AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
on 25 Mar 23:57
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“Users who in the past would type ‘free online file converter’ into a search engine are vulnerable, as the algorithms used for results now often include paid results, which might be scams.”
I refuse to believe that the free service I’ve been using for years has been exploiting my behavior for money… what kind of world is this?? What kind of psychopathic organization would do such a thing? Why isn’t capitalism working for me? Why?
MemmingenFan923@feddit.org
on 26 Mar 00:02
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That’s why I always prefer an offline converter. Also if your upload a file somewhere the website can save it for their own purpose alhough they say they won’t do it.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world
on 26 Mar 00:26
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Precisely, and this is why I’ve never trusted online “free” converters since day one. Who the fuck knows what they’re actually doing with your file, and I always assumed that most of them were fronts to steal data and IP from users who are stupid enough to upload corporate and business stuff to them.
Anyway, there’s vanishingly little I haven’t been able to do over the years with ffmpeg or Imagemagick, their byzantine command line structures notwithstanding.
Which is why I’ve been happy to trust them for files nobody cares about, like a random audio file that I got off the Internet. And it’s very unlikely they’d be able to exploit my media player.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works
on 26 Mar 06:27
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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.
Strange, those online tools don’t require any “effort”.
TheBlackLounge@lemm.ee
on 26 Mar 08:29
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This is learned helplessness. Especially for someone who took the time to go waste time on Lemmy in stead of Reddit, you could have learned it in the time it took to complain about it taking effort.
Have some faith in yourself. You’re not an idiot. Find a friend to show you or smth. I’m not a terminal advocate, I avoid it as much as possible, but in a thread about corporations and scammers relying on user ignorance, this behavior is defeatist.
I’m not an idiot. As I’ve already said, I just don’t have the time. LOL @ the idea of any of my friends even knowing what a command line is, much less knowing how to use it any better than I do. You people live in this bubble where you think everyone on the planet is a software engineer. This is not reality.
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
on 26 Mar 06:32
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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.
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
on 26 Mar 06:44
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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.
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?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 26 Mar 06:54
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They did, it’s often a CLI interface because it’s incredibly flexible. ffmpeg and imagemagick are quite easy for basic things.
Building a cross-platform GUI is a pain, and hosting a website costs money. Building a cross-platform CLI is incredibly easy, which is why it’s so popular.
Some of these tools have GUI frontends or alternatives, some don’t. The more niche you go, the harder it’ll be to find a reasonable GUI, and I consider PDF to JPEG pretty niche.
Making a GUI is more work than making a CLI tool. GUIs are not cross-platform, a pure CLI is more portable. You can code a CLI with any programming language you like, while there are many restrictions on what kind of GUI is available on what programming languages and platforms.
The GUI code is tedious and boring to write. That code can become outdated and broken and might need fixing to run on newer platforms. The CLI has essentially no extra dependencies and the interface hasn’t changed much since like the 70s.
The sort of person who develops free software usually knows and likely prefers to use the CLI. They’re not doing it for users like you, first and foremost. They’re doing it themselves, or because they need it for their job. The CLI tool might be exactly what they want, because the file conversion is part of some backend stuff, something that’s run from a script, so you can automatically run it on all the files.
Anybody with basic web dev skills can then take these tools, slap together web fronted and try and make some quick bucks. They’re basically incentivized to not care about security, privacy or anything like that. Of course that space attracts scammers.
The incentives just aren’t there for it to be any other way. You can either learn the CLI commands, written by people who care about their reputations and professional pride and want to share their tools. Or you can trust anonymous internet randos wanting to make a quick buck. And while I sympathize not wanting to have to learn new shit, I swear using a shell isn’t actually more complicated than using a web browser, you’re just not used to it.
I swear using a shell isn’t actually more complicated than using a web browser, you’re just not used to it.
We’re just going around in circles here. I already told you that I am used to it. I’ve dedicated many dozens of hours of my life to trying to learn it while tearing my hair out because things people like you repeatedly declare is simple simply isn’t. I’m not falling for it anymore. I’m not giving it anymore of my time. I have better things to do.
Overall fair enough I guess. I didn’t say it was simple though, i said it was not more complicated. Your experience using GUIs and web interfaces probably spans years. It’s not like you’re born with GUI skills.
