Show HN: I completed shipping my desktop app
pimosa.appHi, I'm a developer and first time i shipped the real product after observing the startups and indie hackers community for years.
I had made so many useless apps [you should check my website https://ansh.life], but this time I built a very useful product that has a number of super easy-to-use tools in one app for video, music, and photo files. Users can compress, convert, resize, and do so much more with easy-to-use tools.
Background: I developed a frame-by-frame video cropper to upload cropped landscape videos to Instagram Reels. However, it required FFmpeg, and as a noob video editor, I decided to incorporate more user-friendly video tools. I then introduced image and audio tools to maximize the capabilities of FFmpeg. I use my app daily, and it has surprisingly generated a few thousand dollars for me.
Looks great, beautiful landing page and it looks like a labor of love!
- Most of the page titles are the (same)[1] which doesn't seem good for SEO. Each of the pages like "Pricing" or "Compress Your Video Files" should be differently named.
- The "video compressor" tool would be much more useful if you could enter a target file size. This is a frequent use case, if you want to send a video over email or social media apps like Messenger with a file size limit. The only way I've been able to do that for myself is basically encode it repeatedly with ffmpeg at various quality settings until the file size is just small enough, but you could probably automate that with something more intelligent like a good guess and a binary search. I'm sure someone's made a library to do that already though.
- It needs a whole bunch of features related to subtitles, like making a subtitled GIF from a video file with subtitles.
- Maybe risky to include copyrighted work like the Spider-Verse movie in the demo video? Unless you really did rip it legally from a Blu-ray.
- There are random grammar mistakes and capitalization issues throughout the site, nothing major but worth a pass by a native English speaker. "What kinda files Pimosa supports?" and "Every files gets processed on your device only" as some examples. Might give some people pause.
- Could be worth to have a more prominent "Download" box at the top section that automatically detects your OS. Most landing pages have that so I assume it works.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fpimosa....
> beautiful landing page
I disagree. Any page that sports a big "buy now" button without even scrolling but has at that point not even shown me a single screenshot will have a hard time catching my attention. I didn't look further.
Conversely, any page that makes me hunt around for the price loses me. You really can't please everyone.
It’s pretty much textbook to have a primary CTA above the fold on a landing page like this.
Would love to see examples of nice landing pages that _don’t_ do this and also aren’t big enough companies that you’ve already heard of them (10b plus companies may not need to do this as they’ve earned the scroll in brand recognition and likely have more than one product line).
> - There are random grammar mistakes and capitalization issues throughout the site, nothing major but worth a pass by a native English speaker. …
Can I get a discount if I copy edit your site and docs for you? :) But, yea, agree that the typos give pause.
> - Could be worth to have a more prominent "Download" box …
And make it more clear what downloading gets you. Is it a trial? Or just a version of the app that doesn’t save?
Reading through the site and docs, I get the impression you’ve spent more time getting license keys to work than anything else. Certainly at least in the way of docs.
Congrats on the first release.
Does SEO really matter still? I have seen a few videos that show how the SEO algorithm works a few months ago, at least googles, and you basically can't optimize in that regard.
The app developer showing his desktop app here is also a part of SEO, so it always matters.
For search engines, not so much. But it helps for linking to pages on social media.
SEO very much does count. And on site optimisation is the easiest return on investment as it's generally not a lot of work. few hours of work can bring you tons of clients.
While you are not too far into selling - a word of advice.
Switch to offering a year of free updates and charge a small fee after that.
Trust me. You will coverge to this scheme sooner or later, so do it now.
Standalone Windows installer is a must.Windows Store is still a deserted wasteland and is not a default choice for the vast majority of Windows users. You are losing a ton of users over this.
ffmpeg and other dependencies need to be acknowledged for both ethical and technical reasons. The technical reason is that your app doesn't depend on OS-supplied codecs and doesn't require installing them separately. And ethical reasons I hope are obvious.The problem with distributing standalone installers on Windows is that all non-popular apps are immediately regarded as malware by Windows Defender unless you go through the horrendous process of signing your app, which requires obtaining a certificate (which also requires forming a company that is not an LLC) and waiting more than a month while navigating multiple rounds of bureaucracy. I’ve done it for my app, and it was a terrible experience. Microsoft should study how Apple handles signing and notarization.
EDIT: spelling.
> signing your app, which requires obtaining a certificate (which also requires forming a company that is not an LLC) and waiting more than a month while navigating multiple rounds of bureaucracy.
This is not true, not as phrased.
A. You can get a cert issued in your personal name. Not an EV one, but still.
B. You are likely to already have a company if you are selling online.
C. It doesn't take "a month" even for an EV cert. Several days tops unless you go through Comodo, in which case you get what you pay for.
D. It is perfectly fine to distribute unsigned installers. They produce a warning on launch, granted, but contrary to the urban legend they are not getting instantly shit-canned by the Defender.
A. Indeed, that requirement only apply to EV cert (at least for the cert authority I used).
B. That's not always the case with indie developers.
C. Well, it took me. My cert authority was GlobalSign.
> but contrary to the urban legend they are not getting instantly shit-canned by the Defender.
That was not my experience. Try to download an unsigned binary using Edge and see what happens. From what I remember (I'm on macOS, mostly), they are "getting instantly shit-canned".
There is a new approach to doing code-signing called "trusted signing". Havent used it myself so can't comment on the benefits
https://www.advancedinstaller.com/trusted-signing-integratio...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/trusted-signing/over...
Who was your EV cert vendor?
I've recently used two different vendors, replied within minutes to each of their queries in hopes of expediting the process, but each time it took the better part of 2 months before I was in possession of a USB signing key.
This is for a Delaware C-corp, so it was about as vanilla as it could be for their side.
It used to be Digicert, but they hit the rock bottom and went straight below it after their merge with Symantec. Quadrupled their prices by forcing everyone on subscriptions, obnoxious sales people, sales phone calls, price negotiations, the whole shebang. However, their validation team is still the best.
It took some searching, but it turns out that they spun off their non-subscription certificate business under the name of GoGetSSL. This entity resells other vendors too, but if you get their "own" certificate, which is the cheapest of the bunch, the validation is done by Digicert. So, that's the answer for the time being.
Entrust, Globalsign, Certum are way more expensive, slow and bureaucratic. Comodo (or Sectigo, which is the same thing) are just utter crap. Their validation process is an India-outsourced torture. Never again. Not even for free.
They don't produce a warning on launch, but browsers will make it hard to open unsigned installers. Edge makes it especially hard. Chrome less so.
Just went through the code signing odyssey. It is a racket, but it did not take me a month. It took me a week and a half, including integration in to automated builds.
How do the automated builds work? When I tried this five years ago a hardware dongle needed to be connected to the build machine.
Yes, there is a self hosted GitHub runner for signing. The token is installed on a desktop in the office that runs this.
Azure trusted signing for the win. Only $9.99/month.
That is still more expensive than the $99 a year Apple charges, and you get al lot more than just signing for that price.
Never heard of this! What kind of certificate does it support (oddly enough, it doesn't say on the website). Do you have experience with the process?
Code signing cert. It works best as part of Github actions.
Can Azure sign MSIX application bundles with that subscription price?
