Honey, I Shrunk The Vids is an overengineered oversimplified system-agnostic frontend for FFMPEG.
This is a followup to a post I made yesterday, about a silly little Windows application I’d made for batch transcoding files. I wanted something that I could just dump my files onto without having to muck about with Handbrake or Tdarr - post here, for those curious: https://piefed.ca/c/selfhosted/p/568748/honey-i-shrunk-the-vids-a-windows-transcoding-frontend-for-ffmpeg
So I spent today making my silly little Windows application a silly little platform-agnostic application. I rewrote the whole thing in Rust and JavaScript with a webview frontend, and apparently Github lets you compile binaries for quite the range of target platforms, so I have compiled binaries available for Windows, Linux, and Mac (Intel/Apple Silicon). It’s got a dark theme because of course and a light theme because I guess, also it’s themeable because why the hell not. I’m pretty pleased with how it’s coming along - if anyone decides to give it a go, please let me know if you find issues!
screenshots
Compiled binaries can be downloaded at https://github.com/obelisk-complex/histv-universal/releases
Cool, I just tend to run one liners or little shell scripts but nice to see more of this stuff appearing.
Worth considering the backend too imo, as I imagine I’m not the only one here trying to leverage the most out of potatoes with not a lot of storage.
On my little n100 boxen for example having a building ffmpeg for the cpu/igpu to use hardware decoding gives ~5x the encode speed for a slightly larger filesize for hevc.
Missing the ”made using AI, barely tested” disclaimer I see…
Yes, I used Claude to help me build this, but it’s not “barely tested”. The major features all work, and they didn’t at first; I hunted down bugs, caught (some of) the mistakes the AI made, and manually applied fixes so I could be sure I understood what went wrong and why. This was first and foremost a learning experience for me. And I’m actively using this thing to batch transcode my media right now, because my learning experience has resulted in something that works.
If you find issues, by all means let me know and I’ll do my best to fix them. If you’re just here to be a jerk, I’m not interested.
No one is being a jerk here, stop being defensive.
What fixes did you apply. That’s what we want to know. It’s not a trick question.
- Did you use unit tests?
- Did you check the logic flow so that if I run this code x 10,000 on a ton of media, it isn’t using terribly inefficient settings that will make my 40h workload take two weeks?
- how are you deploying this thing?
If you want to present your project, be prepared to explain it. That is completely above board for us to ask.
No one is being a jerk here
Really? Literally the only thing they said was
Missing the ”made using AI, barely tested” disclaimer I see…
They didn’t ask a question. They just came out swinging, for no reason. You asked three questions, and I’m not going to call you a jerk for it. But just coming in here and making snide remarks? Absolutely being a jerk.
Now, your questions.
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No, I didn’t use unit tests. I built this for my own personal use, and tested it on my system and my wife’s with files in a variety of containers encoded at a variety of bitrates with a variety of codecs - random crap we had laying around our hard drives, from the internet, from Steam and OBS records, from our phone cameras. This isn’t commercial software, I’m not asking for donations, and I made the license The Unlicense because I don’t want money or credit for it. I shared it because I got it working and I thought other people might find it useful too. I’m not going to exhaustively test it like I’m taking subscriptions, I hate testing. When I come across an issue, I fix it, and that’s the best I’m offering.
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It’s FFMPEG in the backend, and it processes files sequentially. It encodes whatever you put in to HEVC MKV, or H264 MP4. You can set the QP settings for the quality you want. Explain where you expect inefficiency and how I can fix it, and I will.
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I’m pushing from a local repo to my Github where it runs a job to compile the binaries for each platform, and to Codeberg where it’s not doing that (so I only have the compiled binaries at GitHub right now).
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What fixes did I apply? Many. Some examples would be not successfully detecting available hardware, showing all available encoders rather than only the ones that would work with available hardware, failing to build (so many build failures), window sizing issues, options not showing, hanging on starting a job because the ffmpeg command was getting mangled, failing to find ffmpeg, unable to add files, unable to probe files, packet counting not working so “best guess” settings would result in larger files than the originals, that sort of thing.
And incidentally, the fact that this is a personal project I shared in case someone might find it useful is another reason that coming in here and throwing shade is a shitty thing to do. This isn’t Stack Overflow. If it’s no use to you, move on. If you have constructive criticism, let’s hear it. If you can do it better, go ahead. But why try to make me feel bad about it, because you don’t like the way I built it? I used spaces instead of tabs too, go get the fucking pitchforks.
Again, get off your high horse.
They just came out swinging, for no reason.
You already know how most self-hosted folks feel about vibe coding, or you wouldn’t have taken immediate offence to the initial comment (which ia valid, btw. You did not mark the project as vibe-coded or ai-assisted.) MARK YOUR PROJECT AS AI-ASSISTED.
Explain where you expect inefficiency and how I can fix it, and I will.
I’m looking to replace my cron-timed ffmpeg bash and ash scripts for encoding. Three of the four projects I looked at have double- and triple-work loops for work that should be done once. This seems to be a theme in vibe-coded projects.
And incidentally, the fact that this is a personal project I shared in case someone might find it useful is another reason that coming in here and throwing shade is a shitty thing to do.
Once again, I’m interested in the project, but I have my own thresholds of quality and security. If you can’t handle questions about your project, personal or not, then maybe don’t share it.
But why try to make me feel bad about it, because you don’t like the way I built it?
Sir/Madam, your feeling are your responsibility, not mine. I did not utter any pejoratives your way. Grow up.