I didn’t say it was simple though, i said it was not more complicated.
Those are the same thing.
Your experience using GUIs and web interfaces probably spans years
I don’t know why you guys are always harping on about “experience”. This has nothing to do with experience. Anyone who has never even used a computer before can go to one of these websites, follow the instructions on the screen in front of them, and get it done. Zero experience or skills required. As opposed to being presented with a black box with a bunch of random characters and a flashing square.
Anyone who has never even used a computer before can go to one of these websites, follow the instructions on the screen in front of them, and get it done. Zero experience or skills required.
No they don’t. People who have never used a computer before have trouble even using the mouse. They don’t know what a file is, they don’t know what a filetype is, they don’t know that you can convert one type of file to another, they don’t know even to look for a file conversion website, they don’t know how to upload a file to a website, they don’t know how to find a file in the file dialogue, and on and on. Seriously what are you on about?
You don’t have to host a website. Just make software that works like the website and runs locally.
No offense, but you were told about handbrake, a tool that goes out of its way to offer a cross-platform GUI and complained about it not immediately working- with no elaboration.
We learn to write before we learn to navigate computer systems- the command line is only scary because digital illiteracy is taught to us the second we are presented with the windows/macos login screen. It truly does not get simpler than telling a computer convert image.pdf image.jpg.
These tools are daunting, yes, and it’s not your fault that everyone is taught that computers are magic boxes we have no real control over, but the hours you spend in a command line are just like the hours you spend learning to sew, or play an instrument. Nobody starts with every manpage seared into their brain, but if you’re able to look up a sketchy website that may well give you malware, you have the tools needed to learn this valuable skill.
No offense but as I mentioned previously, I downloaded handbrake and it did not work because it does not function like those websites.
the command line is only scary because digital illiteracy is taught to us the second we are presented with the windows/macos login screen
The command line is not “scary”, it just requires specialized knowledge. If I’m presented with a GUI I don’t need any specialized knowledge, I just look at the available options and click the ones I need. In the command line I’m not presented with a fuckin thing except a black box and text field, and when I spend my time searching the web for commands and then type them in, they return a generic error with no diagnostic information and I waste hours trying to figure it out.
I’m telling you this is not for lack of trying. Im not helpless, I literally just don’t have time to acquire this breadth of specialty knowledge. I already have multiple jobs. When I need plumbing work, I don’t spend 40 hours learning to become a half-assed plumber and cross my fingers that I don’t fuck it up and destroy my house, I hire a specialist who knows how to do it right and I spend my time doing my profession to make back the money that I paid them.
I’m simply not wasting my time anymore chasing this stuff that people that lack self-awareness repeatedly declare is “easy”.
The terminal? Your post history suggests you are quite familiar with Linux. But I agree that those who are most prone to use random file conversion sites because they need something as PDF for work will be very confused by those instructions.
I am familiar with Linux but I avoid it whenever possible. I dailyed it for a couple of years but I’ve unfortunately moved on to Mac due to their deep dependency on terminal. If I have a problem and go and look up support, 99% of the time the advice is to open the terminal and start running commands, which is almost never the case for Windows or Mac. I’ve been using a Mac for about a year and I don’t even know where the terminal is. Even where there’s a perfectly suitable GUI solution, they’ll send you into the terminal anyway. Linux is made by and for devs and it is and will remain that way until the mentality of it’s creators change. And I am not a dev.
I can follow instructions. The problem is #1 I’m told “don’t type commands you don’t understand” and #2 no one ever explains what any of these commands do, so I never learn anything, and #3 the commands don’t work, and they return a generic error with zero diagnostic information, or sometimes just nothing at all happens. I don’t have time for that. I just want something that works.
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 26 Mar 20:04
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I understand that you may not know the commands you are told by strangers, but many of these are tools are meant for professionals. ffmpeg, for example, is used by many industries and companies worth millions of dollars to handle production workloads. They often have documentation to tell you what they do, though
Obviously you won’t understand any of that because the command line doesn’t work for you, but for those of us who do understand it and can use it, it’s very informative.
I think handbrake is a gui wrapper on top of ffmpeg, but I never used it, I just memorized the ffmpeg commands and can type so much faster than i can click.
these are tools are meant for professionals…these are often not consumer-level software
Then stop recommending them to random people.
