March 13, 2026
Press F for ffmpeg fights
Show HN: fftool – A Terminal UI for FFmpeg – Shows Command Before It Runs
FFmpeg helper wins fans — but “no source?” and Linux-only stir the pot
TLDR: A new terminal helper for FFmpeg shows the full command before running, aiming to teach and simplify video and audio tasks. The crowd loves the concept but balks at a Linux-only, binary-only drop—demanding source code, screenshots, and an asciinema demo before they’ll trust it.
Hacker News lit up over fftool, a friendly terminal menu for the famously brain-bending FFmpeg. The pitch: pick a task, see the exact command before it runs, and learn along the way. People love the idea of a “teaches you while it works” tool, and the feature list is wild—trimming, resizing, normalizing audio, even generating fractals and color bars from thin air.
Then came the spicy part. The top chorus was trust: users spotted a downloadable binary with no visible source code and hit the brakes. One commenter deadpanned, “Am I blind or is there no link to the source?” while another warned that “running random binaries is pushing it.” The Linux-only note also drew side-eye, with folks probing whether there’s a real reason it can’t run elsewhere. The community demanded proof-of-life too: “Any screenshots?” quickly became the unofficial catchphrase, along with calls for an asciinema terminal demo.
Still, not everyone brought torches—one drive-by “Nice” became the thread’s comedic relief, almost a meme in itself. Another commenter tried to remember a similar tool with live preview, turning the thread into a crowdsourced scavenger hunt. Verdict: fftool’s show-the-command approach is winning hearts, but until there’s source code and a demo, the community’s clutching its popcorn and its caution in equal measure.
Key Points
- •fftool is a Go-based terminal UI that wraps ffmpeg operations and displays the exact command before execution.
- •It groups operations into Video, Audio, Image, Generative, and Info/Probe categories, surfacing internal ffmpeg generators.
- •Multi-pass workflows (e.g., Stabilize, Normalize) are handled automatically, with all passes shown on a confirm screen.
- •During processing, fftool parses ffmpeg’s stderr to show live progress and presents a result screen upon completion.
- •Go was chosen for a single compiled binary, fast startup, and concurrency for reading stdout/stderr.