[HN Gopher] Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative
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Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative
Many years ago, I made VJ softwares (to mix live visuals in clubs)
for unexpected platforms like the Game Boy Advance, the Playstation
2 and the Raspberry Pi. This year, I'm back with a new web-app:
Pikimov. Inspired by Photopea (a free Photoshop clone), I created
this web-based motion design & video editor as an alternative to
After Effects, to fill empty void. It's free, without signup,
without cloud uploads (your files stay on your machine), and your
projects are not used for AI models training.
Author : clementpiki
Score : 737 points
Date : 2024-07-01 08:57 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pikimov.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pikimov.com)
| n3storm wrote:
| Site and brand looks amazing and it's like something that really
| can compete with AE. Best of the lucks and I hope you will make
| it open source some day and make it work on Firefox :D
| Melatonic wrote:
| Nuke blows AE out of the water but is mainly only used by
| professionals
| Keyframe wrote:
| There's overlap in comp, for which people use Nuke. No one
| does motion graphics AND comp in Nuke. Closest would be
| Fusion and Flame.
| fl0id wrote:
| Wow looks cool. Now if only it could be used in Firefox. And yeah
| I know it doesn't have some chrome-only things. But afaik that's
| mostly because google/chrome does what ever they want, and there
| is no such thing as standards anymore apparently.
| cloogshicer wrote:
| Wow, this looks really amazing! Must've been a lot of work.
| pointlessone wrote:
| So... What are the features vital that only available in Chrome?
| bnt wrote:
| Not OP but guessing: easier to build/test/debug in Chrome for
| starters, and if it gains traction try to fix cross-browser
| bugs. Especially if this is a 1 person show.
| AshleysBrain wrote:
| WebCodecs and File System Access API I believe. Both pretty
| essential for an app designed for editing large video files
| from disk.
| clementpiki wrote:
| Yes, File System Access API is the main issue with Firefox
| gatinsama wrote:
| Great idea and the product looks great. I looked everywhere for a
| suitable substitute for AE and there was none.
| briandear wrote:
| DaVinci, Apple Motion
| skrebbel wrote:
| DaVinci Resolve has a very generous free version. It's enormous
| but also powerful.
| rabf wrote:
| As well as the already Davinci Resolve there is Natron:
|
| https://natrongithub.github.io/
|
| "Open Source Compositing Software For VFX and Motion Graphics."
| ottorocket wrote:
| Funny how "No AI" has become an feature. As someone how doesn't
| know anything about motion design, this looks great!
| smolder wrote:
| The other day I recommended someone try out pixlr as a free
| image editor, as I remember it being a nice tool, and they told
| me "I don't want an AI tool. I hate AI." I was confused, went
| to the site, and saw it is plastered with adverts for some AI
| image generation features. The actual editor seems buried.
| People do NOT like having AI stuff shoved in their face. The
| investors out there pushing every company to develop an AI
| strategy or whatever are misguided.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > People do NOT like having AI stuff shoved in their face
|
| People don't like having bad or unhelpful AI features crammed
| into products but seeing the growth of ChatGPT, Midjourney,
| Adobe Generative Fill, Udio and Luma people definitely do
| like AI that actually works.
| Kye wrote:
| The ML-based similar sound search in Live 12 has been a
| huge help. It replaced searching for the right percussion
| sound with a button on the drum rack that moves through
| similar sounds at an instrument or rack level. I can also
| use it to search for similar Foley to add variety in the
| textures that tie the track together.
| tigeroil wrote:
| You say that but in my experience the same kinds of people
| who will say that are also the kinds of people who
| demonstrably don't actually even know what AI is.
|
| They're the same types who'll insist that DALL-E is just
| making collages of other artists' work, for example.
| rootlocus wrote:
| It's a black box that takes human produced artwork without
| consent and spits out superficial mediocre content a dime a
| dozen. It also takes away developer time and focus from
| other aspects of the software. I don't think you need to
| understand the algorithms underneath to have a problem with
| that.
| andybak wrote:
| It's possible to be a reasonable, thoughtful person and
| disagree with aspects of what you just wrote.
