FFmpeg Studio 518

All of FFmpeg's useful jobs — convert, compress, resize, trim, extract audio, make GIFs — as a batch tool with named profiles. Point it at a folder, pick a profile, press start. No command line, no install.

_{🐧 Linux? The AppImage is on the Releases page.}

What it does

• Convert & compress — MP4 / MKV / WebM / MOV / AVI with H.264, H.265, VP9 or AV1. Pick quality (CRF), a fixed bitrate, or a 2-pass target file size
• Uses your GPU by default — "Auto" picks NVENC when the card supports it and falls back to the CPU when it doesn't. On jobs where nothing needs to touch actual pixels (timelapse), the decode stays on the card too, which measured 1.86× faster end to end. Target-size mode deliberately stays on the CPU, since only it can do a real two-pass
• Share without re-encoding — the H.264 web-safe codec stream-copies anything that already plays on Discord and in browsers, and only converts what doesn't (RGB 4:4:4, HEVC, 10-bit, AC-3 audio). Add a Max size ceiling that caps quality mode without inflating short clips
• RGB 4:4:4 mastering (libx264rgb) for copies that keep full colour detail — CRF 0 for mathematically lossless
• Resize · FPS · rotate — 4K/1080p/720p/480p, percent or custom (never upscales), frame-rate change, rotate & flip
• Audio — extract MP3/M4A/Opus/FLAC/WAV, strip it, normalize loudness, or fold stereo down to mono with an equal L+R mix (fixes VRChat POV recordings where the music swings between your ears)
• Multi-track audio — OBS and ShadowPlay keep game, mic and voice chat as separate tracks, and most players only play the first. Keep all of them, pick specific ones by number, or mix the chosen ones into a single track. The Audio section lists what tracks the selected file actually has
• Timelapse — say how long the result should be and it works out the speed-up per file, so a 2-minute clip and a 2-hour one both land on the length you asked for. Works for GIFs too
• Trim & clips — cut a time range, palette-based GIFs, WebP, thumbnails
• Profiles — save a whole setup under a name and reload it in one click; rename, export and import them as JSON to share. Eighteen ship with the app, and hovering any of them explains what it's for and what it will do. Edit a shipped one and a ≠ defaults notice appears — the ↺ on its row in the list restores it
• Collapsible sections — every settings group folds down to its title bar, and loading a profile opens only the groups it actually uses, so you see at a glance what a profile touches
• Subfolders — process a whole tree at once, mirrored into the output folder, with the output folder itself always skipped
• Command preview — a plain-words summary spells out what will happen ("Cut from 2:00 to 5:00 — keeps 3:00 · Video: copied untouched") next to the exact ffmpeg command, along with a note whenever a setting had to be adjusted to make sense

Quick start

1. Hit the big Download for Windows button above — a single file, nothing to install
2. Pick an INPUT folder (or drag one onto the window). An OUTPUT folder is suggested for you
3. Choose a profile, tick the files you want, press START

No FFmpeg on the PC? The app offers a one-click download on first start and keeps it to itself — nothing else on the system is touched.

Windows SmartScreen will complain about the unsigned exe — More info → Run anyway.

Good to know

• Settings and profiles live in %APPDATA%\FFmpegStudio518
• A downloaded FFmpeg goes to %LOCALAPPDATA%\FFmpegStudio518\bin. To use your own instead, drop ffmpeg.exe next to the app, or point at it with ⚙ → Set FFmpeg location
• Originals are never modified — results always go to the output folder, and existing files get (1) rather than being overwritten unless you turn that on in ⚙
• Two themes, Neon and Midnight, in the ⚙ menu
• Times are written the way a video player shows them: 1:30 is a minute and a half, 1:02:03 is hours:minutes:seconds, and a bare number is seconds (90). Units work too — 90s, 2m30s, 1h30m. Whatever you type, the line under the box tells you how it was read

From source

git clone https://github.com/Blise518B/FFmpegStudio518
cd FFmpegStudio518
start.bat        # sets up .venv and launches

Python 3.10+. build.bat builds the exe. python -m unittest discover -s tests runs the suite (184 tests, including integration tests that drive real ffmpeg encodes when it's installed).

License

MIT

FFmpeg is a separate project by the FFmpeg developers (ffmpeg.org); the Windows builds it offers to download come from gyan.dev.

_{Built with the help of AI.}