• Ulrich@feddit.org
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    1 month ago

    Which offline converter? I find myself often trying to convert:

    • PDF to JPEG
    • AVC to MP4
    • OPUS to MP3

    etc. I have no idea how to do that but if I type it into a search engine there’s usually tools there.

    • T156@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      FFmpeg and handbrake do the latter two quite handily. The latter even has a nice program interface, rather than needing commands.

      ImageMagick is capable of the first. I’ve had it go the other way before, and I should be most surprised if it couldn’t convert a PDF to a jpg.

      • Ulrich@feddit.org
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        1 month ago

        I don’t have the knowledge or the time to learn to use these tools.

            • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              Let me tell you a little bit about all those various file converter tools, be it ffmpeg, pandoc, imagemagick, whatever.

              The majority of them can be used like this: magick inputfile.bmp outputfile.jpg. If all you need is this file in that format, that’s how you do it. They’re ridicluously capable, you can do editing and compositing and such with them and whatever. If you have a use case where you do that a lot, like you just always put a watermark on images or you always desaturate them or whatever, you can write a script, then just run that script.

              They’re basically all like that. Fairly simple to use for basic format translation, shockingly capable if you want to write a script.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          Handbrake has a GUI, and it’s relatively straightforward to use. VLC also works well. You can also use ffmpeg on the CLI like so:

          ffmpeg -i input_video.mp4 output_video.avi
          

          imagemagick isn’t really that hard, in most cases it’s:

          convert <file1> <file2>
          

          For example:

          convert file.pdf file.jpg
          

          If that doesn’t work, try pdftoppm:

          pdftoppm input.pdf outputname -png
          

          I don’t know of a good GUI for it, I recommend just learning to use either imagemagick or pdftoppm.

          • Ulrich@feddit.org
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            1 month ago

            Handbrake has a GUI, and it’s relatively straightforward to use

            I downloaded it and it immediately did not work so I’m gonna have to disagree with you there, champ.

            You can also use ffmpeg on the CLI like so:

            I’ve lost far too many hours to the CLI. I don’t fall for that trick anymore.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              You do you, I guess. Those are incredibly simple commands I provided, and you can intuit pretty easily how to tweak them for other formats.

              I guess it’s up to you. You can gamble with random services online, or you can spend a few minutes and learn to use a tool that’s all but guaranteed to not have malware.

              • Ulrich@feddit.org
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                1 month ago

                or you can spend a few minutes

                This is just a fucking lie and I’m tired of hearing it. What did I just say?

                I’ve lost far too many hours to the CLI.

                I’ve tried to learn this shit. It’s a fucking rabbit hole. I type these commands, letter for letter, the terminal returns some completely useless error that provides me with no diagnostic information whatsoever, I spend hours searching and trying to understand why and come up empty-handed. I don’t have time for that anymore. I already have multiple jobs. It’s not how I prefer to spend my free time. And frankly, I don’t believe it anymore when software engineers feed me this bullshit.

                You know what those web services do? I just click a button and it does what the button says. Why is that so hard?

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 month ago

                  You know what those web services do? I just click a button and it does what the button says. Why is that so hard?

                  There’s also a pretty big chance that they’ll do more than what the button says, like inject malware. That’s the whole point of the article.

                  • Ulrich@feddit.org
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                    1 month ago

                    I understand that but that’s beside the point. It does what they advertise. It’s incredibly simple and easy to use. Why can no one make something comparable that’s FOSS?

    • kava@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      imagemagick handles almost all image files

      images ) ls
      001.jpg  002.jpg  003.jpg  004.jpg  005.jpg
      images ) convert 001.jpg example.pdf
      

      ffmpeg handles almost all video files

      ex ) ls
      rock.mp4
      ex ) ffmpeg -i rock.mp4 rock.avi
      

      if you use gnome there’s a nice little feature of the file explorer where you can just drag and drop scripts into ~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts/

      for example

      make a fish script (ignoring error checking for brevity here, my real script had a couple guard rails)

      /#!/usr/bin/env fish
      set file $argv[1]
      convert $file (basename $file .png).pdf
      

      then when you right click on a file in your gnome file explorer you can click the scripts option

      example

      and the script is right there so you can just easily convert with the press of a button

      example

      note, i crossed out some stuff that includes client names

      tldr: there are so many ways to do what you need to do there’s no reason to trust random websites you don’t know. there’s a lot of slimey people out there wanting to take advantage of people. and everybody should strive to be at least a little computer literate. the examples i gave here aren’t complicated. they’re simple commands

    • vithigar@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      PDF to JPEG

      Don’t most pdf viewers have an export to image option?

      AVC to MP4

      Do you actually have files with an .avc extension? AVC is a codec that can be used in many different container formats, including MP4. Where did these files come from?

      OPUS to MP3

      I actually agree that most audio conversion tools are needlessly awkward. Audacity will convert these just fine, though doesn’t really do bulk conversion. Foobar2000 will do it in bulk if you’re on windows.

      • Ulrich@feddit.org
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        1 month ago

        Don’t most pdf viewers have an export to image option?

        Don’t know, I never looked! But I will, thanks.

        Do you actually have files with an .avc extension?

        Yes

        Audacity will convert these just fine, though doesn’t really do bulk conversion.

        I’ll give this a try on Tenacity. I didn’t realize they had file conversion on there.

        Only helpful comment in this thread, thanks.

      • AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        On the PDF to JPEG, you can also open the PDFs with an image editor, such as Inkscape or krita, and then save the image on the format and quality needed. This method also has the benefit that on some cases you play with the assets if needed. (Depends on how was the PDF generated)

      • Ulrich@feddit.org
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        1 month ago

        Handbrake won’t load the file and Shutter won’t even open. But thank you.

    • ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 month ago

      In Windows, Foobar2000 does easy audio file conversions, once you have installed the relevant codecs.

    • zerofk@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      I can’t comment on the others, but PDF to JPEG should be easy enough. ImageMagick, which another commenter suggested, is possible but not user friendly. However you can just open the PDF in many applications and export it as an image. Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop can do it. GIMP probably too.

      I’m a last ditch effort you can even just open the file and screenshot it.

    • kipo@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      You could try Permute. It’s a pretty simple app for converting video and audio. Permute is my go-to for quick video conversion.

      DBPowerAmp has an easy-to-use audio converter that supports pretty much every audio format and does batch file conversion as well. DBPowerAmp is my go-to for audio conversion.

      Both of these are paid apps.