|
| Personally I dislike being morally steamrollered on
| complex, nuanced topics.
| spookie wrote:
| I think it's important to contextualize the situation. The
| Adobe TOS were updated, and people where understandably
| concerned over the rights Adobe now has over private
| customer data. The biggest issue was this part: "Licenses
| to Your Content. Solely for the purposes of operating or
| improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-
| exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license,
| to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify,
| create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and
| translate the Content."
|
| People looked at this and immediately assumed this was
| added to allow Adobe to train models with people's private
| work.
|
| Adobe has now updated their TOS, but this was a breach of
| trust.
|
| Either way, in the end, this potential AI threat is just
| another reason to not store stuff in the "cloud".
| latexr wrote:
| > You say that but in my experience the same kinds of
| people who will say that are also the kinds of people who
| demonstrably don't actually even know what AI is.
|
| Funny. In my experience AFK it is the people who use AI
| that have zero idea what it is and think answers can be
| blindly trusted. The ones who don't like it can enumerate
| the drawbacks clearly.
| Kye wrote:
| The pro and anti sides of generative text and generative
| art seem to be completely separate, so I don't think they
| can be mixed up like this. On the generative art side, I
| find the users to be well-versed while the artists who
| worry about it are currently deleting years of posted
| work to reupload with questionable anti-AI tools like
| Glaze long after that art has already been scraped and
| trained on.
|
| FWIW I'm on the pro-artist side and anti-the current
| state of things, and wish we could start over with a
| collaboration between technologists and artists rather
| than each side having nothing but sneering contempt for
| the other.
| rgbrgb wrote:
| Very interesting marketing development but I do not at all
| understand why that would be a feature. Would love someone to
| explain.
|
| "No crypto" labels in the last cycle made sense to me. Similar
| to "no ads", it points to the business model incentives and how
| the product is intended to evolve over time.
|
| Conversely, "no ai" feels like a very fuzzy line around which
| editing features will be included (smart lasso tool? object
| tracking to frame shots? background / foreground selection?).
| beardyw wrote:
| I feel like that web only is a positive way forward. If only it
| was possible to _prove_ nothing goes back to the server I think
| it would gain a lot more trust.
|
| Though companies who want to see your data might not be so keen.
|
| On my phone, but will try it out when I get home.
| robxorb wrote:
| Some crypto wallets, facing similar concerns but with I suppose
| higher stakes, will provide the user download a local copy of
| the software, load offline a private tab, close it when done
| and only then, go back online again.
|
| A bit fiddly for sure - but seems comprehensive enough.
| beardyw wrote:
| Needs browser support really. Probably harder than we
| imagine.
| lifty wrote:
| There should be an electron local app for running offline
| web apps. Shouldn't be too hard to build.
| creshal wrote:
| Desktop browsers have surprisingly reasonable support for
| offline PWAs and integrate them as desktop shortcuts etc.
| Better than Android and iOS, in my experience, although
| neither is a hard bar to clear.
| AshleysBrain wrote:
| > If only it was possible to prove nothing goes back to the
| server
|
| That's an interesting question, but I think it's also equally
| difficult to prove for non-browser software.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| On macs I feel like little snitch or LuLu are the norm. I
| wonder why, given that Windows and windows apps are
| historically more inclined to install stuff you don't want.
| Anyway, both are outgoing network monitors/firewalls and it's
| one of the first things I install on a new system.
| fl0id wrote:
| Pretty sure they are very far from the norm, in % of Mac
| users
| bananamerica wrote:
| No making any accusations but I used Little Snitch
| extensively at a shop that didn't pay licenses for either
| Final Cut or the Adobe Suite.
| _flux wrote:
| Why do you say it's equally difficult? By limiting network
| operations of a local application you can indeed prove this,
| as long as you trust the facilities provided by the operating
| system.
|
| With web applications doing the same is more difficult,
| because you _need_ to pass some requests, and some requests
| need to pass while others could be smuggling data.
| MitPitt wrote:
| What about just turning off your network?
| latexr wrote:
| That means you have to keep the network off for as long as
| you're using the app, which is inconvenient.
| Mashimo wrote:
| In chrome you can turn off the network per tab.