There’s a manual
How many times do I need to repeat “I don’t have time for this” before you people will stop pestering me with this?
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 26 Mar 20:15
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Im recommending them to anyone who wants free software and is willing to invest their time into understanding how to do things for free and without concern over their data. If you aren’t willing to invest the necessary time it isn’t for you and that’s why I said it. It’s okay if these don’t work for you. That’s valid. But it does, in fact, work for many others who are not you.
I mentioned the manual because you claimed you didn’t know what the commands do. If you read and take the time to learn the manual like you said you can do, you will, in fact, understand how the commands work. Additionally, this is public forum, my post may have been a reply to you but I understand other people may read my comment. Other people may have your frustrations but are not aware of the manuals that tell them exactly how the commands work. It only takes a bit of elbow grease, perhaps people other than you are willing to apply it?
I’m not sure if you saw it, but I did mention a gui application for converting files. I admit, I don’t use it, but many people also save a lot of money using it, so it might be helpful. I have no idea if it’s useful for your needs though.
Im recommending them to anyone who wants free software and is willing to invest their time into understanding how to do things for free and without concern over their data.
That’s just “random people” with more words.
If you read and take the time to learn
There’s a neat little guide
I keep telling you I don’t have time for a new career and you keep replying to me with more reference materials. I appreciate the effort but it’s misplaced. I’ve lost too many days trying to do things that people with no self-awareness (which may or may not be you, I don’t know) assure me is “easy”. I’m done. I’m not trying anymore. If a simple intuitive software is not available then I will just not do it.
I didn’t put the “and” in the commands, I copied and pasted them from the comment above
Yes you did, but you copy pasted two different commands connected with “and”.
The word “and” isn’t meant to be typed into the cli. They’re stringing together two different lines.
but thank you for illustrating my point so very well.
If your point was that it’s easy to copy and paste I’m confused how I helped.
It is easy to copy and paste though. People generally format the commands like I did instead of in the middle of a sentence like OP did where you can make parsing mistakes.
Would it? I’m not wasting anymore time to figure it out. Is there no point at which I’m allowed to give up? Am I forced to continue trying forever and ever because you want me to?
Oh sorry. You’re right, you’re allowed to give up.
I have 100% confidence that you personally had negative experiences in the past trying to get stuff like this working. Like I fully believe you.
I’ve just done this before you know? I know what these tools are and how easy they are! I use ffmpeg.
Im also 100% sure that, if you had put that aside the attitude that it would be a time waste and you had just given it an honest try, me or a bunch of different people on this thread would have easily helped you get it working by now.
Maybe it’d take a couple comments back and forth, but weve already expensed that effort arguing. And I know for a fact it would’ve taken less effort than we’ve spent so far.
It’s okay for you to give up, but you gotta realize how it feels for us to hear you complain, for us to know with certainty we can help you, and not feel a little frustrated when you refuse the help while continuing to complain.
Everytime you keep popping up in the thread complaining about this non existent problem it just hurts cause it’s so easily solvable.
But you’re right, no matter how easy this is I can’t force you to try. So, cheers!
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.
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
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.
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.
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
on 26 Mar 19:50
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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)
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
on 26 Mar 10:55
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I tend to just whip up a script of some sort that employs widely used libraries for the conversion. I know that’s more technical than most people would have the tolerance or aptitude for, but for me, it’s the least ambiguous and most secure way to do stuff like that. And then I can squirrel it away in a utility scripts directory and use it later if I need it again.
What you recommend in terms of offline open-source converters?
AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works
on 26 Mar 19:47
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What are you looking to convert?
Usually what i do is look for any converter and look for open source alternatives to it on alternativeto.net and hopefully one of the top 3 alternatives fits your use case
Psst the URL is:
alternativeto.net
I always stop here first to research what software options there are available and also learning what other people are using. Extremely useful and trustworthy site!
AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works
on 27 Mar 05:54
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Thanks i dropped the “to”
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 26 Mar 19:51
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Pandoc for documents, ffmpeg for video , imagemagick for images
What image types are you using that ffmpeg can’t convert? To my knowledge it works for almost anything.