Again, get off your high horse
I’m on a high horse? You’re the one riding in here yelling at me for not conforming to your arbitrary rules I didn’t know about, and defending someone who did nothing but insult me.
You already know how most self-hosted folks feel about vibe coding, or you wouldn’t have taken immediate offence to the initial comment (which ia valid, btw. You did not mark the project as vibe-coded or ai-assisted.) MARK YOUR PROJECT AS AI-ASSISTED.
No, I don’t know any such thing, I took offense to the implication that there was no effort put into this, and the absolute absence of any constructive criticism whatsoever. And again, I didn’t agree to your rules, and I don’t owe you anything, so take you imperious commands somewhere else, thank you very much.
I’m looking to replace my cron-timed ffmpeg bash and ash scripts for encoding. Three of the four projects I looked at have double- and triple-work loops for work that should be done once. This seems to be a theme in vibe-coded projects.
See, this is something I can actually work with. I’m looking for places that unnecessary probes get spawned for example - there are some that are necessary for the way I want this thing to work, but there’s one just for audio data when previous probes already get that. A useful observation that resulted in an improvement. Thank you.
Once again, I’m interested in the project, but I have my own thresholds of quality and security. If you can’t handle questions about your project, personal or not, then maybe don’t share it.
First of all, I’m going to say this very clearly so maybe it gets through: I am not mad about questions. I am mad about insults and a lack of questions. Thank you for your attention to this matter 🤦 Next: Your thresholds are your responsibility, I didn’t know about them when I built this and I didn’t build it for you, I’m sharing it and you happened to stop by. I appreciate your observations on issues to watch out for when I’m using genAI code, I will be keeping an eye out for duplicated loops and other issues in future projects.
Sir/Madam, your feeling are your responsibility, not mine. I did not utter any pejoratives your way. Grow up.
You have issued a few helpful specifics and otherwise roundly shouted at and condescended to me. You have a few things to learn about living in a civil society, based on how you treat strangers who are trying to learn new skills. Grow up.
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This sound awesome and i’d love to try but, your GitHub link delivers a 404.
Also you hosted the original project on Codeberg but this on GitHub. Is it because of GitHubs ability to build binaries for a wide range of systems or because of Codebergs latest availability issues?
Edit: Found the issue and the link you meant thanks to another commenter, fixed!
And, it’s actually also on Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/dorkian_gray/histv-universal
But yes, I did create a GitHub account just because it can build binaries for a wide range of systems; the binaries are currently only available on Github. I’m trying to figure out how to create a release on Codeberg, but if it’s in the Tags, every time I click into one I get a 502 Bad Gateway, soooo… I think it’s safe to say that I have been running into Codeberg’s availability issues, and I’m now glad I’ve got both 😅
The problem is that the . (full stop) at the end of the sentence is also in the hyperlink.
Good catch! Didn’t see til I looked at it on my phone, wasn’t happening on my desktop. Fixed.
It loads fine for me! It seems like it’s just an issue with the commenter’s setup
I was doing a lot of manual re-encoding down from insane source bitrates with FFMPEG
Thank you for your service
I’m starting to run low on space with my media server, this could be a good way to forestall having to buy hard drives that don’t suck!
Transcoding media is great for saving space. My server has but a humble ancient 1TB hard drive (shared with other storage uses). From a DVD (mpeg2), an episode of this one TV show is 1.6-1.8 GB. After transcoding to AV1, it’s 200-400 MB, and I can’t tell the difference in quality. (consider that’s per episode so over an entire series that’s many GB of space saving!)
I use Veronica Explains’ helpful HandBrake guide, she provides some settings for AV1, which work very well for me (I just saved it as a new preset).
https://vkc.sh/handbrake-2025/
And you can do batches of files by opening a directory and adding all. I haven’t tried OP’s tool so I don’t know how it compares to HandBrake, but that works fine for my use case.
This looks promising! My main use case is Jellyfin through Android TV, and it looks like AV1 has support for that. I currently have about 6 Tb of kids cartoons that are eating up most of my media server, would be great to shrink those slightly.
I think before I try this, I’ll want to spring for an offline backup of the library, then begin transcoding… I need one anyway, at least now I’m excited enough to actually do it!
My advice would be to try transcoding one or two media files first, and test the transcode on different devices. HISTV gives a lot fewer options than Handbrake, but the idea is minimal effort, maximal compatibility.
Specifically, AV1 is a newer standard, and not supported on devices older than ~2020 I think. HEVC (aka x265) produces slightly larger files but works on devices back to 2016 or so, and MP4/H.264 gives yet bigger files but compatibility goes back even further.
For video file size the main things you want to set are the target bitrate and, secondarily, the QP numbers: https://www.w3tutorials.net/blog/what-s-the-difference-with-crf-and-qp-in-ffmpeg/#quantization-parameter-qp-definition--how-it-works
For good quality at a reasonable size you can use the default values of 20/22 but to save a little more space you can probably bump these to 24/26. I went with QP instead of CRF because it’s better for streaming (while still giving better perceived quality than a constant bit rate).
As I say, Handbrake is great, does all this and more, but that was my problem with it - the controls look like something out of a space shuttle and I just don’t need all that most of the time 😅 I’d love to hear how you find using HISTV vs Handbrake, if you give it a go! 🙌
Thanks, I’ll remind myself to report back when I dive in! Ordered the backup drive today, so it’s already in motion. Like you I’m pretty laid back about my video editing work. Simple is good. I do edit a clip show for my kid every week these last two years so I’m at least slightly aware of these ideas, if only as a dilettante.