| 42lux wrote:
| In Firefox I use this extension for the same purpose
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/work-
| offline-...
| sadops wrote:
| This only works on Google's OS, Chrome.
| sadops wrote:
| What about programs that run on your computer so you don't
| even need the Internet for them?
| PetitPrince wrote:
| Naive answer: isn't the browser network tab enough?
| langcss wrote:
| It only shows past behaviour so not completely a proof that
| nothing could be sent.
| Kye wrote:
| In which browser? It's a live view in Chrome and Firefox.
| Zambyte wrote:
| "Live view" means a log of the past, not potential
| futures.
| Kye wrote:
| I don't know what you're on about, but it does show the
| past and any new network activity.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Yes. Exactly. It omits future network calls (things that
| have not yet happened by the moment you look), which is
| what the person you were replying to was talking about.
| Kye wrote:
| It does not omit future network calls. You can, in fact,
| use the network tab to monitor a page's ongoing network
| activity as originally suggested.
| recursive wrote:
| You won't be able to see that activity until _after_ it
| has happened. An empty network monitor list isn 't a
| guarantee of future behavior. Or current behavior.
| Kye wrote:
| Okay. Then solve p=np. Until then, we monitor and reverse
| engineer to verify as best we can.
| recursive wrote:
| It doesn't need to be that hard. A reasonable solution is
| to quarantine the tab/app. Proactively revoke its network
| access after its loaded.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > It does not omit future network calls.
|
| It does.
|
| > You can, in fact, use the network tab to monitor a
| page's ongoing network activity as originally suggested.
|
| Did you forget that this comment chain was about leaking
| data to the server? Observing that you have leaked (note:
| past tense!) your data is not a recommended way to
| prevent leaking data.
| Kye wrote:
| >> _" It does."_
|
| I am sitting here looking at a new entry added from a
| button click that creates a network call. Either you are
| wrong or confused about what the discussion is about.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Was the entry added before or after you clicked the
| button?
| aaarrm wrote:
| They're saying you won't know until after a request is
| already sent, and seem to be implying that this somehow
| stops someone from learning if data is sent to the server
| or not. I think they've forgotten the original point of
| this thread because their replies are missing the point
| Kye wrote:
| I'm not sure. The impression I get is they're not aware
| that the tab isn't just a log of stuff before the page
| "finishes" loading, or not aware that the notion of a
| static page that can't make network requests at any time
| without a full reload went out with AJAX in the 2000s.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Serious question: do you think wireguard is an antivirus
| software? Do you think antivirus software does not exist?
|
| Reading a historic log that shows you have been pwned
| does not prevent you from being pwned. It's the wrong
| tool for the job.
| langcss wrote:
| Yes you are right. There is nothing wrong with the
| network tab in those browsers but you may not reach all
| code paths in your quick (or lengthy) test.
|
| Future behaviour may be different.
|
| Also on the web code can change. Either the site owner or
| by a hacker. There is value in checking network requests
| if you need to but it isn't fool proof.
| Timon3 wrote:
| I've long wished for something like OpenBSDs pledge to be
| available in browsers, ideally both through meta tags and
| through JS APIs. Once a pledge is made, the resource will be
| unavailable to the page until it's closed, like:
|
| - I pledge to only make network connections to X, Y and Z
|
| - I pledge to only make GET requests to
| http://example.com/foo/*
|
| - I pledge not to use canvas, iFrames or storage APIs
|
| This info wouldn't be immediately useful to most users, but it
| could massively help experienced users with trusting local
| utilities.
| gwervc wrote:
| >- I pledge to only make GET requests to
| http://example.com/foo/*
|
| Doesn't solve any trust issue since data can be send as part
| of the URL, and the backend response can change at will.
| Timon3 wrote:
| That was just an example - it fully solves trust issues if
| the pledge is "only make GET requests to exactly
| example.com/favicon.ico or example.com/style.css". This way
| you can't send any data (as there's no body, and encoded
| data wouldn't match the URLs).