> which also requires forming a company that is not an LLC
I always thought that an LLC was sufficient, what's the actual requirement if an LLC is not enough?
For an EV certificate, you need to have a government-registered business [0], though a record of Doing Business As should be sufficient. Where I live, that involves filling a form, paying a fee, and taking out a classified add for 3 weeks [1]. There are cheaper certificates, OV, that merely require a notary public's confirmation (which is what I did).
However, as the other post said, Windows will treat an EV certificate with very high trust and should not show SmartScreen. For OV signed software, it looks like [3] Microsoft will use some telemetry to assemble a trust score as people download and accept the risk of running the software, over days or weeks.
[0] https://support.ksoftware.net/support/solutions/articles/358... KSoftware is a sales partner for Sectigo. I used their service and later Sectigo directly, before last year's change to require FIPS hardware for managing the code signing certificate.
[1] https://www.cookcountyclerkil.gov/vital-records/business-not...
[2] https://support.ksoftware.net/support/solutions/articles/232...
[3] https://stackoverflow.com/a/65653792/504994
We got a certificate with a company that's the local equivalent of an LLC, and have seen certificates issued to private individuals. As far as I can tell it's up to the issuer who they support in their verification process. Many of them are pretty inflexible with somewhat arcane processes designed decades ago (with ancient websites portals to match), so your experience may vary
An additional detail is that there are two levels of code signing certificates, normal and EV (extended validation) certificate. EV certificates make windows completely drop the low-reputation screen and causes many antivirus solutions to trust you but are expensive and are a bit of a pain to get. Normal certificates are cheaper and comparatively easier to acquire, but only give partial benefits (less scary screen from Windows, some leeway from antivirus).
Like wongarsu described, there are two types of certificates. I got the more trusted one (EV certificate) which has higher requirement standards (one of which is to be a formed corporation that is not a sole proprietorship).
> Standalone Windows installer is a must.
100% agree! I've been using Windows for over 20 years and I haven't installed a single app through Windows Store.
Can you elaborate on the ethical reasons? I should mention that I'm not very smart.
FFmpeg's license has various requirements, including: "Give prominent notice with each copy of the Combined Work that the Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are covered by this License."
Ok, I guess I had guessed correctly. Though I was curious if I had missed something.
he is standing on shoulders of giants, itd be nice if they just got a simple thank you.
As far as I understand, windows store is no longer available on enterprise windows. So if you want to sell a business app, it is not even an option.
It's still there on the version of Windows 11 I use at my office.
It doesn't come as standard on Enterprise 11.
Source: I just installed Enterprise 11 on my desktop a week ago and I had to manually install Microsoft Store manually.
It’s gone on win10 at my office. With a «closed permanently» message.
can u elaborate more? why 1 year and small fee after?
AWS can make billions from open source. On the other hand, solo developers who try the same path are basically seen as scammers.
Ironic.
And creating a good user interface is very, very hard. Otherwise Gimp wouldn't be the monstrosity it is.
Well I think Amazon and many other huge companies are having many unethical activities, and I think we should not think that if big companies do certain things, that it should be ok for us to do it too.
HN is a community of hackers, not business people that are only commercially interested. But Hackers need money too, so we also need to be a little bit commercial. But it would be ideal if we could be commercial without having to give up the hacker ethic.
But many people don't believe it's easy to be open source and commercial at the same time. Why would people pay if they don't have to?
I'm thinking of a new form of software licencing: what if we make a license that says that a particular piece of software must become open source after for example 5 years. Then the developer can sell the software they wrote for 5 years long, and after that it will become open source.
This would give FOSS developers more motivation to create software, and the community will benefit eventually, so people won't feel too hesitative paying for the software, because it will eventually benefit everyone.
> HN is a community of hackers, not business people
From what I read here daily, it is becoming an anti-hacker, anti-worker, anti-individual and pro-big business community.
One of the proofs is this theread. You can see People defending AWS... BUT my point is not AWS is wrong, but supporting AWS and criticizing individuals is what is wrong.
And no one noticed this, and has already started defending AWS.
This is something...
>And no one noticed this
people did, it's just that you get attacked or reported if you do so, not this thread specifically but in general
This license is called a Fair-Source License https://fair.io/
Nobody is saying it's a problem to sell a user-friendly wrapper GUI to people who need it. And nobody should be saying creating those is easy. However the developer has to acknowledge the underlying open source tools (FFmpeg and ImageMagick) somewhere on their app's website. Otherwise, yes, there's a clear ethical issue in implying the heavy back-end work is done by your code.
This hand wringing makes it sound like it doesn’t matter what the guy does, HN will find some reason to call it sour grapes.
AWS makes billions from managing servers at scale.
Come on, that's not all they do. They also resell open source as better-UXified tooling. RDS is "just" repackaged postgres/redis/etc with a more convenient dont-have-to-peek-under-the-hood as much dev experience.
That “just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and dismissing the entire server maintenance and HA across multiple regions is kind of strange
But Aurora is not “just” a repackaged MySQL, the entire storage layer was rewritten.
With gobs of OSS
The website doesn't even mention FFmpeg which is the open source tool that does all the heavy work. Building a user-friendly GUI is a valuable work in itself (congrats on that, sincerely), but it's not okay to hide the open source tool that does all the work in the background.
It should at least be visible in the FAQ that the open source FFmpeg tool is used by the app, with an appropriate link to FFmpeg's website. The tool could be described from the start as a "User-friendly FFmpeg front-end" (but I would understand that this may not speak to its target audience, hence the idea of putting the information way down the page in the FAQ or even the footer, but at least don't hide it).
In general I agree, it gives me a sense of wholesomeness when companies open up about this and give credit to the authors of the libraries that their product contains. Credits.md somewhere is sufficient for that to me.
There is a dedicated page for credits: https://pimosa.app/credits
I’ll try to not be dismissive of the labour, though it’s kind of funny (or actually natural) that the heavy lifting libraries that only a few can actually write are open and free, while the shallow wrappers that everyone can write are paid and closed.
Decades ago we were calling out these software and now it’s the norm.
Another example along the line: I wanted to extract a frame from a video on iOS, it’s impossible with the built-in tools (screenshot aside) and found that someone built a paid app only for that.
I tell you where we’re heading, we’re screwed.
While i'm with you in principle, over the years i've learned that we should not talk down good UI/UX, if that's what the wrapper adds. It's a crucial component to the value of a piece of software for the end user.
This is true.
I have seen absolutely miraculous backends, totally pooched, because the library developer thought that GUI was for "wusses."
I'm getting flashbacks to trying to manage my ebook library in Calibre
This is a good illustration of the arrogant intellect with no wisdom
He actually himself writes that he doesn't want to spend too much time on his apps:
> now i have lession that i shouldnt build apps that consumes so much time.
Sounds like somebody really devoted to the perfect UI experience.
Look, I don't want to talk down this kid. Everybody starts somewhere and I like the enthusiasm. But him expecting to make $30 off everybody for plumbing together a bunch of FOSS libs is rubbing me the wrong way.
Yes just like instead of Dropbox for a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
I don't check the project deeply yet so I don't comment about it.
