qgustavor
commented
1 month ago An idea: one can open one or more files into the website, it will show a list of recipes which are compatible with the inputs, and the user can either choose one of them or write a new one using flowcharts or code.
Those recipes are code pieces that take as inputs the names of the files inputted and their ffprobe results and return ffmpeg commands. They can also read files and write files to memory, which is useful for tasks like batch editing subtitles.
Example: I have a lot of videos with subtitles which I want to remove all lines with a specific style, but keep the rest. It currently would require me to extract all subtitles, remove all lines with those styles using either Subtle Edit (which provides a UI for that) or Notepad++ (using regular expressions) and mux everything back or load those subtitles manually. This tool could automate that.
That being said, it's clear to me that allowing those recipes to defined parameters and use those is an essential thing to do too. For the above case the parameter this function would require is a list of styles to remove. Also, a set of useful functions available to recipes is also important, like something to call anitomy, as it's great for detecting episode numbers in file names.
Some recipes I think that would be useful:
- The example I cited above.
- Extract subtitles from HDTV videos and mux into BD videos: the recipe would take all videos, choose those with HDTV in the name, match those videos with those with BD in the name, then mux the subtitles from the HDTV videos into the BD videos.
- Mux HDTV subtitles into BD videos: same as above, but the subtitles are inputted instead of the videos.
- A recipe to show two subtitles in two different languages at the same time, one above and other below, great for language learners. It would require the user to choose which language to place above and which below.
- A recipe to remove all subtitle and audio tracks which don't match the user's preference, great for people which want to save space.
- A recipe for muxing subtitles into the matching videos.
I'm posting this issue so people can comment on it. IMHO an online tool like that should be not as feature-complete as MKVToolNix, instead it should be easy to use, focusing on common tasks for the everyday user. Like, at the moment, I'm trying to embed a folder of subtitles which I extracted from HDTV mkv files into BD mkv files.