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Serenity OS also makes use of pledge. The episode in which
| Andreas kicks it off was delightful to watch.
| Tajnymag wrote:
| What you are describing are essentially an extended version
| of various security http headers.
|
| * first requirement can already be done using Content-
| Security-Policy header
|
| * haven't found a suitable header for the second requirement
|
| * third requirement can be done with Permissions-Policy
| header
| Timon3 wrote:
| That's partially true, but it would be important for this
| to both work without a server, and at runtime.
|
| Not relying on a server makes this functionality available
| for downloaded sites. I'm a big fan of offering single file
| builds for web utilities, and the pledge should be part of
| that build instead of something the user supplies.
|
| Having this as a runtime API would enable easier
| integration - say I'm developing a video editor that needs
| some WASM blobs. It might be a lot easier to load the blobs
| and pledge no further network access than having the URLs
| known on the server-side.
| dartos wrote:
| Why do you think web only is positive?
|
| 15 years from now, will this site still be up?
|
| Will you be able to open your projects from today, then?
|
| I think web only is a really compelling way to get someone to
| try a product, but I'd much rather install a tool like this.
| Unless you could host the site yourself, of course.
| thiht wrote:
| Honestly there's 2 situations:
|
| - if the tool is updated continuously for 15 years it'll
| still be up
|
| - if it's not updated, it will be technically irrelevant
| anyway and you'll have switched to another tool by then
|
| Future support is overrated for tools, just use one now and
| worry about tomorrow later.
| jbstack wrote:
| Strong disagree on the second point. I don't want the
| choice of whether I switch tools to be based on an
| arbitrary factor such as when a website suddenly doesn't
| exist anymore. I might be very heavily invested into that
| tool in terms of project files, learning curves, workflow
| integration etc. I also might be in the middle of something
| very important with a deadline at the moment that I'm
| unable to access the site.
|
| Other points that weren't raised - I want to be free to
| work in situations where I have poor or no internet e.g.
| when traveling.
|
| Tying tools down to whether or not a website is available
| and you have reliable internet access is a huge step
| backwards in my opinion.
| glenneroo wrote:
| Winamp would like to have a word with you :) Granted I'm
| using the latest release from 2018, but I still sometimes
| load up v2.x released in 1998 just to show people that 25+
| year old software still works just fine... even the AVS
| visualizer and Shoutcast internet radio features work,
| which is to me just insane.
|
| I also use older software quite often that has long since
| been updated, such as older versions of Audacity, Ableton,
| Adobe Premiere, etc. for various reasons such as: not
| wanting to spend money, avoiding spyware, ads (see: Windows
| 11), and other bloat which often IMO negatively outweighs
| the positivity of new features. There are a lot of other
| small utilities that I still use that are 10+ years old
| because they still work fine and I know how to use them
| blind-folded. There are also tools that haven't received
| updates in many years but still work great, why would I
| bother to look for something new that potentially will spy
| on me and not offer the same functionality?
| thiht wrote:
| We're not talking about Winamp. A more accurate
| comparison is the Adobe CS suite: no one use CS5 anymore.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Web only does bring with it the notion of web scale
| rendering. Cloud render farms are already a thing, so it
| would be a compelling feature. Lots of video acquisition is
| already cloud based, so the footage is already there. There
| are still plenty of times where the render stage takes enough
| time that rendering on my local single machine is not
| pleasant.
| beardyw wrote:
| I see what you mean, but I'm not using anything from 15 years
| ago today apart from Linux.
| cush wrote:
| You're using a 15 year old version of Linux?
| sadops wrote:
| In what way? Good luck using this thing if the network is down,
| or if the website is down, or if DNS is down, or if the domain
| expires, or if the author disappears. A program you download
| and run is yours forever, a website can disappear tomorrow, or
| get acquired and get enshittified. It happens every single
| time, and then there's a thousand-comment thread here, until
| the next web app that everyone loves, and the cycle repeats
| itself. Do we never learn? Am I taking crazy pills?
|
| Break the cycle.
| mdrzn wrote:
| Looks very good! Will give it a try whenever I need a quick video
| edit on the fly.
| notachatbot1234 wrote:
| It says "Privacy respected" but there are Google Ads and
| Analytics included.