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 27 Mar 12:34
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Gonna be honest, never used ffmpeg for images lol. I often take images from PDFs that have transparency (rpg books to import into my vtt) and they come out of pdfimages with an opaque greyscale alpha mask and an opaque image. I found it easy to apply the mask with imagemagick, though. Ffmpeg can probably do it but just never had a use case. I just use cwebp to convert because that’s my primary use-case: converting pngs to lossy webp files and cwebp is good enough for me for that:)
Images from PDFs, wasn’t thinking about that. I normally work with just image files. Cool!
doctortofu@reddthat.com
on 26 Mar 00:30
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“Users who in the past would type ‘free online file converter’ into a search engine are vulnerable, as the algorithms used for results now often include paid results, which might be scams.”
Nooo, you mean turning search engines into monetization and ad delivery engines had downsides? Who would have thought!
Fucking greed at the root of another goddamned issue…
Protip: ask your favourite llm to write you a python script to convert between the formats you’re interested in. Bonus benefit: simultaneously learn a bit about programming!
As much as I’m not a fan of this, I’ll at least admit it was helpful in helping me quickly learn how to scale videos using FFMPEG. That, combined with the documentation and now I have a command saved to a reference text document to help if I ever forget.
olympicyes@lemmy.world
on 26 Mar 23:10
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I have zero interest in learning all the intricacies of ffmpeg so I find ChatGPT to be very useful. I’ve also used it for yt-dlp for downloading videos and converting the audio to mp3. Very useful. I personally save them as bash scripts so I can just input the file name or url as a command line argument. On Mac you can also wrap your bash scripts in AppleScript if you want to make applets for these functions. ChatGPT works great for apple script as well but I’ve had to feed it source code (eg from Apple Digital Mastering applets) to ensure it writes the new code correctly. You still must know what you’re doing.
Is yt-dlp really that difficult that you can’t take ten min to learn the syntax? Do you not worry that you might end up relying on this stuff too much?
For example, I know I’m completely reliant on GPS, and I would be useless without it
The syntax is easy, but the options change a bit depending on what you want to do. My entire job I requires me to use my brain so I don’t mind cheating when it doesn’t really matter as in this case. In my case I wanted a SQLite database to store URLs and playlist IDs for recording attempts and to make sure I don’t download the same video multiple times. I think I also had songs run thru music brainz for audio fingerprinting and mp3 tags. ChatGPT doesn’t get it right the first time but often gives a reasonable boilerplate piece of code as a template to start from.
Ffmprg is remarkably powerful. If it is a picture on your screen, you can use ffmpeg to do what you want to it. Recently discovered it could convert PNG, jpeg, and webp images back and forth. To think I’ve only used it for video.
variouslegumes@reddthat.com
on 28 Mar 00:04
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I’d recommend some CLI utility to a beginner over Python: pandoc, ffmpeg, image magic…
peteyestee@feddit.org
on 27 Mar 01:10
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No way, lol
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
on 27 Mar 11:59
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That’s why I only use totallylegitfileconverter.ru they even have a lottery where they can directly transfer the money to your bank account when you win. They’re very friendly!
threaded - newest
Mm hmm.
I refuse to believe that the free service I’ve been using for years has been exploiting my behavior for money… what kind of world is this?? What kind of psychopathic organization would do such a thing? Why isn’t capitalism working for me? Why?
That’s why I always prefer an offline converter. Also if your upload a file somewhere the website can save it for their own purpose alhough they say they won’t do it.
Precisely, and this is why I’ve never trusted online “free” converters since day one. Who the fuck knows what they’re actually doing with your file, and I always assumed that most of them were fronts to steal data and IP from users who are stupid enough to upload corporate and business stuff to them.
Anyway, there’s vanishingly little I haven’t been able to do over the years with ffmpeg or Imagemagick, their byzantine command line structures notwithstanding.
Which is why I’ve been happy to trust them for files nobody cares about, like a random audio file that I got off the Internet. And it’s very unlikely they’d be able to exploit my media player.
Which offline converter? I find myself often trying to convert:
etc. I have no idea how to do that but if I type it into a search engine there’s usually tools there.
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.
I don’t have the knowledge or the time to learn to use these tools.
Then I suppose you’re up shit creek.
Thanks for that deep analysis.
