when my partner pointed out to me that ffmpeg could give me that exact data on the commandline.
  - jon9544hn 5y ago
    Any pointers? Would love to see that command
    - gilmore606 5y ago
      ffmpeg -i in.mp3 -af anequalizer=c0 f=70 w=100 g=-24 t=0|c1 f=70 w=100 g=-24 t=0, anequalizer=c0 f=4000 w=7500 g=-24 t=0|c1 f=4000 w=7500 g=-24 t=0 astats=metadata=1:reset=48,ametadata=print:key=lavfi.astats.Overall.RMS_level:file=log.txt -f null -
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tombert 5y ago
I feel like I know Ffmpeg better than most, and I still only know between 5-10% of all it has to offer. It’s amazing that they manage to keep adding features.
xnx 5y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29939789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29939789
artursapek 5y ago
The swiss army knife of audio/video. I love ffmpeg

115 points by LeoPanthera 5y ago

I keep being impressed by this project. Has served me so well over the years, and the depth of the technologies is so exciting. Assembling ffmpeg command line arguments is a meditative exercise, with almost arbitrarily deep research allowed.

azinman2 5y ago
I do wish there was an official complementary UI that would make all the options explicit.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I would be very afraid of what that UI would look like. I have a feeling it would be more difficult than a Sony camera menu system.
  - icelancer 5y ago
    They exist for Windows (bulk ffmpeg encoder is popular) and they look horrible, probably because they just have to. Handbrake is the best frontend for it and "works fine" on basic settings and looks OK. But try to do anything advanced and.... Video processing is just really, really complicated when it involves compression/transcoding. There's no other way around it. And that's alright!
    - AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
      Yeah, I think a more workable "interface" to the complexities of FFmpeg would be some sort of terminal "shell" application that allows the user to easily tab-complete their command and visually separate out the command's various parts (i.e., input opts and output opts on separate parts of screen; each track in the container tabbed out and line-returned from the last track; etc.) Also some users may benefit from a program that can identify what the particulars are about the input file(s) to help them make better commands. Or even ask them first what kind of result they want and work backwards from there. If the user knows they want multiple PNGs and then the input file is an MPEG-4 container with an x265 video bytestream, it's pretty clear what the user may want to do. But unless you're quite initiated, today's FFmpeg still really makes the average user work for it.
      - MrWiffles 5y ago
        > Yeah, I think a more workable "interface" to the complexities of FFmpeg would be some sort of terminal "shell" application [...] I was thinking something similar, but hadn't thought about tab completion - interesting idea! I was picturing something with a nano-like interface. Run the program from your terminal, get a simple set of menus you can navigate with a keyboard, tick off boxes for options, etc., then have an auto-updating command example output in a bottom "pane" showing you in real time what the cli args would be for what you specified. In C* land I think they use ncurses to build those, if memory serves, but I probably wouldn't write it in C myself just since I'm not very well versed in it. Probably Go or Rust... Anyway, good idea. If I hack on this I may see about implementing something like that, some day!
- fortysixdegrees 5y ago
  VLC is pretty close
  - AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
    Perhaps as an interface to `ffplay`, but it's certainly not complete enough to be the GUI for `ffmpeg`.

CharlesW 5y ago

Sweet! Very excited to do quality benchmarks with this: https://ffmpeg.org/#aac_encoder_stable https://ffmpeg.org/#aac_encoder_stable

Youden 5y ago
I'm curious, how do you intend to benchmark it? Do you have some metric for audio quality or do you just mean blind listening tests?
- CharlesW 5y ago
  There is PEAQ[1], so I suppose I should try implementations like GstPEAQ, Peaqb, and PQevalAudio. If anyone reading along has tried these and has thoughts on them or implementations I'm unaware of, I'd appreciate hearing about them. Typically I just do informal listening tests, in this case against Apple's AAC encoder (the gold standard). You're right that ideally, I'd do something more formal like double-blind ABX testing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_Evaluation_of_Audio_Quality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_Evaluation_of_Audio...

tschellenbach 5y ago

quietly powering video literally everywhere. such an amazing project

dylan604 5y ago

YAPE: yet another prores encoder

eatonphil 5y ago

I always thought ffmpeg was a massive, impossible-to-use library that solved all cases under the sun. Well regardless of the latter, I learned the former was not true as I was looking for a way to turn an mp4 into a gif without some silly desktop app. ffmpeg -i in.mp4 out.gif That's it! Incredibly easy to use after all.

freedomben 5y ago
It's incredibly easy to use as long as you are happy with the default settings. The hard part comes in when you want to apply some sort of transformation but you don't know what a lot of the technical terms mean.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Maybe it should come with a sticker "No user servicable parts inside". If you don't know what you're doing, don't take the cover off and start poking with metal objects. /s There's no better way to learn than to face something you don't know. 99/100 things you don't know or can't figure out, someone on the internet as been there done that. Come across enough of these things, and you start to think like ffmpeg!
tombert 5y ago
Ffmpeg is one of those things that I repeatedly find replaces other tools. It can convert video, it can deinterlace it, it can apply effect filters, etc. It’s one of those products that has effectively replaced everything else I use video/audio related because ffmpeg is free and does everything.
dylan604 5y ago
FFMPEG comes with a lot of training wheels, and it tends to make the right "guesses" the majority of the time. That is meant as a HUGE compliment. Edit: maybe not training wheels. more like gutter bumpers in bowling. no matter what you do, you're going to hit some pins (make a playable output). with just a little trying, you can easily roll strikes
TT-392 5y ago

anon_123g987 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29939789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29939789 FFmpeg 5.0 (https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/release/5.0/Changelog https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/release/5.0/Changelog) 113 points|_Gyan_|3 days ago|27 comments

devadvance 5y ago

I'm perpetually impressed by the value FFmpeg adds to society. I imagine an accurate tally of all the places it's used would be impossible, but I can't help but imagine it would be eye-opening in it's breadth. Two noteworthy items that stand out to me: > AV1 Low overhead bitstream format muxer > speex decoder Congrats on the 5.0 milestone to all contributors!

gilmore606 5y ago
On a current project I needed to get RMS volume of the mids of an audio file in 1-second isolated segments. I wrote a bunch of code to do just that...and was floored when my partner pointed out to me that ffmpeg could give me that exact data on the commandline.
- jon9544hn 5y ago
  Any pointers? Would love to see that command
  - gilmore606 5y ago
    ffmpeg -i in.mp3 -af anequalizer=c0 f=70 w=100 g=-24 t=0|c1 f=70 w=100 g=-24 t=0, anequalizer=c0 f=4000 w=7500 g=-24 t=0|c1 f=4000 w=7500 g=-24 t=0 astats=metadata=1:reset=48,ametadata=print:key=lavfi.astats.Overall.RMS_level:file=log.txt -f null -

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tombert 5y ago

I feel like I know Ffmpeg better than most, and I still only know between 5-10% of all it has to offer. It’s amazing that they manage to keep adding features.

xnx 5y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29939789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29939789

artursapek 5y ago

The swiss army knife of audio/video. I love ffmpeg