3 ms·

I guess this a testament to the power of source code translation, but it's a very impractical hack overall.

zapt02 13y ago
I disagree completely. It is amazing that you can now encode videos, create screenshots etc without any additional software required.
- dutchbrit 13y ago
  Well, I'd hardly call this something usable in a production environment. It's a lot slower to say the least... Still, I applaud the hacking :)
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  Some things are just better left to the desktop and not the web, I'm afraid. FFmpeg is a part of most standard desktop Linux distributions, and can easily be downloaded for other systems. Apparently installing software locally is a horrifying predicament now. Encoding videos on the desktop with the native FFmpeg code will not only yield better performance, but I can't think of a scenario why you'd want to use as a web-based service. Create screenshots? Really? What a complete triviality. I guess using standard software and hitting the PrtSc key is too difficult in comparison to using the browser for everything. Making screencasts is a different issue, but also one you'd do locally. Sorry if I'm not so passionate.
  - k3n 13y ago
    > Some things are just better left to the desktop and not the web That list changes every year, too. As JS runtimes get faster, more and more is now possible in the browser that would've been fully impractical just a few years ago. In just a few more years, I predict that stuff like video processing won't be so far-fetched either.
  - newsmaster 13y ago
    http://www.easyprintscreen.com http://www.easyprintscreen.com saves me time firing up photoshop. (shameless plug) more editing tools coming soon :) Funnily enough I'm using a color pallete plugin written by @bgrins who is working on the OP project.
    - zapt02 13y ago
      This looks great, but what I really meant in the original comment is creating screenshots from a video.
  - sp332 13y ago
    Porting software to multiple platforms can be a pain, and a source of bugs. If there's an update it has to manually installed by each person. Then you have to remember where you put it, or which one is in your $PATH. And if you want to send it to someone else, you have to find the right version for their machine and figure out where they can download it, or how to copy it over to them. <- These problems are all solved by having a single URL you can visit or share, where the latest version of the single codebase runs every time.
  - trevorhinesley 13y ago
    Honestly, I think this project was to show what could be done all inside the browser. This is a very cool idea, and is extremely impressive for being done in a weekend. Don't be that guy--maybe you should find some passion.
- lmm 13y ago
  What's the practical performance? Encoding a 24-minute episode with high quality seconds is a 6-hour overnight job (at least on my machine); if this is fast enough to finish in one night then ok, but I don't fancy leaving a browser running for a week.
  - aaronm67 13y ago
    In our testing, in the latest version of Chrome, there is about a 75-80% performance hit. So a 6-hour native encoding would take a little over a day to compile (we're working on getting more accurate benchmarks) You're right, you're not going to use this to encode movies or very large media files, but for encoding shorter clips, the performance isn't unreasonable.
  - moocowduckquack 13y ago
    Perhaps if you have something that can intelligently split the job into segments and communicate with other nodes over webRTC then you could have a distributed encoder that any spare machine with a browser can join.
cantankerous 13y ago
I think that "completely new and innovative" approaches are preceded by toy projects that many consider to be impractical or simply hacks. I think that this is a pretty cool demonstration for what it is.
smtddr 13y ago
Ah yes, the obligatory pessimistic/negative HN comment. I can think of some things an "ffmpeg.js" would be good for. Maybe not super-high-performance, but the masses don't care. Keep in mind ffmpeg does more than just videos. It processes images & audio files too; depending on what was --enabled during compile. - Upload a short video-clip and turn it into a looping gif without the webapp's backend doing the work? - Take an already existing looping gif and append/truncate it - Add watermark - Make a ringtone from your music-in-the-cloud?(This is an idea I've been thinking about for awhile, btw) - It'd be kinda cool to see a program like, say, Adobe After Effects or Photoshop re-implemented in a browser. This happened: http://pixlr.com/editor/ http://pixlr.com/editor/ - ffmpeg also supports streaming to twitch.tv; it's the backend to http://www.ffsplit.com/ http://www.ffsplit.com/. What if you could stream straight from your browser? Some HTML5 canvas window streamed via "ffmpeg.js" to some other place? Access your webcam/microphone maybe?