| smolder wrote:
| With ads/analytics, Google and the site operator know you're
| hitting certain pages at certain times, but assuming what they
| wrote under "privacy respected" is true, none of your content
| is uploaded.
|
| That's an important distinction to make especially for a
| browser based app. It's also a very low bar IMO, but one that
| many other companies aren't clearing anymore, like MS, Adobe,
| and others.
| aloisdg wrote:
| it is so easy to avoid Google analytics as a product
| developer nowadays that this is really a misplay (e.g.
| goatcounter, etc.)
| liquidise wrote:
| It is so easy to avoid GA as a web user that i'm surprised
| anyone concerned about this isn't using an blocker that
| blocks GA scripts and requests themselves.
| clementpiki wrote:
| Without Analytics, I'm blind: I can't tell which feature are
| popular and which aren't. I need those infos to undertand where
| I should focus, what are users the more interested in. By
| "Privacy respected", I meant that I am not asking you for your
| email, your name, and what you do on the editor stays on your
| machine: no cloud uploads of your files.
| creshal wrote:
| > Without Analytics, I'm blind: I can't tell which feature
| are popular and which aren't.
|
| There's plenty of alternatives to google analytics though.
| This sort of basic breakdown could be done with goaccess (or
| an awk one-liner); plausible, matomo or simple analytics
| would be decent options that cover most reasonable
| requirements.
| latexr wrote:
| > Without Analytics, I'm blind: I can't tell which feature
| are popular and which aren't. I need those infos to undertand
| where I should focus, what are users the more interested in.
|
| I have a suggestion which has always served me well: Ask. Or
| don't even ask, users will tell you what they want anyway.
| Analytics will only give you skewed information, as you are
| unable to distinguish the popularity of a feature is due to
| its usefulness, its prominence, or a general lack of clarity.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| That's a totally reasoble way to do it, but it leaves you
| with other blindspots People will tell you what they want
| anyway but also, sometimes people aren't aware of what they
| want or need
|
| Non visible parts of aproject tend to get neglected a lot
| more if you just ask your users What will get more people
| talking to you, a 10% speed up split among many small
| interactions, or a visual glitch that doesn't affect
| usability but it's front and center?
| notachatbot1234 wrote:
| What exactly is tracked though? What information about my
| videos and my usage patterns are send to Google?
|
| It would be great if you could use a self-hosted analytics
| platform instead! :)
|
| And I would strongly advise not to develop based on anonymous
| analytics, users might tell you different desires if you ask
| them and use completely different workflows if added.
| Optimizing for web analytis metrics has ruined many projects.
| billconan wrote:
| but I think each browser tab has a memory limit of 4gb? this
| means a web based video editor can only work on short clips?
| atum47 wrote:
| Bump for interest
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Lots of factors at play that makes your assumption not
| necessarily correct.
|
| I.e. 1. Newer API such as directory access, which would let the
| app utilize something like swap as necessarily. And only ever
| loading the data it can currently handle from the filesystem
| (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/File_System...)
|
| 2. Input doesn't necessarily have to be RAW/8k. You get several
| h of 1080p AV1 video within 4gb.
|
| I think it ultimately depends on how much effort the Devs wants
| to invest to support large video inputs. If none is invested,
| then your assumption would be true.
|
| I was unable to find the source code, so I wasn't able to check
| for myself. We'll have to wait for the author to chime in, if
| they're willing.
| rootlocus wrote:
| 1. Swapping to disk would kill the performance to an
| unnacceptable level.
|
| 2. I'm assuming video editing software works on a raw format
| in memory with access to individual frames? Just like
| Photoshop would need access to individual pixels from an
| importend JPEG, the actual canvas uses a lot more memory than
| the compressed input format.
| clementpiki wrote:
| That's correct, access to each pixel of each video frame is
| needed. Each video frame must be inflated from its codec
| compression.
