ai-ffmpeg-cli 0.2.3

AI-powered CLI that translates natural language to safe ffmpeg commands

🎬 ai-ffmpeg-cli

Stop Googling ffmpeg commands. Just describe what you want.

ai-ffmpeg-cli is an AI-powered CLI that translates natural language into safe, previewable ffmpeg commands. Built for developers, content creators, and anyone who works with media files but doesn't want to memorize complex syntax.

✨ Why ai-ffmpeg-cli?

• 🤖 AI-Native: Translate plain English to perfect ffmpeg commands
• 🔒 Safety First: Preview every command before execution
• ⚡ 10x Faster: Skip the documentation, Stack Overflow, and trial-and-error
• 🎯 Battle-Tested: Generates reliable, production-ready commands
• 🔄 Smart Defaults: Sensible codec and quality settings out of the box

# Instead of this...
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=1280:720" -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -b:v 2000k output.mp4

# Just say this... (cli command is different)
aiclip "convert input.mp4 to 720p with good quality"

🚀 Quick Start

Installation

# Install from PyPI
pip install ai-ffmpeg-cli

Setup

# Set your OpenAI API key
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-your-key-here"

# Or create a .env file
echo "OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-key-here" > .env

First Command

Interactive mode (type your request after launching):

aiclip

╭─────────────────────────────────────── Welcome to Interactive Mode ───────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                                                                                           │
│  ai-ffmpeg-cli v0.2.2                                                                                     │
│                                                                                                           │
│  AI-powered video and audio processing with natural language                                              │
│  Type your request in plain English and let AI handle the ffmpeg complexity!                              │
│                                                                                                           │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

               Available Media Files               
┏━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃  Type  ┃ Count ┃ Files                          ┃
┡━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Videos │   1   │ • input.mp4                    │
│ Images │   2   │ • logo.png                     │
│        │       │ • watermark.png                │
└────────┴───────┴────────────────────────────────┘

╭────────────────────────────────────────── Output Configuration ───────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ Output Directory: /path/to/your/aiclip                                                                    │
│ Generated files will be saved here                                                                        │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

aiclip> convert this video to 720p

┏━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓
┃ # ┃ Command                                      ┃ Output                                        ┃ Status ┃
┡━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩
│ 1 │ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=1280:720...    │ /path/to/your/aiclip/input_720p.mp4           │  New   │
└───┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────┘

╭────────────────────────────────────────── Confirmation Required ──────────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                                                                                           │
│  Run these commands?                                                                                      │
│                                                                                                           │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
 [y/n]: Using default: Y

Or run a one-shot command (no interactive prompt):

aiclip --dry-run "convert input.mp4 to 720p with good quality"

📖 Usage Examples

Video Processing

# Convert formats
aiclip "convert input.mov to mp4 with h264 and aac"

# Resize videos  
aiclip "downscale video.mp4 to 720p"
aiclip "make input.mp4 1080p resolution"

# Compress files
aiclip "compress large-video.mp4 to smaller size"
aiclip "reduce file size with CRF 23"

# Create animated GIFs
aiclip "convert input.mp4 to animated gif"
aiclip "create a 5 second animated gif from video.mp4"

Audio Operations

# Extract audio
aiclip "extract audio from movie.mp4 to mp3"
aiclip "get audio track from video as wav"

# Remove audio
aiclip "remove audio from video.mp4"

Trimming & Cutting

# Time-based cutting
aiclip "trim first 30 seconds from video.mp4"
aiclip "keep segment from 2:15 to 3:45 in input.mp4"
aiclip "cut out middle 5 minutes"

Image Extraction

# Thumbnails
aiclip "create thumbnail at 10 seconds from video.mp4"
aiclip "extract frame at 2:30 as PNG"

# Frame sequences
aiclip "extract one frame every 5 seconds"
aiclip "get all frames from video as images"

Advanced Operations

# Overlays
aiclip "add watermark logo.png to top-right of video.mp4"  
aiclip "overlay text on video at position 10:10"

# Batch processing
aiclip "convert all .mov files to .mp4"

🎛️ Command Line Options

# One-shot mode (no interaction)
aiclip "your command here"

# Skip confirmation prompts  
aiclip --yes "convert video.mp4 to 720p"

# Preview only (don't execute)
aiclip --dry-run "compress input.mp4"

# Use different AI model
aiclip --model gpt-4o-mini "extract audio"

# Increase timeout for complex requests
aiclip --timeout 120 "complex processing task"

# Verbose logging for troubleshooting
aiclip --verbose "your command"

# Specify custom output directory
aiclip --output-dir /path/to/output "convert video.mp4 to 720p"

Subcommands and option placement

You can also use the explicit nl subcommand. Put global options before the subcommand:

aiclip --yes nl "thumbnail at 10s from test.mp4"
aiclip --dry-run --model gpt-4o-mini nl "compress input.mp4"

Do not invoke the binary twice:

# Incorrect
aiclip aiclip --yes nl "..."

🔧 Configuration

aiclip uses environment variables and .env files for configuration:

# Required
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-openai-api-key

# Optional
AICLIP_MODEL=gpt-4o              # AI model to use
AICLIP_DRY_RUN=false            # Preview commands by default
AICLIP_OUTPUT_DIR=aiclip        # Default output directory