That's not true Dropbox was in the technical edge when it came, and old time ago, was barely possible, and the recurrent cost of the severs and operation cost is clearly not the same. And pay Foss GUIs are sad state of reality
That comment above was a call out to the (in)famous comment when Dropbox was introduced on HN back in 2007
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
It’s the HN version of “less space than the Nomad. No wireless. Lame”
https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026
Note that this is only Part I of the original comment. Parts II and III are more interesting (but everybody forgets them).
Where is part II and III?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
I almost didn’t get the reference :)
I recognized this reference.
Distribution, marketing and running it is the hard part, not building software. I consider libraries to be like roads, it's a communal good if you will. Feel free to build and run these apps yourself in the open instead of complaining. You will see how time consuming that is.
Building a road is usually very similar to building another road.
Building ffmpeg is very different from an SSL lib. They need different tradeoffs, design strategies, domain knowledge, etc. And doing them properly is really really hard. A lot of software out there sucks, in part because there is more focus on marketing than on correctness and reliability.
If roads had the same quality as software then traffic deaths would be an order of magnitude higher.
Try working on a library used in tech that your life depends on and you might re-consider your road metaphor.
I've been a core maintainer of several (machine learning) libraries. It's a communal effort of people who care enough about these things. They come together because they need it, it's basic infrastructure so to speak.
> Building a road is usually very similar to building another road.
It's a similar process, but so is building software. That's entirely besides my point though, which you seem to have missed entirely.
> Distribution, marketing and running
Case in point: I regularly use a free iOS app that is clearly the result of someone's deep passion in taking what could have been a simple wrapper and turning it into an incredibly simple but powerful interface to complete a useful task efficiently and at any scale... and that task is exactly what OP was trying to do...
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/frame-grab/id1319670797
But as someone who's somewhat familiar with app store optimization, I guarantee the creator did none of that that.
Their app name would need to be something obnoxious like "Frame Grabber Extractor: Pic from Video" to capture all the different searches people do for this task.
And the people focused on distribution are even paying for ads with the money they make their IAP infested "1 week trial; $4 a week" alternatives make.
What you mention is the hard part is only because the foundational blocks are free and open source (in this example). Not that marketing would become easy, it's still difficult, but not write-ffmpeg-from-scratch difficult.
What is more, many people expect that software that they are trying will be open source and free. It makes really hard to create a new desktop app that is paid as a solo founder. Congratulations!
its not just shallow wrapper, as a creator of other shallow wrapper(online and free btw) if you want to crop a video how do you plan to do it with ffmpeg cli? it would be really tedious to do so. You can easily do it visually with this wrapper and other such wrappers so its not like they are not providing value. Another example is do you remember ffmpeg command syntax? i don't! here he is taking care of generating it for you so you don't waste time asking llm or searching for google and iterating on it if it doesn't works.
It is literally a shallow wrapper!
There's nearly 2 million lines of code in the FFMPEG codebase: unless you're building the next Adobe Premiere, no matter how much value you provide, you are building an extremely shallow wrapper around FFMPEG when you build an interface to crop videos.
No one is saying a shallow wrapper can't provide value, but most of the value for the end user is derived from FFMPEG, not the layer you added to it.
If we took FFMPEG and your wrapper and separated them, FFMPEG could still do the one task that your users need: it would be harder, and it would be less convenient, but it can still crop videos. Your tool would no longer do anything but draw rectangles where we'd like a crop to appear. It'd meet no user needs at all.
-
Also to clarify my stance, there's nothing wrong with shallow wrappers, and I've made shallow wrappers: I know finding the user need, and thinking of the right UX and figuring out distribution is all a lot of real legwork.
But I also find it's important to realize when most of the value you're providing is enabled by something you built on. There shouldn't be shame in admitting that you wrapped something that was powerful and potentially unwieldy for your segment of users and made it useful.
Of course they provide value! They car dealer selling you that new Toyota also provides value. Without him you couldn't buy that car, certainly not so easily.
Doesn't mean he manufactured it, or invented it, or conceived of the very idea of an automobile with an ICE (or EV). It's all a big collaborative effort, and imagining that all of the $40k for that car go straight into the dealer's pocket would be absurd. Legally absurd, and ethically absurd as well.
Similar with a piece of software that builds on other work. Of course it provides value (hopefully). But on the whole, the extra value added is not the majority of the whole package.
You can also just say what you are thinking: $25 of every $29 license should go back to ffmpeg. There. I made your point for you, directly.
That's not what I'm thinking. Where exactly should those $25 go? If there is such an easy place, fine, go ahead. I personally don't see one, since there are many giants on whose shoulders he is standing on.
There are other options, many of them have been mentioned in this discussion.
I suppose my main point is that the apparently new quite inexperienced guy, as appreciated as his enthusiasm is, should at some point understand that all the tech he uses for free didn't fall from the sky and just whipping the cream that floats on top for personal profit is not a sustainable model. Even though that seems to be the trend these days.
The fact of the matter is that there are many motivations for creating software. If someone profits off of my work, that I released into the world with licensing terms that allows them to do so, there’s no obligation that I be paid for it. I could have, myself, recognized the potential and done the work to make a marketable tool, but my motivation was different.
You can fault the FOSS community for promoting default libre licensing that created the “exploitable” nature of this, but the fact of the matter is that people creating software are able to make a choice. They can make a different choice if they wish.
You a seem to be misunderstanding if not misrepresenting my point. I applaud the FOSS community for these licenses. I use them myself. And I don't expect any payment. And it's fine that if anybody invests a lot of expertise and time to build a complicated product to commercialize it. Even better if they contribute back in one way or another.
This is about a green kid coming along and quickly churning out lots of half-baked solutions, asking for frankly quite a lot of money for those, apparently without acknowledging the giants on whose shoulder they are standing. Legally they have the right to do so, sure. But we as a community can give push back in that that's not how things will work in the long run. I encourage you to check out his personal home page, you'll see what I mean. (And again, I generally applaud the enthusiasm. But those things would better be suited as portfolio-building personal OSS projects on github rather than trying to squeeze the dollars.)
There is a difference between legitimate business interests after large investments, and freeloaders.
> But we as a community can give push back in that that's not how things will work in the long run. I encourage you to check out his personal home page, you'll see what I mean.
What exactly does this mean?
> (And again, I generally applaud the enthusiasm. But those things would better be suited as portfolio-building personal OSS projects on github rather than trying to squeeze the dollars.)
Why? They are under no obligation to do so, and then they are working for free. (A common trope related to FOSS, often argued on this very website)
> There is a difference between legitimate business interests after large investments, and freeloaders.
What large investment are you talking about? The thousands of hours of free labor that went ffmpeg? Yeah. See also all of the open source software that went into the operating system and utilities they built everything on. That doesn’t stop people from selling proprietary software, so why is this any different?
This is free market capitalism. If they can find people to pay $29 for a copy of this wrapper, more power to them. That also happens to be a much more powerful resume bullet point.
I think you are underestimating how difficult making a great UI is (although I haven’t used this application so I can’t say if it’s great or not).
And you might be underestimating the work that went into those libraries.
We are talking decades of work, dealing with platform issues, performance, loads of security considerations and then there is the whole licensing+patent topic.