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.
magick inputfile.bmp outputfile.jpg.
I don’t think it worked.
They’re command line tools. If you want to get something done you have to put in a little effort.
Strange, those online tools don’t require any “effort”.
This is learned helplessness. Especially for someone who took the time to go waste time on Lemmy in stead of Reddit, you could have learned it in the time it took to complain about it taking effort.
This is learned not-wasting-my-timeness. And no, I couldn’t. I have tried, several times. I don’t waste my time anymore.
Have some faith in yourself. You’re not an idiot. Find a friend to show you or smth. I’m not a terminal advocate, I avoid it as much as possible, but in a thread about corporations and scammers relying on user ignorance, this behavior is defeatist.
I’m not an idiot. As I’ve already said, I just don’t have the time. LOL @ the idea of any of my friends even knowing what a command line is, much less knowing how to use it any better than I do. You people live in this bubble where you think everyone on the planet is a software engineer. This is not reality.
You’re free to use these tools that steal your data, nobody is stopping you.
No, but they are repeatedly insisting that I use certain other tools that require specialty knowledge that I don’t possess.
No one has suggested tools that require specialty knowledge.
You just haven’t tried and keep placing arbitrary obstacles in front of yourself.
Yes, they are.
Please just read the comments before you start replying.
I read through your comments. I’ve also used ffmpeg.
You say you don’t have time but it takes less time than you’ve spent arguing.
This isn’t other people’s problem, this is your learned helplessness as much as you refuse to admit it.
You obviously have not.
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:
imagemagick isn’t really that hard, in most cases it’s:
For example:
If that doesn’t work, try
pdftoppm:I don’t know of a good GUI for it, I recommend just learning to use either imagemagick or pdftoppm.
I downloaded it and it immediately did not work so I’m gonna have to disagree with you there, champ.
I’ve lost far too many hours to the CLI. I don’t fall for that trick anymore.
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.
This is just a fucking lie and I’m tired of hearing it. What did I just say?
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?
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.
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?
They did, it’s often a CLI interface because it’s incredibly flexible. ffmpeg and imagemagick are quite easy for basic things.
Building a cross-platform GUI is a pain, and hosting a website costs money. Building a cross-platform CLI is incredibly easy, which is why it’s so popular.
Some of these tools have GUI frontends or alternatives, some don’t. The more niche you go, the harder it’ll be to find a reasonable GUI, and I consider PDF to JPEG pretty niche.
No. This does not compute.
You don’t have to host a website. Just make software that works like the website and runs locally.
But not niche enough that these websites don’t exist.
Making a GUI is more work than making a CLI tool. GUIs are not cross-platform, a pure CLI is more portable. You can code a CLI with any programming language you like, while there are many restrictions on what kind of GUI is available on what programming languages and platforms.
The GUI code is tedious and boring to write. That code can become outdated and broken and might need fixing to run on newer platforms. The CLI has essentially no extra dependencies and the interface hasn’t changed much since like the 70s.
The sort of person who develops free software usually knows and likely prefers to use the CLI. They’re not doing it for users like you, first and foremost. They’re doing it themselves, or because they need it for their job. The CLI tool might be exactly what they want, because the file conversion is part of some backend stuff, something that’s run from a script, so you can automatically run it on all the files.
Anybody with basic web dev skills can then take these tools, slap together web fronted and try and make some quick bucks. They’re basically incentivized to not care about security, privacy or anything like that. Of course that space attracts scammers.
The incentives just aren’t there for it to be any other way. You can either learn the CLI commands, written by people who care about their reputations and professional pride and want to share their tools. Or you can trust anonymous internet randos wanting to make a quick buck. And while I sympathize not wanting to have to learn new shit, I swear using a shell isn’t actually more complicated than using a web browser, you’re just not used to it.
We’re just going around in circles here. I already told you that I am used to it. I’ve dedicated many dozens of hours of my life to trying to learn it while tearing my hair out because things people like you repeatedly declare is simple simply isn’t. I’m not falling for it anymore. I’m not giving it anymore of my time. I have better things to do.
Overall fair enough I guess. I didn’t say it was simple though, i said it was not more complicated. Your experience using GUIs and web interfaces probably spans years. It’s not like you’re born with GUI skills.