🎯 Smart Defaults & Safety

• Preview First: Every command is shown before execution
• Overwrite Protection: Warns before overwriting existing files
• Sensible Codecs: Automatically chooses h264+aac for MP4, libx265 for compression
• Stream Copy: Uses -c copy for trimming when possible (faster, lossless)
• Context Aware: Scans your directory to suggest input files and durations
• Organized Output: All generated files are saved to a dedicated output directory
• Duration Support: Automatically handles time-based requests (e.g., "5 second GIF")

📁 Output Directory Management

aiclip automatically organizes all generated files in a dedicated output directory:

# Default behavior - files saved to "aiclip" folder
aiclip "convert video.mp4 to 720p"
# Output: ./aiclip/video_720p.mp4

# Custom output directory
aiclip --output-dir /path/to/output "convert video.mp4 to 720p"
# Output: /path/to/output/video_720p.mp4

# Environment variable configuration
export AICLIP_OUTPUT_DIR=my_outputs
aiclip "convert video.mp4 to 720p"
# Output: ./my_outputs/video_720p.mp4

Benefits:

• 🗂️ Organized: All generated files in one place
• 🔍 Easy to find: No more searching through mixed directories
• 🧹 Clean workspace: Input files stay separate from outputs
• 📊 Progress tracking: See all your generated files at a glance

⏱️ Duration and Time Handling

aiclip intelligently handles time-based requests for video and GIF creation:

# Create GIFs with specific duration
aiclip "convert video.mp4 to 5 second animated gif"
aiclip "create a 10 second animated gif from input.mp4"

# Time-based video operations
aiclip "extract first 30 seconds from video.mp4"
aiclip "create 15 second clip from input.mp4"

# Thumbnails at specific times
aiclip "extract frame at 2:30 from video.mp4"
aiclip "create thumbnail at 10 seconds from input.mp4"

Supported time formats:

• Seconds: "5 second", "10s", "30 seconds"
• Time codes: "2:30", "1:45:30", "00:02:15"
• Duration: "5 second duration", "10 second clip"

📊 Supported Operations

Operation	Examples	ffmpeg Equivalent
Convert	"convert to mp4", "make it h264"	-c:v libx264 -c:a aac
Resize	"720p", "1920x1080", "scale to 50%"	-vf scale=1280:720
Compress	"make smaller", "CRF 28"	-c:v libx265 -crf 28
Extract Audio	"get audio as mp3"	-q:a 0 -map a
Trim	"first 30 seconds", "2:15 to 3:45"	-ss 00:02:15 -to 00:03:45
Thumbnail	"frame at 10s"	-ss 00:00:10 -vframes 1
Overlay	"watermark top-right"	-filter_complex overlay=W-w-10:10
Batch	"all *.mov files"	Shell loops with glob patterns
GIF Creation	"animated gif", "5 second gif"	-vf fps=10,scale=320:-1:flags=lanczos,split[s0][s1];[s0]palettegen[p];[s1][p]paletteuse -c:v gif

🛠️ Development

# Clone and setup
git clone https://github.com/d-k-patel/ai-ffmpeg-cli.git
cd ai-ffmpeg-cli
make setup

# Run tests
make test

# Check code quality  
make lint

# Try demo commands
make demo

📋 Requirements

• Python 3.10+ (uses modern type hints)
• ffmpeg installed and available in PATH
  • macOS: brew install ffmpeg
  • Ubuntu: sudo apt install ffmpeg
  • Windows: Download from ffmpeg.org
• OpenAI API key for natural language processing

🆘 Troubleshooting

Common Issues

"OPENAI_API_KEY is required"

# Set your API key
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-your-key-here"
# Or add it to .env file

"ffmpeg not found in PATH"

# Install ffmpeg
brew install ffmpeg          # macOS
sudo apt install ffmpeg      # Ubuntu
# Windows: download from ffmpeg.org

"Failed to parse natural language prompt"

• Try being more specific in your request
• Use --model gpt-4o for better accuracy
• Increase timeout with --timeout 120
• Check your internet connection

"No input files found"

• Ensure files exist in current directory
• Check file extensions match your request
• Use ls to verify available files

"Duration not applied to GIF/video"

• Be explicit about duration: "5 second animated gif"
• Use clear time specifications: "10 second video clip"
• Check that the AI model includes duration in the generated command

Getting Help

• 📖 Documentation: Full guides at [docs link]
• 💬 Discord: Join our community for real-time help
• 🐛 Issues: Report bugs on GitHub Issues
• 💡 Discussions: Feature requests and Q&A on GitHub Discussions

🤝 Contributing

We love contributions! Whether it's:

• 🐛 Bug reports and feature requests
• 📖 Documentation improvements
• 🧪 Test cases for edge scenarios
• 💻 Code contributions for new features
• 🎨 Examples and tutorials

See our Contributing Guide to get started.

📈 What's Next?

• 🔄 Batch Templates: Save and reuse complex workflows
• 🎛️ GUI Mode: Visual interface for non-CLI users
• ⚡ Local Models: Run without internet using local AI
• 🏢 Team Features: Shared commands and analytics
• 🔌 Integrations: GitHub Actions, Docker, CI/CD pipelines
• 🎬 Enhanced Duration Support: Better handling of time-based requests
• 📁 Advanced Output Management: Custom naming patterns and organization

📄 License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

⭐ Support

If aiclip saves you time, please:

• ⭐ Star this repository
• 🐦 Share on social media
• 📝 Write a review or blog post
• 💬 Tell your developer friends

---

Made with ❤️ by developers who got tired of Googling ffmpeg commands
_{🎬 Turn your words into perfect video commands}