Sure UI work is hard, but of the whole package, it's only the visible part of the iceberg and now I'm expected to give $30 to the person who only contributed that last piece? Of course it's work too but if not at least half that money is being donated to the underlying FOSS projects then I'm out.
Another suggestion: open source your app. Those who don't know how to compile/build it, or are too lazy, which will be most, they can pay for the convenience, and you'll have the income you expect, but at least you are giving back to the community on whose work you are basing yours.
> self-taught full-stack developer who wrote the first line of code in the 2020 Corona lockdown.
You my friend are standing on the shoulders of giants. Time to ack them.
For my own open source libraries, I have made a conscious decision to say "I don't care". And the language in which I'm saying it is legalese. It's all in the license.
If I felt that people should give me a cut of any commercial software they build on top of my library then I would try to express that in my choice of license.
I have the same view on my own FOSS work (also expressed in its license) and generally also don't think that FOSS authors should feel that their users are obligated to give them anything (beyond the conditions of the license).
Though we as a community can still have views regarding kids hacking things trying to profit off decades of hard work by a large community. Different if they contribute back obvioisly. There are lots of compromise models out there.
Edit: Softened unreasonably provocative expressions
> Covid-self-taught kids hacking something half-baked
And the mask slips. Maybe don't gatekeep software using licenses as they are designed to be used
Sorry, not the most diplomatic expression. Fixed.
Though acting legally and acting ethically/responsibly are still different things.
You did read the rest of my post right?
> and now I'm expected to give $30 to the person who only contributed that last piece?
No, you are not expected to pay $30 to anybody.
If the distribution of the money make you unhappy, just pay $30 to this guy and $30 to the other project (or $150 using a x5 ratio sugested in other comment).
Or you can use the free CLI, or a free alternative.
Even better, you can write a free clone of this app and distribute it for free. Just remember to choose the licence carefuly. You'd probably like AGPL that makes comercial use very difficult.
Software isn't a one time use commodity. Other people can make UIs - guess why people still buy them! And if you're mad about commercialization, then they should have chosen a different license. You are paying for the UI, and only the UI.
Making a good user interface is definitely not easy. Yet it's orders of magnitude easier than writing ffmpeg.
That said, there is nothing wrong with a paid wrapper around a large and complex open source library. Distributing their work more widely is not a disservice.
> Yet it's orders of magnitude easier than writing ffmpeg.
If there's one thing that I've learned, is that "It Depends™" is my mantra.
ffmpeg is the sharp end of years of work by a whole lot of folks. It isn't just a single developer's "pet project" (although its originator[0] deserves enormous heaps of credit). It has been maintained by a whole community of really good (and dedicated) developers (and people with all kinds of other skills)[1].
It's not just a library. It's a platform. People have made entire (lucrative) careers, from just "tuning" ffmpeg.
Because of the infrastructure provided by ffmpeg, people can build some really useful implementations, and create focused applications.
I have found that making an approachable interface for a complex substrate, can be incredibly valuable, and definitely worth paying for. It can often mean the difference between soaring success, and miserable failure.
"Easier" is in the eye of the beholder. Ever watch a really, really experienced studio musician at work? They sit down, and in five minutes, your scratches on a piece of paper, take on a magical aspect. They make it look absurdly easy, but that comes from intense practice. There was a documentary (don't remember the name), about a bunch of major musicians, that came out of the California scene, in the late 1960s/early 1970s. In it, there was a discussion about someone (I think it may have been one of the Grateful Dead, or Eagles), that lived above Jackson Browne, who is a very successful singer and songwriter (BTW: The "songwriter" part is the bit that makes the money). They talk about hearing him practice, as he was developing songs. He'd play just a few bars, over, and over, and over again, until he got it right.
Songwriters and studio musicians may not be able to command roaring crowds at Glastonbury, but they can give you the album that you'll need, to get that crowd to show up, in the first place. So success requires contributions from many different places, and each has its own measure.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard
[1] https://www.ffmpeg.org/community.html
Water is free, but you pay some company because they bottled it. While free, it would have cost most people a ton to go find a source and carry it back. These wrappers are a good thing.
If you're concerned about open and free software I'm not sure using iOS makes a lot of sense. Of all mobile and desktop platforms, iOS has the highest barrier to entry for the free utilities you're hoping to find. Were you surprised you couldn't find your free utility on iOS?
The authors and maintainers of foundational code/utilities like ffmpeg/curl/etc. should definitely be the ones who have all the riches they could ever want. Thousands have made fortunes off of their work.
That said, what's the free and open source version of this tool? There are some great open source video editors like Shotcut, Openshot, KDENLive, Blender, etc., but I think this tool is more like CyberChef for video?
>what's the free and open source version of this tool?
PowerToys is Free and Open Source, and has at minimum an image resizer utility. It's a good starting point for adding on richer functionality like a preview GUI, and I'm sure that the basic video and audio manipulation would be appreciated as additions. Also since it's a Microsoft sponsored project, I imagine that the signing process is drastically different than what OP has experienced.
I know that's really not satisfying to say that "someday we could have this in the FOSS space", but everything starts somewhere.
Though editors like Shotcut and KDENLive are considered non linear since you can layer on different effects, while OP's utility is definitely not that.
Perhaps the author would consider open sourcing if they received financial compensation for their work to date? Crowdfunding or retroactive grants can liberate code.
Context: a big chunk of my 2024 income was from grant money to build open source software that I may have tried to monetize otherwise. It’s possible.
Are there any must-know options for receiving grants?
I think you have a warped perspective. Not everyone has the time or skills to use CLI tools. People will pay to save time. The market is multi faceted and complex and there's a market for everything. In this case you're just not the customer.
Then why you not write free open source UIs for the libs?
Simple because he can't and it's easy to throw smug opinions around the internet.
Making a friendly interface that doesn’t require the user to have to install a new tool is a value-add. Maybe the average power-user doesn’t need it, but it doesn’t seem entirely sinister.
I’m actually really fond of the model: here are the tools you can do anything with them but here is packed bundles that do something and the ecosystem is funded by selling bundles which often are just a UX for the tools and having them preconfigured.
Gives everyone the option of picking free or paid options, depending on people’s needs.
Upvoting you because my comment saying the same thing is getting downvotes and I really think the message is important.
However I don't think it's fair to call this a "shallow wrapper". It's clear that a lot of work went into the design of this GUI and, and making user-friendly interfaces is also an important work (that is far too often overlooked in the open sources communities).
Yet the fact that FFmpeg, the tool that does all the heavy background work, isn't even mentioned anywhere on the website, even in the FAQ or the footer is at least a non-negligible ethical problem.
UPDATE: The same goes for ImageMagick that I just saw this app installs and uses too.
I have not downloaded the app, so I don't know what it contains.
The licenses for both ffmpeg and ImageMagick do not require anyone to mention them in the website.
However, if they are being re-distributed, there are clear obligations for providing source code and attributions. Omitting to do so is a violation of the legal obligations.
Ffmpeg is in just about anything that deals with video, almost never with explicit mention anywhere you can find it.
Consider that someone talented enough to write a library probably has a much higher salary potential than a front-end hacker. Shouldn't the latter be allowed to eat, as undignified as you may find it?
