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If I remember rightly it was “Elvis Presley” who contributed the ProRes codec in the first place. Or maybe I’m thinking of a similar closed codec. There are on

If I remember rightly it was “Elvis Presley” who contributed the ProRes codec in the first place. Or maybe I’m thinking of a similar closed codec. There are only a handful of people that really contribute to ffmpeg, yet its codebase runs pretty much the entire video based internet. It’s a marvel of the modern world.

zerocrates 3y ago
You do remember rightly: https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commit/5554de13b29b9bb812ee5cfd606349873ddf0945 https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commit/5554de13b29b9bb812ee...
- skywal_l 3y ago
  I am always impressed by the collective memory of HN commenters.
tombert 3y ago
I genuinely feel like ffmpeg is kind of like a "secret weapon". Occasionally my dad will need some help with video or audio, and he'll see me hack together an ffmpeg command (even on Android with termux in a pinch!) and be utterly astounded. Being able to quickly slice up the video without re-encoding, or being able to stitch video together without a re-encode, or being able to arbitrarily glue a bunch of videos together all of different formats and it will work flawlessly. It's a piece of software I would gladly pay hundreds of dollars for, and yet it manages to be free. I think I'll visit their donate page right now.
- vrosas 3y ago
  It’s amazing how many companies are literally just ffmpeg-as-a-service. It wasn’t a ton of money but I saved my last company a few hundred bucks a month they were paying a service to convert .gif files to .mp4
  - tombert 3y ago
    ImageMagick as well! At a big social media company I used to work at [1], they were spending a not-insignificant amount of money (in the millions) to their CDN/caching provider just to have images resized and converted to PNG and WebP. I am pretty sure all this CDN was doing was running the image through ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick and calling it a day, and charging absurd quantities of money to do it. [1] it's not hard to find my employment history but I ask you not to say it publicly here
xattt 3y ago
Was this an Apple employee working covertly to cement ProRes as an open codec?

zerocrates 3y ago

You do remember rightly: https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commit/5554de13b29b9bb812ee5cfd606349873ddf0945 https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commit/5554de13b29b9bb812ee...

skywal_l 3y ago
I am always impressed by the collective memory of HN commenters.

tombert 3y ago

I genuinely feel like ffmpeg is kind of like a "secret weapon". Occasionally my dad will need some help with video or audio, and he'll see me hack together an ffmpeg command (even on Android with termux in a pinch!) and be utterly astounded. Being able to quickly slice up the video without re-encoding, or being able to stitch video together without a re-encode, or being able to arbitrarily glue a bunch of videos together all of different formats and it will work flawlessly. It's a piece of software I would gladly pay hundreds of dollars for, and yet it manages to be free. I think I'll visit their donate page right now.

vrosas 3y ago
It’s amazing how many companies are literally just ffmpeg-as-a-service. It wasn’t a ton of money but I saved my last company a few hundred bucks a month they were paying a service to convert .gif files to .mp4
- tombert 3y ago
  ImageMagick as well! At a big social media company I used to work at [1], they were spending a not-insignificant amount of money (in the millions) to their CDN/caching provider just to have images resized and converted to PNG and WebP. I am pretty sure all this CDN was doing was running the image through ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick and calling it a day, and charging absurd quantities of money to do it. [1] it's not hard to find my employment history but I ask you not to say it publicly here

xattt 3y ago

Was this an Apple employee working covertly to cement ProRes as an open codec?