I disagree completely. It is amazing that you can now encode videos, create screenshots etc without any additional software required.

dutchbrit 13y ago
Well, I'd hardly call this something usable in a production environment. It's a lot slower to say the least... Still, I applaud the hacking :)
vezzy-fnord 13y ago
Some things are just better left to the desktop and not the web, I'm afraid. FFmpeg is a part of most standard desktop Linux distributions, and can easily be downloaded for other systems. Apparently installing software locally is a horrifying predicament now. Encoding videos on the desktop with the native FFmpeg code will not only yield better performance, but I can't think of a scenario why you'd want to use as a web-based service. Create screenshots? Really? What a complete triviality. I guess using standard software and hitting the PrtSc key is too difficult in comparison to using the browser for everything. Making screencasts is a different issue, but also one you'd do locally. Sorry if I'm not so passionate.
- k3n 13y ago
  > Some things are just better left to the desktop and not the web That list changes every year, too. As JS runtimes get faster, more and more is now possible in the browser that would've been fully impractical just a few years ago. In just a few more years, I predict that stuff like video processing won't be so far-fetched either.
- newsmaster 13y ago
  http://www.easyprintscreen.com http://www.easyprintscreen.com saves me time firing up photoshop. (shameless plug) more editing tools coming soon :) Funnily enough I'm using a color pallete plugin written by @bgrins who is working on the OP project.
  - zapt02 13y ago
    This looks great, but what I really meant in the original comment is creating screenshots from a video.
- sp332 13y ago
  Porting software to multiple platforms can be a pain, and a source of bugs. If there's an update it has to manually installed by each person. Then you have to remember where you put it, or which one is in your $PATH. And if you want to send it to someone else, you have to find the right version for their machine and figure out where they can download it, or how to copy it over to them. <- These problems are all solved by having a single URL you can visit or share, where the latest version of the single codebase runs every time.
- trevorhinesley 13y ago
  Honestly, I think this project was to show what could be done all inside the browser. This is a very cool idea, and is extremely impressive for being done in a weekend. Don't be that guy--maybe you should find some passion.
lmm 13y ago
What's the practical performance? Encoding a 24-minute episode with high quality seconds is a 6-hour overnight job (at least on my machine); if this is fast enough to finish in one night then ok, but I don't fancy leaving a browser running for a week.
- aaronm67 13y ago
  In our testing, in the latest version of Chrome, there is about a 75-80% performance hit. So a 6-hour native encoding would take a little over a day to compile (we're working on getting more accurate benchmarks) You're right, you're not going to use this to encode movies or very large media files, but for encoding shorter clips, the performance isn't unreasonable.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  Perhaps if you have something that can intelligently split the job into segments and communicate with other nodes over webRTC then you could have a distributed encoder that any spare machine with a browser can join.

cantankerous 13y ago

I think that "completely new and innovative" approaches are preceded by toy projects that many consider to be impractical or simply hacks. I think that this is a pretty cool demonstration for what it is.

smtddr 13y ago

Ah yes, the obligatory pessimistic/negative HN comment. I can think of some things an "ffmpeg.js" would be good for. Maybe not super-high-performance, but the masses don't care. Keep in mind ffmpeg does more than just videos. It processes images & audio files too; depending on what was --enabled during compile. - Upload a short video-clip and turn it into a looping gif without the webapp's backend doing the work? - Take an already existing looping gif and append/truncate it - Add watermark - Make a ringtone from your music-in-the-cloud?(This is an idea I've been thinking about for awhile, btw) - It'd be kinda cool to see a program like, say, Adobe After Effects or Photoshop re-implemented in a browser. This happened: http://pixlr.com/editor/ http://pixlr.com/editor/ - ffmpeg also supports streaming to twitch.tv; it's the backend to http://www.ffsplit.com/ http://www.ffsplit.com/. What if you could stream straight from your browser? Some HTML5 canvas window streamed via "ffmpeg.js" to some other place? Access your webcam/microphone maybe?