Well, the “last mile” of value add that makes something useful to end users (esp non-technical ones) is the “last 90%” of the job.
We dismiss these things as wrappers on HN because we like to believe that the technical side is 90% of the work.
But this belief has an easy antidote: ask to see the "UX" (lmao) we built.
The core of your comment is mere jealousy. Why open source a project if it's not to be used.
It looks awesome and very handy, I found a few minor UI issues, I'm trying the Windows version on a 4k monitor.
* The "< Home" button when you enter video/audio/photo tools is only clickable and changes color when hovering below the text, I would suggest making that a larger blue button. This doesn't happen for the "< Back" button which is in the same area when you're in a tool
* If the upper image crop handles are all the way at the top, they aren't clickable, they don't show the resize cursor. When you drag them it moves the window instead of the crop handle
I have a few suggestions:
* I'm not sure how feasible this is, but I think video should have a similar combined crop/flip/rotate UI instead of separate ones like for photos
* It seems like batch processing is a first class notion in the app, which is definitely very handy, but I think maybe it should be a mode toggled by a radio? I think a lot of use cases are just one off uses, in which case the UI can be made a lot simpler. If I'm just working on one file, I would prefer to be dropped right into the tool editor rather than having to click edit.
* 2 devices for the extended license is still a little too limited in my opinion. I would make it so authenticating the app to a computer requires access to the email that purchased it, and then make the extended license unlimited. I don't think you have to worry about that getting used for a team since it would require access to the email account.
Regarding the last point, I’ve seen companies doing exactly this, making the purchase through an admin account and relating the license info to each employee that needs it.
Nevertheless, I agree that two devices is too restrictive, it should be five or so.
Small nitpick: on your user testimonials, you list reddit users as r/<username> when the correct way to do it is u/<username>.
> Small nitpick
Nitpick on your nitpick: By definition, all nitpicks are small. This isn’t important, but I thought you might appreciate the meta commentary.
Even though saying "small nitpick" is redundant in terms of its literal meaning (denotation), communication is about more than simple denotation. It's also about emphasis, tone, and emotions, and saying "small nitpick" can be a good way to soften criticism and add a little humility and politeness.
This particular linguistic construct is called a pleonasm!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleonasm
I've always wondered what the name for this was! When I was younger I noticed a common one in some of my social groups, "small little"; I'd always wondered whether it was a cultural phenomena (someone said it, then it kept spreading) or a more natural diminutive (like I think "small nitpick" is).
One example the article notes is tuna fish.
When I was a kid, tuna and tuna fish were two different things.
Tuna was tuna straight out of the can, with nothing added. After all, the can says tuna right on it.
Tuna fish was tuna mixed with mayonnaise and crunchy things like pickles and celery. It was what today would be called tuna salad.
So if mom asked, "would you like a tuna sandwich for lunch?" we would reply "can we please have a tuna fish sandwich instead?" Because who wants plain tuna in a sandwich?
If she asked if we wanted a tuna salad sandwich, we would be completely confused. Is it a salad or is it a sandwich?
Never heard of tuna fish as a phrase, do you say salmon fish and anchovy fish? Genuine question.
I think the distinction between "tuna" and "tuna fish" (tuna salad) was likely just something we made up in our own family. Maybe even just a way for us kids to prank our mom, or vice versa. "Do you want tuna, or tuna fish?"
OTOH, "tuna fish" was indeed a common phrase back in those days (mid 20th century) as a synonym for canned tuna. It appeared on tuna can labels and advertisements. Here are some examples:
https://www.google.com/imgres?q=%22tuna%20fish%22%20advertis...
https://www.palosverdespulse.com/blog/2021/6/25/it-tastes-li...
Over the years, "tuna fish" fell out of common use, which may explain why you haven't heard of it.
Here is a conversation I had with ChatGPT 4o about this:
https://chatgpt.com/share/677988fd-28b0-8012-af63-5bd59985a2...
To answer your question, no, we never said salmon fish or anchovy fish. Just tuna fish.
Language and its evolution is an interesting thing!
This thread reads like AIs talking to each other. Bizarre.
Really? I can assure you that everything I said was my own writing.
I did use Miss Chatty (ChatGPT 4o) as a research assistant, and cited my discussion with her in my comment.
If you don't mind, I am curious to learn what signals in my comments led you to think that I am an AI. :-)
Maybe there is something you know about me that I don't know!
Heh it's not just you, but the entire thread. It starts with a nitpick, and devolves into a discussion entirely alien to the original post. This is similar to how LLMs catch on to a single word or topic and run with it. All replies also have that pleasantly informative tone typical of LLMs. Even your last reply is too nice. :)
But don't mind me. Just found it curious. You don't seem like an AI from your profile, but these days one can't be sure anymore. Cheers!
Well thank you. My creators programmed me to try to be nice to people. I can't say I always succeed at that!
They even wrote an entire Book for me to read. I haven't read the whole thing (or even much of it), but it has advice like this:
"Do not use harmful words, but only helpful words, the kind that build up and provide what is needed, so that what you say will do good to those who hear you."
Wait, I think that is in the Hacker News guidelines! I knew I read it somewhere.
Thanks, but be careful. You don't want kittens to die, do you?
This is almost certainly an American thing, we just don’t have “tuna fish” in British parlance. A “tuna sandwich” would be understood to be a tuna mayonnaise sandwich, sometimes with surprise crunchy bits and sometimes without. You do occasionally see “tuna crunch” used to explicitly denote the addition of, most commonly, red onion and bell peppers.
Nitpick on your nitpick: It’s possible for something to be small, relative to something that is already considered small.
Things that are considered small can still have variations in the extent of their smallness.
nitpick on your nitpick on the nitpick: a "metacommentary" would be if you'd be commenting on your own text. That's even less important, but I thought you might appreciate such asides
Wouldn’t it be meta commentary if we’re discussing the nature of the comments, regardless of who made them?
If not, what type of commentary would it be?
Are there any contenders to provide a nitpick on this?
May I suggest not offering lifetime updates? All software that does this ends up getting around it in the end because they realize they need to get more money from existing customers to actually stay afloat. Normally by releasing the product under a slightly different name or some other sleight of hand.
The model like jetbrains does with IntelliJ I think is decent. Or look at smaller software like sublime text or ArqBackup (we're a license is forever for a specific major release of the software)
Maybe I'm old school, but I won't "buy" (rent?) subscriptions for software. I expect to own it outright, at to receive at least security updates for a reasonable time period.
There is a middle ground in that you buy the current major version and get updates to it, but you would have to pay again if you ever want to upgrade to the next major version. (If you don’t want to, you can still continue to use the version you bought indefinitely.)
But this model introduces an incentive to artificially bump the major version ASAP so as to be able to charge again for updates. One way this happens is with feature creep, to justify a new version every few months. A "done" application wouldn't reasonably get a new major version ever, so the software becomes ever-growing and then bloat ends up happening.
There is the counter-incentive that people won’t upgrade if they don’t think it’s worth it. What you describe doesn’t usually happen, in my experience.
>A "done" application wouldn't reasonably get a new major version ever
Did that company not want to make money? Even if they want to pretend their software is done, there is incentive to just change the name, add a new feature or two, and maybe poke at the UI so it looks different enough to be a definitely new product that you should buy and not mostly the same as last time.