Those are the same thing.
I don’t know why you guys are always harping on about “experience”. This has nothing to do with experience. Anyone who has never even used a computer before can go to one of these websites, follow the instructions on the screen in front of them, and get it done. Zero experience or skills required. As opposed to being presented with a black box with a bunch of random characters and a flashing square.
No they don’t. People who have never used a computer before have trouble even using the mouse. They don’t know what a file is, they don’t know what a filetype is, they don’t know that you can convert one type of file to another, they don’t know even to look for a file conversion website, they don’t know how to upload a file to a website, they don’t know how to find a file in the file dialogue, and on and on. Seriously what are you on about?
You’re just lying.
About what?
No offense, but you were told about handbrake, a tool that goes out of its way to offer a cross-platform GUI and complained about it not immediately working- with no elaboration.
We learn to write before we learn to navigate computer systems- the command line is only scary because digital illiteracy is taught to us the second we are presented with the windows/macos login screen. It truly does not get simpler than telling a computer
convert image.pdf image.jpg.These tools are daunting, yes, and it’s not your fault that everyone is taught that computers are magic boxes we have no real control over, but the hours you spend in a command line are just like the hours you spend learning to sew, or play an instrument. Nobody starts with every manpage seared into their brain, but if you’re able to look up a sketchy website that may well give you malware, you have the tools needed to learn this valuable skill.
No offense but as I mentioned previously, I downloaded handbrake and it did not work because it does not function like those websites.
The command line is not “scary”, it just requires specialized knowledge. If I’m presented with a GUI I don’t need any specialized knowledge, I just look at the available options and click the ones I need. In the command line I’m not presented with a fuckin thing except a black box and text field, and when I spend my time searching the web for commands and then type them in, they return a generic error with no diagnostic information and I waste hours trying to figure it out.
I’m telling you this is not for lack of trying. Im not helpless, I literally just don’t have time to acquire this breadth of specialty knowledge. I already have multiple jobs. When I need plumbing work, I don’t spend 40 hours learning to become a half-assed plumber and cross my fingers that I don’t fuck it up and destroy my house, I hire a specialist who knows how to do it right and I spend my time doing my profession to make back the money that I paid them.
I’m simply not wasting my time anymore chasing this stuff that people that lack self-awareness repeatedly declare is “easy”.
It is indeed very difficult to type convert 001.jpg example.pdf and ffmpeg -i rock.mp4 rock.avi
TYPE IT WHERE!? WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS INFORMATION!? How are you so completely unaware of how non-sensical this information is?
The terminal? Your post history suggests you are quite familiar with Linux. But I agree that those who are most prone to use random file conversion sites because they need something as PDF for work will be very confused by those instructions.
I am familiar with Linux but I avoid it whenever possible. I dailyed it for a couple of years but I’ve unfortunately moved on to Mac due to their deep dependency on terminal. If I have a problem and go and look up support, 99% of the time the advice is to open the terminal and start running commands, which is almost never the case for Windows or Mac. I’ve been using a Mac for about a year and I don’t even know where the terminal is. Even where there’s a perfectly suitable GUI solution, they’ll send you into the terminal anyway. Linux is made by and for devs and it is and will remain that way until the mentality of it’s creators change. And I am not a dev.
I can follow instructions. The problem is #1 I’m told “don’t type commands you don’t understand” and #2 no one ever explains what any of these commands do, so I never learn anything, and #3 the commands don’t work, and they return a generic error with zero diagnostic information, or sometimes just nothing at all happens. I don’t have time for that. I just want something that works.
I understand that you may not know the commands you are told by strangers, but many of these are tools are meant for professionals. ffmpeg, for example, is used by many industries and companies worth millions of dollars to handle production workloads. They often have documentation to tell you what they do, though
There’s a manual for ffmpeg for example: ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html
Here’s imgemagick’s documentation: imagemagick.org/script/magick.php
Obviously you won’t understand any of that because the command line doesn’t work for you, but for those of us who do understand it and can use it, it’s very informative.
I think handbrake is a gui wrapper on top of ffmpeg, but I never used it, I just memorized the ffmpeg commands and can type so much faster than i can click.
Then stop recommending them to random people.
How many times do I need to repeat “I don’t have time for this” before you people will stop pestering me with this?
