FFmpeg Commander
Video Toolbox
A full-featured desktop application for video conversion, editing, color grading, and creative filmmaking — powered by FFmpeg, built with Python and GTK3.
FFmpeg is one of the most powerful media tools ever made, but its command line isn’t for everyone. FFmpeg Commander wraps all of that power into a visual interface anyone can use — drag in your files, pick your settings, and go.
What It Does
At its core, FFmpeg Commander takes video files in and produces converted, edited, graded, or assembled video files out. But it goes far beyond a simple converter.
🎬 Batch Video Conversion
Drop multiple files and convert them all at once. Choose from built-in presets like YouTube 1080p, YouTube 4K HEVC, or create your own custom presets. Hardware acceleration (VideoToolbox, NVENC) is auto-detected.
✏️ Edit — Cut + Text Overlay
Trim clips by setting start and end points. Add text overlays with custom fonts, sizes, positions, and timing. Preview your edits before rendering.
📷 B&W Film Emulation
Emulate classic black-and-white film stocks — Kodak Tri-X, Ilford HP5, ORWO, and more. Real LUT-based processing with per-channel controls and live preview.
🎨 Color LUT Grading
20 built-in color LUT profiles for cinematic looks. Compare LUTs side by side in a grid. Import your own .cube or .3dl LUT files for custom grading. Also, import other LUT files.
🎤 Director Workbench
An AI-assisted workspace that analyzes your clips and suggests creative directions: Alt Cuts, Auto-Highlight Reels, Montage sequences, and combined pipeline renders.
🗃 Holding Bin & Timeline
Collect clips in a visual bin, drag them into order, apply effects and transitions between clips, and render the assembled timeline as a single output file.
💾 Download from URL (yt-dlp)
Paste a YouTube or web video URL and download it directly into your project. Supports format selection, auto-batch queuing, and custom yt-dlp presets.
🔴 Screen Recording
Record your screen with system audio capture (BlackHole on macOS). Built-in controls for region selection, frame rate, and audio source.
🎥 GoPro Import
Auto-discovers GoPro media on mounted volumes. Browse clips in a thumbnail grid with hover preview and import directly into your workflow.
💬 Whisper Transcription
Transcribe audio from any video using OpenAI Whisper or faster-whisper. Generates subtitles and text files. Runs in an isolated virtual environment — no conflicts with your system Python.
♾ Watermark System
Design a watermark once and apply it across all your exports. Supports text and image watermarks with position, opacity, and size controls.
▶ Built-in Preview Player
Professional preview player with overlay controls, zoom, frame stepping, and timeline scrubbing. A separate timeline-aware player handles Holding Bin previews.
The Director Workbench
This is where FFmpeg Commander goes beyond conversion and into creative filmmaking.
See It In Action
HOWTO open first time App on a Mac – https://youtu.be/bAkgdLuTxd8
The Workbench analyzes your loaded clips — duration, scene changes, audio levels, visual content — and generates a set of creative suggestions you can render with one click:
- Alt Cuts — Alternative edit suggestions with different pacing, ordering, or emphasis. Re-roll for fresh ideas.
- Auto-Highlight Reel — Automatically selects the best moments from your footage and assembles a highlight video with transitions.
- Montage Builder — Combines clips into a stylized montage with configurable transitions and timing.
- LUT Suggestions — Recommends color grades that complement your footage, with a Compare LUTs grid for side-by-side evaluation.
- B&W Film Stock Matching — Suggests which classic film emulation best suits each clip’s tonal range.
- Pipeline Renders — Combine Montage + Highlight Reel into a single output file in one render pass.
- Custom LUT Import — Bring in your own .cube or .3dl files and apply them as presets.
Built With
- Python 3 — core language
- GTK 3 — native desktop UI
- FFmpeg — media processing engine
- FFprobe — media analysis
- yt-dlp — web video downloads
- frei0r — video effect plugins
- Whisper / faster-whisper — transcription
Runs On
FFmpeg Commander is cross-platform. Hardware acceleration is auto-detected per platform:
- macOS — Apple Silicon, VideoToolbox acceleration
- Windows — NVENC (NVIDIA) and CPU fallback, standard install file.
- Linux — VAAPI, NVENC, and CPU
Under the Hood
The application is a single-window GTK3 app with modular dialogs. Each major feature — editing, downloading, the Workbench, the Holding Bin, the B&W processor, screen recording — lives in its own module and communicates back through shared state.
At 55,000+ lines of Python across 40+ files, it’s a substantial codebase that’s been iteratively built and refined.
FFmpeg Commander Video Toolbox — 2026