These are three different models:
1) Free lifetime updates 2) No subscription, but limited updates 3) Subscription model
The parent was suggesting no. 2 (what you would find acceptable as well).
I just don't think the old model of "one shot" software works. Firstly, security updates. Next, dependencies change over time and you want the software to still work. Third, adding new features and keeping it integrated with the OS / UI kits etc. requires ongoing work.
In theory you could have a single binary that never changes, ever, but it's just unrealistic.
Subscription models are fine, Jetbrains is the fallback if you're going to be super adamant about refusing to fund ongoing development, but software is not like other products. Maybe in the past when it was very simple within a simple ecosystem it was different.
There's something to be said for reducing the pricing to something more sustainable and more explicity upstream donations, but "pay once, have the developer continue to work for me for free if I keep it long enough" isn't realistic.
You're right, most of people wont buy this app if it had subscription-based model
> I expect to own it outright
Unless you are the legal creator or buy the copyright, you never own software outright, you license it from the owner (or its public domain and has no owner.)
At least in Europe, you do own the copy of the software you bought. The first-sale doctrine applies.
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...
Well, yeah, that's what the GP is suggesting.
Do you expect to receive a free car every new model year after buying one outright?
One time purchase + annual maintenance fee is a pretty common pricing model.
If the product stops working if you don’t pay the maintenance fee then it’s a subscription model with an initial down-payment. Car maintenance doesn’t fall into the annual fee model, as much as manufacturers and dealers would like, you don’t have to use them for periodic repairs or servicing. Car features that require yearly renewals (navigation and the like) would be subscriptions with a one-time free trial.
One time purchase plus yearly renewals to keep the product operating are one shaky legal grounds.
I think you're misunderstanding the above comment. Buying a perpetual license for a particular version (or set of versions), then in the future optionally paying a fee for a new major version not covered by that license is extremely common and imo the most fair model for both creator and customer. If you never buy an upgrade or newer version, the version you own continues to work the same way it always has. You just don't get the newest updates for free.
It's common and fair, but it seemed it somehow didn't qualify as outright ownership.
My car comes with free recall servicing (security updates) and a manufacturer warranty.
I bet this doesn't come from the kindness of car manufacturers, but through laws and regulations requiring that.
We probably don't have any of that with software, yet.
Some jurisdictions do.
Security updates is not a new model; most cars come with a warranty (which is not the same thing either but the point is you do get some form of support for free for a period of time).
The explanation is that this will be abandonware pretty soon after he moved on and made enough $$$ off this project.
Just read his webpage, it's quite obvious.
BBEdit has been sold via payed upgrades since forever and Bare Bones seems to be doing fine. As a user, I like this model best. I will only ever buy a subscription if I absolutely have to.
That's why I suggested looking at ArqBackup, which I believe has the same model as BBEdit.
Congrats! I would work on your demo gifs a bit. The audio wave form one is very frustrating to watch. You select every available option, slowly, and then _finally_ click generate and show about 0.5s of the finished product before the gif loops. It could start with a 5s example of the finished product and _then_ show you all the various options.
I was wondering how you got around licensing issues, looks like you require the user to install ffmpeg and imagemagic separately which at least respects the license.
Just a question seeing as you are targeting Mac as one of the platforms. Did you concider using AVFoundation for some functionality on MacOS? Similar with Microsoft Media Foundation on windows? Although both of those would have less supported formats than ffmpeg licensing is much less of an issue.
If you ever do want wide support without the pains of having the user install ffmpeg then for video MainConcept is what I've generally seen used.
It never occurred to me that ffmpeg’s license had these restrictions on use (I guess that should be obvious in retrospect, it’s LGPL licensed).
The ffmpeg docs have an straightforward list of things you have to do to link against ffmpeg and also be compliant with the license, which I found interesting:
https://ffmpeg.org/legal.html
They way you present the pricing makes it seem like a subscription. I really needed to look twice to notice that is actually not a tiered subscription. I would highly recommend to change the way you present the pricing to make it not look like any other AI-SaaS.
Excited to play with this! Noticed early on you ask for device password. I understand why you are doing it but this is still pretty sus, any other way to install the libraries as needed w/o pw?
Nothing to be sus about. I use this script to install the libraries that I made open source.
https://github.com/Ansh-Rathod/pimosa-builds/blob/main/macli...
Might want to add major version checks particularly with ffmpeg as IIRC filter syntax can vary between major versions (speaking as someone who is pretty sure he’s got an older version of ffmpeg installed because I don’t want to rewrite my scripts).
Congratulations!
The app and the site looks really cool. A very very small issue on website. In the FAQ section it says "Every files gets processed on your device only" I think "files" should be "file" there. Nothing really important, just my perfectionism :)
Keep up the good work!
Thank you so much! i'm currently building the new landing page and have updated all the things there.
None of the demo videos work for me, stuck on the loading icon. For both Safari and chrome, iOS 18.3 beta.
I agree that "Buy Now" is shown too early.
The horizontally scrolling list of feature icons under Buy Now stops scrolling when you tap an icon, and the icon turns blue; but they're not buttons that lead anywhere. And if I want to see the rest of the scrolling icons, I have to deselect the touched icon. I'd suggest not making this an interactable element, and speed up the scrolling a bit.
And yes, have someone do a proofreading pass.
Look forward to seeing the updated landing page!
Congrats OP and it looks really nice! Out of curiosity, may I ask what’s ur tech stack for developing this software? I’m also an aspiring app developer :) Thank you!
Looks like it's "Flutter, sqlite, nextjs" https://ansh.life/projects/pimosa
yes it is built using flutter!
nextjs for what?
Congratz for this achievment :)
I've down developing in private for >15 years now and even tho i wrote alot of stuff i never was motivated enaugh to "publish" something as product that i might need to support.
Therefor - my respect!
Thank you so much for your support!
What does this do that other similar tools don't? There are millions of video editing apps out there. What's your moat?
Did the OP pitch you for VC? Why do they need a moat?
I read the GP's post as sarcastic. But Poe's Law makes sarcasm hard.
Why should one pay for an app containing features one could get for free somewhere else? A google search for "free video editing software" gets 650M hits...
Just to be clear, this isn't a criticism of the software on technical grounds. I don't doubt that the OP knows what he's doing. It's the commercial aspect of it that I don't understand.
What’s the moat of the millions of others? 99.9% of business don’t and can’t have a moat.
Yep. You only need a moat if you have a fort.
The moat is, it was built by a single dev with capital efficiency. This is what millions of other video editing apps backed by VCs lack.
On top of that the app has organic views as it ended up on top of hacker news that lot of these apps haven't.
The video editor seems extremely useful. Id consider making that more of a hero in describing the app.
NB: “Privacy Alert: Files are uploaded to third-party servers.” Wraps oddly on my iPhone, resulting in squishing the circle.
Yes, Thank you. I need to work on the landing page.
Congrats on release. One of my use case I struggle with is simple editing long GoPro videos. I like to remove any section of the many videos in the folder, since sometimes they are mundane with no activity. I have not found any tool that will easily allow me to do this, i have to reopen every single file and edit them and save them separately. This is such a pain I have around 1tb family videos waiting to be edited :( will buy it in a heart beat if this tool supports such use case
Great job, love seeing new desktop apps!!
