I redesigned FFmpeg - Open Source Redesigns #1

Open Source Projects are the backbone of modern software development. But many times the website does not represent the importance of the software at all and has not been updated in many years.

In Open Source Redesigns I bring new life to old open source websites, starting with FFMPEG. FFMPEG is an video and audio processing command line tool that is used all around the world in all sorts of different software.

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[evil-cheetah]

Could you provide the source code, if possible, to see how it's done?

[arian]

There is a trend in cold heart open source projects to have a minimum barebone website, this signifies the simple homebrew mindset of the developers. This version looks like it is asking investors money.

[RenderingUser]

I want this to exist in just the about section of ffmpeg. The current ffmpeg webpage is so elegant

[mihailazar]

what people don't get about ffmpeg is that it really has no limit to how many filters you can stack
and when using complex mode, your graph need not be a single linear pipeline, but you can do different operations to different parts and then splice them all together

You can actually also do full alpha-mask compositing of a video on top of another video while mixing the bg audio.
This means that for a small subset of video editing, you could have a video editor which transpiles a user-edited timeline of clips and effects into a single giant ffmpeg command which would run so much faster because ffmpeg actually knows how to operate with streams on a file level. you can add a 10 second intro and outro to a 10h video INSTANTLY
because it can do some voodoo with the files themselves and just splice them together without actually decoding most of the video. Concatenation is O(1) complexity

The current way all video editors work is that they use ffmpeg to split all input videos into what essentially boils down to a folder full of images* . Then they go through the timeline and for each frame stack all of the effects and render the image into an output folder.
Then call ffmpeg again to take all those images and encode them into the user-specified format. This is dumb. Like, really really dumb. With modern hardware that has support for accelerating the decoding of all of these formats, one should reasonably expect that unless you are doing 3D raytracing or anything like that your video should render in about the same amount of time as it takes to watch it. But as I'm sure any of you who have used any video editor ever, from the piece of crap that is kdenlive, to the industry standard adobe premiere, which is still mostly single-core after them having promised multicore support in like the 2010s (even davinci resolve, which has some gpu acceleration cannot simple concat and rescale operations faster than real-time)

with ffmpeg, it is common to encode at 5-8x the real speed of the videos unless you are using some very agressive compression.

ffmpeg is not just a piece of software that makes google 38 billion a year, you as a regular guy can use it, and it's great
save a few commands as scripts and you can now instantly compress that video that is just too big for discord to accept without firing up your entire editor, or using one of those garbage on-line video converters that are full of ads and guess what ? are running ffmpeg themselves too XD


* | (some use more clever buffering methods but essentially they all use images as the operating representation)

[MrSofazocker]

Only objection I have is, whenever I want to download an open source tool and the website doesn't look it its from the 80s I turn around and leave the site bcs I think I fell into a copy-cat site.

[raracool]

This is a pretty good design, but im not sure if the principle suits FFMPEG. Using testimonials and such makes it seem like youre trying to sell FFMPEG to me, not that its a free and crucial tool. I know you highlight that in the video which I appreciate a lot, but i think there should be more focus on contributors, open communication, stuff like that. In this version, especially with the venture capitalist aesthetic (which is not a bad thing!) i have conditioned myself to search for a "pricing" entry in the navigation bar

[eknayeem]

Every modern website has Dark Mode :D

Amazing work btw ❤

[DavidFlanagan-qv]

Great style in the video. I love that you included the command line for how it's used. Minor touch. Great

[enijar]

Excellent redesign, however it's missing dark mode – an absolute must for websites that have a developer audience

[nikkehtine]

For such a "nerdy" open source tool, the official website looks actually very nice and clean

[nikkehtine]

You can make the hero section more useful by making the "convert" section on the right interactive - the ".mp4" and ".avi" buttons can be transformed into menus where you can choose whatever format you want. Hell, even make the "Convert" word a menu and showcase different operations you can perform with ffmpeg.

[kjat]

finally, mpreg is getting more recognition

[hexxt_]

this is so awesome. we really need this

[adventuretuna]

You just tricked me into watching an ffmpeg tutorial

[pipeliner]

That's a great idea for a youtube series!

[thehen]

now you just need to compile it with wasm and embed it into the website

[savire.ergheiz]

You know its good if the dev abandoned being fancy 😂

[oguzhan.yilmaz]

Came for remaking ffmpeg itself stayed for remaking website

[OklmZerTuVasRienFaire]

the thing is what people who use ffmpeg want direct, concise docs, not good looking websites, honestly it doesn't matter at all
great lookings website are for startups

[kipchickensout]

Subtitles automatically turned on and ffmpeg was written different each time xd