this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Honey, I Shrunk The Vids - a Windows transcoding frontend for FFMPEG (codeberg.org)
submitted 12 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) by obelisk_complex@piefed.ca to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

histv - Honey, I Shrunk The Vids

An overengineered PowerShell frontend for FFMPEG

screenshots

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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.

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[–] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] obelisk_complex@piefed.ca 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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).

[–] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] obelisk_complex@piefed.ca 1 points 34 minutes ago

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!

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 24 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Does Handbrake not work on Windows?

[–] obelisk_complex@piefed.ca 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Yep. I didn't scope out and build that one though. Also I didn't get to name it, which in hindsight was obviously a terrible mistake.

[–] dave@feddit.uk 14 points 11 hours ago

It does—portable app too.

[–] CallMeAl@piefed.zip 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

What makes this better than Handbrake?

[–] obelisk_complex@piefed.ca 10 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

This isn't better than Handbrake. It's simpler, though. Also, as I said in another comment, I wanted to see if I could get it to work - it was as much personal challenge as anything.

And I got it working, and I'm proud of my dumb little first project, so I posted about it. There seem to be some people think I shouldn't have done that last bit, though.

[–] CallMeAl@piefed.zip 6 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

To be clear, I'm not trying to discourage you from posting about your project and I think you should always pursue such personal challenges.

I also think it helps others better contextualize your project if you include a bit in your post about your motivation (like in your reply).

To me, it's also very nice to mention alternatives you are aware of and how your project compares to them. "It's doesn't do as much as Handbrake but it's simpler" is a selling point for some people.

[–] obelisk_complex@piefed.ca 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Oh! Apologies, I wasn't directing that at you. I see how it came off that way though; my tone was meant to be self-deprecating. By the last bit I just meant I saw a downvote or two. Could be any reason for those, or none at all.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

There seem to be some people think I shouldn’t have done that last bit, though.

Do your thing man, fuck what they lookin' at.

[–] obelisk_complex@piefed.ca 2 points 5 hours ago

Lol cheers bru, appreciate the solidarity 🙌

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 12 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Seems like a good middle ground for people who don't want to run Tdarr and who don't want to learn longass commands.

[–] obelisk_complex@piefed.ca 9 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

Thanks! Yeah, that's pretty much my exact use case lol. I can't run the transcode on my server for various reasons so I have to do it on my local machine. Dunno if tdarr supports that. Probably should have found out before rolling my own, but I wanted to see if I could do it 😅

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Tdarr can distribute compute to other nodes, so you could set it up on your server and have your workstation do the actual transcoding.

[–] obelisk_complex@piefed.ca 1 points 5 hours ago

TIL, cheers! That's pretty awesome. Now that this is working, I'll probably drop it entirely and move on to learning Tdarr, I'm really curious how the network compute works 😅