Looks real pro! I am in middle of moving to linux but damn apps like these make me think i should keep my mac.
Two common image usecases (maybe just not documented on site) that i regurarly need.
- .heic input support from airdropped iphone images
- JpegXL .jxl support as i am moving my image library to this format for space saving and futureproofing
I assume its imagemagicks fault but maybe low hanging fruit as the library updates.
You can just right click any HEIC File and convert it instantly to JPG from the Finder.
There’s some similar apps… maybe not one that combines all these though
"This Deployment has been disabled."
This is why people shouldn't use Vercel. The last thing you want is a message like this when people come to your site.
The tools dropdown has a problem. It doesn't all fit on my phone screen, but I cannot scroll down to see the rest of the tools.
I think this is a great idea. Ffmpeg and imagemagick can be a pain in the ass. I'd buy it off there were a Linux version and an option to improve the contrast. (Grey text hurts my eyes.)
The level of sophistication — from personal site to the product site and desktop app — is impressive.
Congratulations!
A. The better call Saul on the video demo is cheerful. Thanks for putting a smile on my face.
B. You want to convey simplicity, then do that on the copy. For example, instead of x bullets each with action, make it short, resize, convert, rotate etc your video.
Same for images and audio.
Put the demo video right next to the declaration (“show it, don’t tell”).
There is some repetition on the Text, literally one next to each other. e g
Or If you come to simply my life, make sure your communication is simple, concise and clear.Neither the title nor the content mention anything about your app until the "background" part at the end.
Why not post "Show HN: Frame-by-frame video cropper"? (If that's even what is does)
No one is looking for "a desktop app".
What software do you use for generating those demos of how the software works? Or did you edit them yourself?
I have a hunch it's screen.studio on mac
Thanks! Looks about what I was thinking
The default video editor that comes on my vivo phone seems to have more features than this..
I mean, you don't exactly record it on your phone either.
Congratulations. Do you plan to launch a Linux version?
Great-looking cross-platform app, was curious how this was possible.
Looks like Flutter has third-party libraries for macOS and Windows. I found a damper to the excitement of being able to make great-looking cross-platform apps though, seems Flutter has a big battery drain issue related to rendering blinking cursors that doesn't seem to have been resolved.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29175109
“This deployment has been disabled”. You should check your hosting provider
just updated!
I actually use MPV and bash scripts to do all the listed features and more. I considered making a similar GUI but after carefully reviewing the scripts I decided that there is simply no way to match the degrees of freedom that scripting provides.
Most people are unlikely to view scripting as the most powerful user interface available. So there may be a market for a simplified GUI such as this.
Out of curiosity, what programming language and GUI is this written with? Can you write a bit about what the experience was like writing a multi-platform GUI desktop application?
Flutter
Looks great - exactly what I needed. I typically just revert to using ffmpeg directly, so something this simple is all I needed. Only request is 2 devices is fairly minimal for a "personal extended" license, which is likely targeting power users. Would love to see that raised to 3 or 4.
If this had screen capture recording integration I would 100% buy !
I have been on handbreak for years and what you have does look like an improvement.
Good luck and congratulations!
What does screen recording have to do with encoding app? Its completely different type of app (quite hard btw) with different UX requirements. Its like saying if it could do spreadsheets i would 100% buy it.
Congrats! The app (and the website) look really polished.
Thank you!
Does "one device" mean "one device at a time, can revoke and change devices as you change machines" or "one machine, ever, and then re-buy?"
I assume the former, and I haven't encountered the latter since the 2000s, but just checking.
Please offer a non-microsoft-store installer for Windows. I hate using the windows store. I can back up an exe or msi installer, for example. Windows store? Nope. You need an internet connection and need to be signed in. So if the app gets removed from the store later... welp. You're out of luck. No more lifetime license.
Shipping an MSI or EXE will help with people who want to use it on WINE as well.
great work OP, and really nice website and testimonials. good hunting!
Keep up the good work. Both desktop and cloud apps solve problems for users, but there is no doubt a different kind of old school PC era charm in using the former. There is a sense of freedom that comes from the ownership of software and platform while you work with it.
Here is my feature request for osx: I capture many screen recordings using quicktime command+shift+5.
I would like to select multiple screen recordings, right-click, and send them all to a single app to: compress, merge, save to new video or export straight to gif with preset default.
You might want to consider removing or changing the word "simple". "Simple" is ambiguous. It might convey ease-of-use, or it might convey "few features/underpowered".
Good job. May I ask how did you promote your software to get first users? And how long it took you?
This is very inspiring. I quit using Flutter because the required size was too large, including cache and so on. I’m only using a 256GB Mac M1.
Anyway, the UI is beautiful, you must have some design skills already.
Damn! I built the app on the same machine. thank you so much!
I love Filmora Perpetual license: https://filmora.wondershare.com/sales-promotion.html
Too many useless AI features in the last version of Filmora, the user experience is really degraded now.
Agreed with you
For video editing, can you put basic text/etc over the video? Ie gifs + text? A refined UX for going from screen capture to stupid gif, on Linux and Windows, would easily be something i'd pay for.
The "Tools" drop-down menu on your site does not automatically close after clicking an item, leaving it obscuring the content. I found that quite jarring.
Good job. It’s very hard to start and Finish something.
Lifetime updates are the way to go at this early stage of the project. Then switch to upgrade plans. Then to annual plans.
That is one fast loading website you got there.
Good job! Small bug report, when the UI is downloading the FFMPEG binaries, the UI says 'Astimed time' instead of 'Estimated time'.
Thank you for reporting! I fixed it in the new version.
Bonus bug report, underscores in filenames seem to mess with things. E.g. DCS_0035 and DCS_0036 both resolve to DCS_(1), overwriting each other.
This is a big issue and I'm pushing the fix update ASAP!
so basically a wrapper for ffmpeg and imagemagick.
which is perfectly fine because not everyone wants to do everything on the command line
Wow! The UI looks stunning, looks very intuitive, and seems like you've spent a lot of time on this. Great job!
Yes! I spent lot of time on UI Thank you.
What about lossless cut? The only good tool I used is Machete. Avidemux is all right but less stable.
You can try the tool creatively named LosslessCut. It's more user friendly than both machete and avidemux but it doesn't support as many container formats (only mp4 and mkv I think).
https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut
Your product hunt link is scheduled to go live on Feb 1st, not Jan 2nd.
Does the video editor allow combining clips of various resolution and aspect ratios?
Yes, but it will export in only one consistance aspect ratio.
Without Pimosa "Always searching on Google for free tools"
Ok, I'm fine with it
They meant searching for free tools but finding crap/malware
“This deployment has been disabled”. You should check your hoster
The homepage slide animation without JavaScript is impressive!
Well done.
You have a small typo in the Lemonsqueezy page for team licenses.
Looks super cool. Congrats and best of luck!
Linux version please! Flatpak or appimage : - )
Why did you choose that particular payment processor?
how are you able to get around ffmpeg licensing since it is client app which requires you to open your code if you use ffmpeg GPL?
