Still, I find the syntax it uses horrible:
ffmpeg -an -ss 12 -t 3 -i bigbuckbunny.mov -vf 'crop=iw-1, drawvg=file=progress.vgs, format=yuv420p' -c:v libvpx-vp9 output.webm
My poor, feeble brain, though, has a hard time deducing all of this. Yes, I can kind of know what it does to some extent ... start at 12 seconds right? during 3 seconds ... apply the specified filter in the specified format, use libvpx-vp9 as the video codec ... but the above example is somewhat simple. There are total monsters in actual use when it comes to the filter subsystem in ffmpeg. Avisynth was fairly easy on my brain; ffmpeg does not, and nobody among the ffmpeg dev team seems to think that complicated uses are an issue. I even wrote a small ruby script that expands shortcut options as above, into the corresponding long names, simply because the long names are a bit easier to remember. Even that fails when it comes to complex filters used.
It's a shame because ffmpeg is otherwise really great.
For what it's worth, LLMs are a great tool for both composing and understanding ffmpeg commands.
And if you want something more verbose / easier to read you can use something like https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python (with LLMs) as well
My main use case is modifying youtube videos of tech tutorials where the speaker overlays a video of themselves in a corner of the video. I'm sure some viewers like having a visible talking head shown on the same screen as the code but I find the constant motion of someone's lips moving and eyes blinking in my peripheral vision extremely distracting. Our vision is very tuned into paying attention to faces so the brain constantly fighting that urge so it can concentrate on the code.
If the overlay was a rectangle, you can use the older drawbox filter and didn't need drawvg. However, some content creaters use circles and that's where drawvg works better. Instead of creating separate .vgs file, I just use the inline syntax like this:
ffmpeg -i input.webm -filter_complex "[0:v]drawvg='circle 3388 1670 400 setcolor black fill'[v2];[0:a]atempo=1.5[a2]" -map "[v2]" -map "[a2]" output.mp4
[1] https://git.ffmpeg.org/gitweb/ffmpeg.git/commit/016d767c8e9d...
torginus•1h ago
ErroneousBosh•1h ago
I got various bits and pieces together and experimented with doing things like driving Big Trak gearboxes (remember? J Bull Electrical used to advertise them in every magazine, along with all sorts of fascinating old shite) with an interface plugged into my ZX Spectrum, but I never actually built one.
Funnily enough I was thinking about that the other day, and how sad it is that schools like my son's primary school just have very locked-down iPads for the children to use instead of the BBC Micros we grew up with (I'm guessing you're more approximately my age than primary school age, and those things were in schools well into the early 2000s. Bombproof.) that could be endlessly tinkered with.
Anyway the guy next door does a lot of 3D printing and it's never been easier to draw PCBs and get them made or even etch them at home (it's the drilling bit I hate). So maybe now EBv2.0 is five, it's time to dig out that issue of HE and start transcribing stuff into Kicad and Blender :-)
severak_cz•55m ago