Im recommending them to anyone who wants free software and is willing to invest their time into understanding how to do things for free and without concern over their data. If you aren’t willing to invest the necessary time it isn’t for you and that’s why I said it. It’s okay if these don’t work for you. That’s valid. But it does, in fact, work for many others who are not you.
I mentioned the manual because you claimed you didn’t know what the commands do. If you read and take the time to learn the manual like you said you can do, you will, in fact, understand how the commands work. Additionally, this is public forum, my post may have been a reply to you but I understand other people may read my comment. Other people may have your frustrations but are not aware of the manuals that tell them exactly how the commands work. It only takes a bit of elbow grease, perhaps people other than you are willing to apply it?
I’m not sure if you saw it, but I did mention a gui application for converting files. I admit, I don’t use it, but many people also save a lot of money using it, so it might be helpful. I have no idea if it’s useful for your needs though.
Here’s “ffmpeg in 100 seconds” youtu.be/26Mayv5JPz0
Here’s a video on ffmpeg and imagemagick: youtu.be/sKBM4M-kuCg
Additionally, you can just learn how to read man pages: itsfoss.com/linux-man-page-guide/
There’s a neat little guide that’ll help you learn how to read documentation.
Once you’ve read through that let me know what confuses you about documentation.
That’s just “random people” with more words.
I keep telling you I don’t have time for a new career and you keep replying to me with more reference materials. I appreciate the effort but it’s misplaced. I’ve lost too many days trying to do things that people with no self-awareness (which may or may not be you, I don’t know) assure me is “easy”. I’m done. I’m not trying anymore. If a simple intuitive software is not available then I will just not do it.
convert 001.jpg example.pdf and ffmpeg -i rock.mp4 rock.avi
okay, now what?
Lol, apparently it is hard. You were supposed to enter
And
By putting the “and” in the commands you just caused an error lol
I didn’t put the “and” in the commands, I copied and pasted them from the comment above, but thank you for illustrating my point so very well.
Yes you did, but you copy pasted two different commands connected with “and”.
The word “and” isn’t meant to be typed into the cli. They’re stringing together two different lines.
If your point was that it’s easy to copy and paste I’m confused how I helped.
It is easy to copy and paste though. People generally format the commands like I did instead of in the middle of a sentence like OP did where you can make parsing mistakes.
My point is that if I had followed the instructions it wouldn’t have worked. Which is what always happens.
Right, but I just pointed out to you why it wouldn’t work and how to fix it.
So if you had followed my instructions they would have worked.
Would it? I’m not wasting anymore time to figure it out. Is there no point at which I’m allowed to give up? Am I forced to continue trying forever and ever because you want me to?
Oh sorry. You’re right, you’re allowed to give up.
I have 100% confidence that you personally had negative experiences in the past trying to get stuff like this working. Like I fully believe you.
I’ve just done this before you know? I know what these tools are and how easy they are! I use ffmpeg.
Im also 100% sure that, if you had put that aside the attitude that it would be a time waste and you had just given it an honest try, me or a bunch of different people on this thread would have easily helped you get it working by now.
Maybe it’d take a couple comments back and forth, but weve already expensed that effort arguing. And I know for a fact it would’ve taken less effort than we’ve spent so far.
It’s okay for you to give up, but you gotta realize how it feels for us to hear you complain, for us to know with certainty we can help you, and not feel a little frustrated when you refuse the help while continuing to complain.
Everytime you keep popping up in the thread complaining about this non existent problem it just hurts cause it’s so easily solvable.
But you’re right, no matter how easy this is I can’t force you to try. So, cheers!
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.
Open/Libreoffice can do that too
imagemagick handles almost all image files
ffmpeg handles almost all video files
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)
then when you right click on a file in your gnome file explorer you can click the scripts option
<img alt="example" src="https://i.imgur.com/7SVC1r0.png">
and the script is right there so you can just easily convert with the press of a button
<img alt="example" src="https://i.imgur.com/nfQ41kq.png">
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
That’s a pretty sweet feature in GNOME! I’ll need to see if there is something similar for KDE.
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.
Thanks, I’ll check those out.
In Windows, Foobar2000 does easy audio file conversions, once you have installed the relevant codecs.