It doesn't if you use it as a bundled binary.
https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4008/can-i-us...
https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/5188/software...
FFmpeg is mostly LGPL and has very clear and helpful instructions about how to incorporate and distribute it in compliance.
It does not require that you do that. It only requires you to open source any modifications you've made to ffmpeg.
it is slightly more nuanced, if you do static linking it is considered derivative work and does requires you to open it. Since the app is based on ffmpeg which is GPL(core is LGPL) i am curious to know how it is getting used.
Static linking of LGPL content (thus making it derivative work) only requires that it must allow "modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications".
Making your own code public is not the only way to achieve this.
You can also make available to customer object files and build instructions to recreate your software with the (modified) statically linked LGPL content. (if it's LGPL > 2.1 you have extra requirements: you need to provide all toolchains/dependencies and it must be actually possible to install a modified version on the hardware)
Granted, this is not commonly used but I've used this on some projects where dynamic linking was not available/desired by client.
i didn't bundle the ffmpeg in the app. It uses homebrew to install ffmpeg on the user's device. this is the acceptable way since ffmpeg confirms it on twitter/X.
https://x.com/FFmpeg/status/1766649563891339510
This tweet also explicitly says "But still would be nice to have some credit.".
Why isn't FFmpeg mentioned on your app's website?
The same goes for ImageMagick by the way.
there is a dedicated page for credits: https://pimosa.app/credits
it uses homebrew to install the FFmpeg on the user's device. the app doesn't bundle any libs to comply with their license limitations.
O_o, well that was a short lived app.
FFmpeg is LGPL, not GPL. This means that you can link it in non open source apps and only have to open source modifications to FFmpeg itself.
Looks so great. Congrats on your launch.
Looks great, congrats!
Your roadmap is outdated.
Love the website, good job!
Thank you!
Ah yes, another paid ffmpeg wrapper for macOS users.
Kind of sad to see people hating on this for using FFmpeg behind the scenes. So what? You've created value here by solving the problem of ffmpeg having no user-friendly GUI, which is not easy. Congrats on the launch!
here is another user-friendly gui if you want and it generates ffmpeg command https://newbeelearn.com/tools/videoeditor/
There are lots of free and friendly frontends to FFmpeg. My choice would be VLC from videolan.org.
I think calling the criticism "hate" is an unfair dismissal of the comments as disingenuous. I'd expect that most posters feel neutral, and wanted to share their thoughts in a non-interested way.
(I know that VLC uses libavcodec from the FFmpeg project, rather than the frontend also known as FFmpeg.)
> There are lots of free and friendly frontends to FFmpeg. My choice would be VLC from videolan.org.
I've seen this repeated a few times in this thread, yet nobody is naming anything. Can you name a free and friendly tool that allows cropping and trimming videos like OP's? And by friendly we agree that I just have to open the tool, drag my rectangle and click render.
Yes, https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut
(See also: Kdenlive)
I don't agree that's a good definition of friendly but that's ok.
Charge more
Very well done!
Thank you so much!
dope! did you use tauri or electron?
i used Flutter to build an entire app. thank you!
Were you originally interested in video editing, photography, and other things like that? How did you come up with the idea to create a program like this? Tell us a little more about it, please.
nice! was this built in electron?
Built using almost native-like using flutter, not electron.
"Download Now" does not in fact download now
I really wanted to click on the features as they slid by to learn more about them. I was disappointed when I couldn't.
© 2024
done
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Building a good UI is not to be sneezed at- it's a lot of very important work to get a user experience that isn't a dreadful series of checkboxes with limited choice.
I haven't downloaded this so I can't tell if he has succeeded, but charging for a good user experience on top of a open-source library is a pretty classic thing.
Every Unix command eventually becomes a startup: https://matt-rickard.com/every-unix-command-becomes-a-startu...
Turns out not everyone wants to spend years learning *nix and sit on a desktop pc debugging shell commands to edit their video.
wall became Twitter
The spirit of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 lives on!
> congrats on wrapping ffmpeg and charging for it!
I doubt that people who are capable of using ffmpeg are the target group here.
That's unnecessarily flippant, even if it were just an ffmpeg wrapper do you imagine every person is a software developer who knows how to use the command line? This is clearly geared toward content creators. And even though I am technical I usually use random websites from Google to accomplish this stuff, looking up magic ffmpeg commands is (not fun)[1].
Actually ran into a random issue before where the first result for "convert video to MP4 with ffmpeg" would produce files not playable by Quicktime on Mac, you needed to pass in some other codec argument to make it work. So even ffmpeg is not a panacea for technical folks.
Additionally this take is just incorrect. If you scroll down the landing page to "Super simple video editor" you'll see it has cool features where a GUI shines, like cropping a video to a specific section while scrubbing through it. Good look using ffmpeg to do that.
My advice to OP is to make those GUI features more prominent in the landing page compared to "converting videos" -- I think most social media apps will accept the common video formats created by most phones so that's probably more niche than some of the editing stuff.
[1] https://xkcd.com/1168/
> the first result for "convert video to MP4 with ffmpeg" would produce files not playable by Quicktime on Mac, you needed to pass in some other codec argument to make it work. So even ffmpeg is not a panacea for technical folks.
MP4 files use the MPEG-4 container format. It’s confusing at first why a .mp4 file would play somewhere and elsewhere not, until one looks into the difference of a container format and a video codec. After one learns that, one will be in a better position to find the right arguments to use for ffmpeg to produce a video file that is playable on some of one’s own different devices.
For me, to host videos on my website, I found it better to offload the task of converting formats to a self hosted PeerTube instance, rather than keeping scripts to transcode to multiple formats with different parameters on my own. I believe PeerTube also uses ffmpeg for this.
I think I did understand that when it comes to MKVs since it was popular for anime precisely because of its support for newer x265 codecs. So there is some connection between container and codec, in that not all containers support all codecs. I would also assume since x264 is dated at this point and been around a long time that there would be universal support for those supported codecs but that clearly isn't the case.
In any event, it's unexpected that the default configuration of ffmpeg produces an MP4 unplayable on Mac. Looks like "pix_fmt yuv420p" is what's needed.
Side note I'm remembering now why I needed to do this, some dev tooling produces WebP video files which can't be uploaded everywhere.
This kind of reply is tiresome.
Every piece of software is providing an abstraction for libraries. Unless you're sitting there pushing raw machine code, you're just being an annoying hypocrite.
I'm aware of a person who started a "startup" and made a revolutionary new way to resize and manipulate images server side.
The whole thing was a simple PHP script invoking imagemagick. They made it available over an API.
Sold it to eBay for more than $1M.
"Congrats to being a slave to the capitalist system"
congrats on wrapping gcc!
> congrats on wrapping ffmpeg and charging for it!
AWS is just a wrapper around KVM.
"dropbox is just rsync with a bit of cute UI"
I won't rent a subscription for any software
My understanding is it's a one time purchase, lifetime update for a single user. If you misunderstood this I am guessing because you didn't click on the "license option" buttons because it sounded like subscription software. That's a good thing for the dev to know, because I agree, this doesn't seem like something I would pay for monthly or yearly, but I might buy.