UPDATE THREAD (it's prettier, and on Mac and Linux now): https://piefed.ca/c/selfhosted/p/571213/honey-i-shrunk-the-vids-mr-universe-edition-v1-0-5
histv - Honey, I Shrunk The Vids
An overengineered PowerShell frontend for FFMPEG
screenshots
I was doing a lot of manual re-encoding down from insane source bitrates with FFMPEG, and I wondered if I could put it into a nice GUI. Then I wondered if I could make it hardware-agnostic. Then I wondered if I could give it a dark theme... and on and on and on... until finally I had it working how I wanted and I wondered if I could put it into a single executable file.
So all up I spent a little while on this today and I think I finally have something worth shipping. The executable will probably trigger your antivirus because it boostraps the powershell script, and the script will always throw a warning asking if you're sure you want to run it. But it works and it's safe, read the full source and readme in the codeberg if you want to be sure.
I hope this might be helpful for anyone else transcoding videos on Windows! I'd love feedback, but please be gentle, it's my first project like this and I have no idea what I'm actually doing.
It's good in principle, and it's good you're learning to build and control your own software, but Windows is a dead end at this point. Start planning your escape to Linux before the cage door starts closing.
That's exactly what this is part of! HISTV is the fruit of one of my many explorations, and that genesis is part of why I posted this in a selfhosting comm.
As to escaping Windows entirely, thanks to Valve's work on the Proton layer I can feasibly switch to daily driving some flavour of Linux. Soon. I just need to metaphorically get off my ass and trial it out for a few days on a live boot USB to work out any bugbears before making the actual switch (for personal reasons, I'm going to be starting from scratch and setting my environment up right, so it has to go smoothly).
Good luck, although I'd caution you with the general principle of "Don't let perfect become the enemy of good". Sometimes good enough is good enough.
It's not that I need it to be perfect, it's that I need to make sure I can get my environment running for work on Monday 😅 But thanks, I'm excited that it's even a feasible option!
This is pure delusion.
You are delusional, take yourself to the infirmary.
That sounds ominous. What cage door is closing? I mean, you and a majority of people here, would agree with you. But I don't see Windows going away.......at least not in the foreseeable future. In as much as Linux has made some great strides, I don't see it being a Windows replacement for a global population, in the foreseeable future either.
It's being built inch by inch. You won't even know it's there until you realize you can't squeeze through it anymore. The trend is extremely obvious: TPM, Secure boot, Windows Store UWP applications, forced updates without consent, or intentional opt-outs that conveniently get ignored or forgotten when it's convenient for Microsoft to force something. They are intent on taking full control of PCs and locking them down exactly the same way Android phones are locked down, they will follow a few footsteps behind what Android is doing now by preventing third-party apps and app stores, but it's obviously coming, because they are on exactly the same path for exactly the same reasons.
I don't imagine we can save everybody either. But that doesn't mean it's not worth trying. The more they tighten their grip, the more will slip through their fingers, and all I care about is that the rebellion against Windows grows large enough to survive indefinitely, if not thrive.
Didn't down vote you but......in general, people follow trends and Windows has been trending for quite a while. Also, people like convenience and I don't think you will wrest the convenience of Windows out of their hands no matter how much you try to steer them.
I have actively and deliberately chosen not to be the kind of person who just "gives up" anymore so I'm not really sure what it is you're trying to convince me of, but I don't think it's going to change the direction of my efforts. The steering must continue, and even if the ship goes down anyway, it will go down with me still at the helm.
Literally the only thing missing is the fact that developers still go out of their way to support windows. If windows' proliferation taught you anything, it should be that the people will follow the tools, wherever they happen to be.
Of course devs cater to Windows. 1 Billion + user base that are consumers. Why not target the biggest market share? I still use Linux, Mac, and Windows, although the latter is a 'crippled' version.....very heavily modified. Until I can find a Linux version of BlueBeam that matches it feature for feature, then I'll stick with using Windows, But I've never viewed it as a competition. It may seem shocking but I have no real preference other than what it takes to get the job done without handing over all your data. Linux makes that easier, but Windows can be tailored to do pretty much the same. It just takes a lot more work.