i only recommend stuff that is reletavely easy to learn and setup and gives insane benefits for us who work with a lot of audio and video files.
| yt-dlp | yt-dlp has dug me out of so many holes. yt-dlp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ -x gives you just the audio stream of anything online with a "play" button. remove the -x for the full video. most issues can be fixed by updating yt-dlp or checking the filename for unsafe characters. age-restrictions and member-only content can be alieviated by passing cookies. works great with playlists and albums! | https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp |
| ffmpeg | great for converting files without needing to hunt down any encoder executables. works for video and audio amazingly. ffmpeg -i local_file.mov local_file.mp3 is all you need to convert between file types. more options exist if you want to tweak the encoder quality. with some additional powershell or a GUI you can make it run in batch. | https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds |
| handbrake | like a batch ffmpeg but it can re-encode videos with hardly-noticeable compression so you can upload to sites with file limits. i don't use this as often but it's handy when i have a big video file for social media or discord. | https://handbrake.fr/ |
| seal | for android, seal has helped me out of a jam when i needed yt-dlp and ffmpeg on my phone. it just works, it's so nice. it even auto-updates and actually is more convenient for me to use than my computer, as convenient as my obscured filesystem allows anyway. | https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal |
| grayjay | i already use ublock origin on firefox, this is an android youtube client that just has ublock origin working all the time, includes a video downloader, and regularly updates to outsmart youtube's attempts to stop it from working. i really hope this app doesn't die because it's the one thing making youtube watchable these days. | https://grayjay.app/ |
| jellyfin | i'm not big about streaming services or their UIs but i will concede that this has worked pretty well for me to stream movies and tv shows from one computer to another. i appreciate that it downloads covers and episode previews and keeps my place between watching sessions. hardest part about setup was knowing how to use ipconfig on my host's console. | https://jellyfin.org/ |
| soulseek | look, all i'm saying is it's not just for music, it's great for sample packs and other types of media, including media that's hard to archive | you're on your own |
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