Video and audio conversion can be done with Handbrake or Shutter Encoder, both are nice GUIs
Handbrake won’t load the file and Shutter won’t even open. But thank you.
Don’t most pdf viewers have an export to image option?
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?
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.
Don’t know, I never looked! But I will, thanks.
Yes
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.
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)
I tend to just whip up a script of some sort that employs widely used libraries for the conversion. I know that’s more technical than most people would have the tolerance or aptitude for, but for me, it’s the least ambiguous and most secure way to do stuff like that. And then I can squirrel it away in a utility scripts directory and use it later if I need it again.
The website mentions that there are fake offline converters that push malware as well.
Yes this can also happen. I should have written open source offline converter
What you recommend in terms of offline open-source converters?
What are you looking to convert?
Usually what i do is look for any converter and look for open source alternatives to it on alternativeto.net and hopefully one of the top 3 alternatives fits your use case
Psst the URL is: alternativeto.net I always stop here first to research what software options there are available and also learning what other people are using. Extremely useful and trustworthy site!
Thanks i dropped the “to”
Pandoc for documents, ffmpeg for video , imagemagick for images
What image types are you using that ffmpeg can’t convert? To my knowledge it works for almost anything.
Gonna be honest, never used ffmpeg for images lol. I often take images from PDFs that have transparency (rpg books to import into my vtt) and they come out of pdfimages with an opaque greyscale alpha mask and an opaque image. I found it easy to apply the mask with imagemagick, though. Ffmpeg can probably do it but just never had a use case. I just use cwebp to convert because that’s my primary use-case: converting pngs to lossy webp files and cwebp is good enough for me for that:)
Images from PDFs, wasn’t thinking about that. I normally work with just image files. Cool!
“Users who in the past would type ‘free online file converter’ into a search engine are vulnerable, as the algorithms used for results now often include paid results, which might be scams.”
Nooo, you mean turning search engines into monetization and ad delivery engines had downsides? Who would have thought!
Fucking greed at the root of another goddamned issue…
Protip: ask your favourite llm to write you a python script to convert between the formats you’re interested in. Bonus benefit: simultaneously learn a bit about programming!
As much as I’m not a fan of this, I’ll at least admit it was helpful in helping me quickly learn how to scale videos using FFMPEG. That, combined with the documentation and now I have a command saved to a reference text document to help if I ever forget.
I have zero interest in learning all the intricacies of ffmpeg so I find ChatGPT to be very useful. I’ve also used it for yt-dlp for downloading videos and converting the audio to mp3. Very useful. I personally save them as bash scripts so I can just input the file name or url as a command line argument. On Mac you can also wrap your bash scripts in AppleScript if you want to make applets for these functions. ChatGPT works great for apple script as well but I’ve had to feed it source code (eg from Apple Digital Mastering applets) to ensure it writes the new code correctly. You still must know what you’re doing.
Is yt-dlp really that difficult that you can’t take ten min to learn the syntax? Do you not worry that you might end up relying on this stuff too much?
For example, I know I’m completely reliant on GPS, and I would be useless without it
The syntax is easy, but the options change a bit depending on what you want to do. My entire job I requires me to use my brain so I don’t mind cheating when it doesn’t really matter as in this case. In my case I wanted a SQLite database to store URLs and playlist IDs for recording attempts and to make sure I don’t download the same video multiple times. I think I also had songs run thru music brainz for audio fingerprinting and mp3 tags. ChatGPT doesn’t get it right the first time but often gives a reasonable boilerplate piece of code as a template to start from.
Ffmprg is remarkably powerful. If it is a picture on your screen, you can use ffmpeg to do what you want to it. Recently discovered it could convert PNG, jpeg, and webp images back and forth. To think I’ve only used it for video.
I’d recommend some CLI utility to a beginner over Python: pandoc, ffmpeg, image magic…
True, that’s a good point :)
The best is online CSR generators.
Yes, I know people who have implemented private keys they have been given from random websites.
I’m… Wut… Just…
WHAT THE FUCK?
What? Just base64 encrypt it before you store it in the git hub
.
No way, lol
That’s why I only use totallylegitfileconverter.ru they even have a lottery where they can directly transfer the money to your bank account when you win. They’re very friendly!