- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
Honey, I Shrunk The Vids is an overengineered oversimplified system-agnostic frontend for FFMPEG. Built with assistance from Claude, but donāt let that stop you reading - Iāll explain why.
Predendum 6/MAR/26: Yes, Iām using genAI - specifically Claude - to help me build and improve this application. But, I believe Iām using genAI differently than the majority of projects. For one thing, Iām not blindly copy-pasting output and crossing my fingers that it works. I read the output, looking for things I know are wrong, and try to fix it; if I canāt, I ask what Iām doing wrong, and then I fix it. When I encounter errors, Iām reading the error output and if I know how to fix it I do it myself. Iām trying to actually learn, but I do that best by diving in and fixing the mistakes I make. I test informally* on the hardware I have available, which is two Windows PCs, and sometimes my friend with a 2016 Mac will do a test run for me to confirm stuff works. (*by āinformallyā, I mean I donāt write test cases. I know how, but theyāre repetitive and I hate them and Iām not doing it for my personal projects or Iāll end up hating my hobbies.)
My goal in posting my projects is not to have other people audit my code for me, nor do I want kudos or approbation (except for any jokes you see. Those are all me). Iām posting what Iāve got when Iāve got it largely working, in case other people find it useful, and thatās it. I do hope that if people see something I could refactor or conventions I should be adhering to, theyāll drop me a (civil) note about it so I can keep it mind. I appreciate feedback and advice, but Iām not expecting it.
Thanks for reading, I hope you find HISTV useful!
This is a followup to a post I made yesterday, about a silly little Windows application Iād 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). Itās got a dark theme because of course and a light theme because I guess, also itās themeable because why the hell not. Iām pretty pleased with how itās 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
Iām on a high horse? Youāre the one riding in here yelling at me for not conforming to your arbitrary rules I didnāt know about, and defending someone who did nothing but insult me.
No, I donāt 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 didnāt agree to your rules, and I donāt owe you anything, so take you imperious commands somewhere else, thank you very much.
See, this is something I can actually work with. Iām 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 thereās one just for audio data when previous probes already get that. A useful observation that resulted in an improvement. Thank you.
First of all, Iām 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 š¤¦ Next: Your thresholds are your responsibility, I didnāt know about them when I built this and I didnāt build it for you, Iām sharing it and you happened to stop by. I appreciate your observations on issues to watch out for when Iām using genAI code, I will be keeping an eye out for duplicated loops and other issues in future projects.
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.
deleted by creator
I really need to stick to my rule of taking a day to think before I respond.
So hereās the thing, I understand why people would want me to label my posts as AI-assisted. Iām sure there are a lot of people who just ask the AI to build them a thing, slap it all together, and throw it up on the internet as a finished project, and itād be exhausting to be looking at the 95th slopbucket of a codebase and realise youāve been bamboozled again by genAI.
Iām explicitly trying to not be that guy, so hereās what Iām doing. Iāve added a preamble to the post disclaiming this project is AI-assisted, and why I think itās fair to say Iām doing it differently than most. Iāll add something like that to my other post now, and Iāll include clean it up to include a shorter boilerplate version in future posts. Itās the internet, nobody knows me, so itās only fair to introduce myself!
If you have any advice or feedback to contribute, Iād genuinely appreciate it - itās just easier for me to take on board if I donāt have to fight through emotional dysregulation to read it.