Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

85•josharsh•2h ago

I built a CLI tool that lets you do common video/audio operations without remembering ffmpeg syntax.

Instead of: ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vf "fps=15,scale=480:-1:flags=lanczos" -loop 0 output.gif

You write: ff convert video.mp4 to gif

More examples: ff compress video.mp4 to 10mb ff trim video.mp4 from 0:30 to 1:00 ff extract audio from video.mp4 ff resize video.mp4 to 720p ff speed up video.mp4 by 2x ff reverse video.mp4

There are similar tools that use LLMs (wtffmpeg, llmpeg, ai-ffmpeg-cli), but they require API keys, cost money, and have latency.

Ez FFmpeg is different: - No AI – just regex pattern matching - Instant – no API calls - Free – no tokens - Offline – works without internet

It handles ~20 common operations that cover 90% of what developers actually do with ffmpeg. For edge cases, you still need ffmpeg directly.

Interactive mode (just type ff) shows media files in your current folder with typeahead search.

npm install -g ezff

Comments

HelloUsername•2h ago

The one good usecase I've found for AI chatbots, is writing ffmpeg commands. You can just keep chatting with it until you have the command you need. Some of them I save as an executable .command, or in my .txt note.

Tempest1981•2h ago

One that older AI struggled with was the "bounce" effect: play from 0:00 to 0:03, then backwards from 0:03 to 0:00, then repeat 5 times.

Terr_•1h ago

As pessimistic about it as I am, I do think LLMs have a place in helping people turn their text description into formal directives. (Search terms, command-line, SQL, etc.)

... Provided that the user sees what's being made for them and can confirm it and (hopefully) learn the target "language."

Tutor, not a do-for-you assistant.

eviks•1h ago

The "provided" isn't provided, of course, especially the learning part, that's not what you'd turn to AI for vs more reliable tutoring alternatives

left-struck•50m ago

I agree apart from the learning part. The thing is unless you have some very specific needs where you need to use ffmpeg a lot, there’s just no need to learn this stuff. If I have to touch it once a year I have much better things to spend my time learning than ffmpeg command

beepbooptheory•1h ago

But doesnt something like this interface kind of show the inefficiency of this? Like we can all agree ffmpeg is somewhat esoteric and LLMs are probably really great at it, but at the end of the day if you can get 90% of what you need with just some good porcelain, why waste the energy spinning up the GPU?

imiric•57m ago

Because the porcelain is purpose built for a specific use case. If you need something outside of what its author intended, you'll need to get your hands dirty.

And, realistically, compute and power is cheap for getting help with one-off CLI commands.

pixelpoet•31m ago

Requiring the installation of a massive kraken like node.js and npm to run a commandline executable hardly screams efficiency...

Tempest1981•1h ago

I was surprised that macOS (QuickTime/Preview, iMovie) can't read .mp4 files. Not sure if it was due to H.265 or the audio codec. I tried using ffmpeg to convert to .mov but that also failed to open, since I guess MOV is just another container format.

Is there an easier way?

codegladiator•1h ago

vlc

felixfoertsch•1h ago

IMHO the de-facto video player for macOS is [IINA](https://iina.io/).

trvz•40m ago

That exists, but it’s still VLC.

wging•34m ago

It's based on mpv, not vlc.

kiicia•46m ago

MP4 is container, not format, so if you have unsupported format packed into MP4 container it won’t be played. Example is trying to play AV1 video codec on devices with M2 chip or older. It won’t play. But it will play on devices with M3 chip and newer. Easiest solution is to use other player so that you can watch any MP4 file but with software decoding where hardware decoding is not available. Examples of such players are MPV or VLC.

mmahemoff•1h ago

Very cool idea since ffmpeg is one of those tools that has a few common tasks but most users would need to look up the syntax every time to implement them (or make an alias). In line with the ease of use motivation, you might consider supporting tab completion.

dllu•1h ago

When converting video to gif, I always use palettegen, e.g.

    ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex "fps=15,scale=640:-2:flags=lanczos,split[a][b];[a]palettegen=reserve_transparent=off[p];[b][p]paletteuse=dither=sierra2_4a" -loop 0 output.gif

See also: this blog post from 10 years ago [1]

[1] https://blog.pkh.me/p/21-high-quality-gif-with-ffmpeg.html

CrossVR•1h ago

I've been thinking of integrating pngquant as an ffmpeg filter, it would make it possible to generate even better pallettes. That would get ffmpeg on par with gifski.

Kwpolska•1h ago

GitHub repo link returns 404.

eviks•1h ago

That's the problem ideally solved by typed data, i.e., some UI where instead of trying to memorize whether it's thumb/s/nails you can read the closed list of alternatives, read contextual help and pick one

my_brain_saying•56m ago

This is why we have fish tab completions. Does exactly that; list of possible commands with contextual help. Fish rules.

eviks•44m ago

Yeah, no, that's a pale imitation that only addresses the one specific example given. But, like, how would you even know what target formats are supported? Break the flow and look it up or simply read the drop-down list? The free type-any-text interface with poor helpers is the worst in accessibility

Which format is the default if no argument is given?

Or more complicated contextual knowledge - if you cut 1sec of a video file, does fish autocomplete to tell you whether the video is reencoded or cut (otherwise) losslessly

Also, what does fish complete to on Windows?

vithalreddy•1h ago

Can't access the githup repo https://github.com/josharsh/ezff

bdbdbdb•56m ago

Sometimes an idea comes along thats so obvious it makes me angry. I have been struggling with ffmpeg commands for over well a decade. All the time I wasted googling and creating scripts so I wouldn't have to regoogle and this could have existed literally from day one

petterroea•49m ago

Somehow it seems ffmpeg has become the "Can it run crysis" of UX design

spullara•48m ago

I have a little script that I use on the CLI to do this kind of stuff (calls an LLM to figure out how to do CLI stuff) but you can just as easily now use any of the coding agents.

pdyc•34m ago

interesting approach, i solved similar problem by creating visual tool to generate ffmpeg commands but its not the same(it cant do conversion etc.)

I like that you took no AI approach, i am looking for something like this i.e. understanding intent and generating command without using AI but so far regex based approaches have proved to be inadequate. I also tried indexing keywords and creating index of keywords with similar meaning that improved the situation a bit but without something heavy like bert its always a subpar experience.

Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

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Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

Comments

Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English

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