Vidding

Ashley Blewer, an archivist specializing in moving images and a software developer, created a website, "ffmprovisr", to make it easier for you to use the program ffmpeg.

FFmpeg is a powerful tool for manipulating audiovisual files. Unfortunately, it also has a steep learning curve, especially for users unfamiliar with a command line interface. This app helps users through the command generation process so that more people can reap the benefits of FFmpeg.

Each button displays helpful information about how to perform a wide variety of tasks using FFmpeg. To use this site, click on the task you would like to perform. A new window will open up with a sample command and a description of how that command works. You can copy this command and understand how the command works with a breakdown of each of the flags.

FFmpeg is a free, open source tool that works on the command line and lets you do stuff like:

• Change codecs (transcode)
  
• Change formats
  
• Filter stuff
  
• Create GIFs and thumbnails
  
• Normalize/equalize audio
  
• Read/extract captions
  
• Make test patterns
  
• Fix audio that's fallen out of sync
  
• Join or split files
  
• Play an image sequence

I have used FFmpeg recipes in the past and it's great how much it can do, especially in combination with youtube-dl which makes it easy to download video from a ton of sites -- YouTube, SoundCloud, Vimeo, and many others. I hope other vidders find ffmprovisr helpful in their work!