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histv - Honey, I Shrunk The Vids

An overengineered PowerShell frontend for FFMPEG

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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.

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

Yeah, 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 😅

Does Handbrake not work on Windows?

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

It does—portable app too.

What makes this better than Handbrake?

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.

Yep. I didn’t scope out and build that one though.

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 😅

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.

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.

Oh! Apologies, I want 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.

Lol cheers bru, appreciate the solidarity 🙌

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!

Windows is a dead end at this point. Start planning your escape to Linux before the cage door starts closing

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.

This is pure delusion.

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.

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.

You are delusional, take yourself to the infirmary.

Hi. Looks very nifty. What license is this under? GPL?

Also a suggestion: it might be worth putting the screenshots you have here inside your README.md so people can see what they are getting.

Thanks! Absolutely, I’ll add those screenshots to the original repo tomorrow. In the meantime, you may wish to check out the update thread I just posted: https://github.com/obelisk-complex/histv-universal

I think the new version looks even better, and it’s cross-platform now!

Ngl, it all reads as ffmpreg now. I had to look at it like four times before it didn’t look like ffmpreg

Honey, I impregnated the vids

I’m not trying to convince you of anything. Succinctly:

• You like Windows - there are caveats to using Windows
• You like Linux - there are caveats to using Linux
• You like Mac - there are caveats to using Mac

None of them are a complete solution for me, and for a lot of people actually. So, until the day when I have one OS that does everything I want it to do, I am forced to use all three of the major OS. I realize that goes against the grain of the anti-Windows coalition, but that is reality.

You think Windows is a dead end? The OS that is the overwhelming market leader in the category?