| clementpiki wrote:
| While doing my testings, it does not appear that a tab is
| limited to 4GB. A typical project in After Effects is not
| longer than a few minutes of duration. Let's say you work on a
| 2 hours movie, each AE project would be about a 1 minute shot
| where sfx need to be applied. Pikimov was created with the same
| behavior in mind, not made to edit a full movie in one go
| billconan wrote:
| some say the default limit is now 12gb
|
| https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40691287
| jsheard wrote:
| WASM memories do have a hard 4GB limit, at least until the
| 64bit extension lands, but there's nothing technically stopping
| a tab from using more than that as a whole _if_ the
| implementation chooses to allow it. I just tried creating a
| dozen TypedArrays of 1GB each and Chrome didn 't panic, and the
| heap profiler shows ~12GB allocated as expected. Mobile
| browsers are much more strict about memory though so don't
| expect those to be so forgiving.
| ohthatsnotright wrote:
| I had a Macintosh Quadra 660AV that had 16MB of RAM and was
| able to edit multiple-gigabytes of video. Not everything needs
| to be in memory all of the time to effectively edit video in a
| non-linear fashion.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Video editing is generally not done in memory at all. The
| videos themselves sit on disk and are played back from disk,
| and the desired cuts/effects are composited on the fly.
|
| For speed, an editing app may also produce lower-res versions
| in memory for quick seeking and smooth playback, as a kind of
| quick preview. But that's easy to control how much memory you
| allocate for that, and even those previews can be stored or
| cached on disk.
|
| Video editing is not especially memory-bound on modern
| machines. It's much more CPU/GPU-bound when it comes to
| applying effects, and IO-bound (including decoding-bound) when
| it comes to larger videos like 4K and 8K.
| bluelightning2k wrote:
| As a developer it's rare to see something which leaves me feeling
| "how would you even build something like that..." but this is one
| of those. Huge cudos for even attempting and following through
| with something like this!
| suyash wrote:
| You start by building your knowledge around computer graphics
| and modern web development, basically WebGL and modern web APIs
| have made doing sophisticated graphic applications on the
| browser. Only limitation right now I see is single threaded
| limitation on the browser.
| ptsd_dalmatian wrote:
| What about workers? Isn't it basically the same as offloading
| computation heavy work to separate thread? Also, we have
| WebAssembly. Afaik, js threads can now share memory using
| SharedArrayBuffers. So I don't think we have this single
| thread limitation anymore :)
| noduerme wrote:
| Idk about this specific app, but the main problem with
| workers is that any data their working on needs to be
| copied in or side-loaded into them once they spin up. I
| imagine for huge video files, having each worker load up a
| separate copy could be a bottleneck.
| mclightning wrote:
| you follow HN, and some guy posts a video editing js library,
| another guy builds an app taking that library further, you get
| inspired and build something even bigger.
| earthtograndma wrote:
| I notice it's written in Ember, which is billed as the
| framework for ambitious web developers -- in this case, it
| definitely checks out.
| swyx wrote:
| yeah i'm gonna need a TLDR of the major moving parts. how do
| you even do video editing in the browser? is there a "ffmpeg in
| the browser"? is that the basic building block?
| atum47 wrote:
| I was well on my way to create a software like this [1], it
| started out as a flash clone, but since I didn't define any scope
| it started to look like after effects, on the back end I mean,
| never actually wrote a single line of code for the UI.
|
| Are you planning on creating a company out of this? Are you going
| to monetize it?
|
| 1 -
| https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pnEx5_eGm9BbCp2ZTj6LT...
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Can you please clarify, which exactly key features are missing
| from Firefox that make this app say 'use Chrome or Edge'?
| ayhanfuat wrote:
| From the FAQ:
|
| > Why no Firefox support Firefox is my daily web browser. As a
| web developper, I always make sure my work is comptatible with
| all major browsers. But you can guess a web based video editor
| is a complex task to achieve, and Pikimov uses several key
| features that only exist in Chrome, Edge, and maybe Opera, and
| maybe, maybe, Brave. That's why Pikimov cannot currently work
| on Firefox (as of today: v127), there's nothing I can do to fix
| this, it is just not possible. For the curious ones, here are
| some of the web API Pikimov requires, but are missing from
| Firefox: - audio data - window showsavefilepicker -
| videoencoder Note: There is no Safari support due to similar
| obstacles.
|
| https://pikimov.com/faq/
| rom1v wrote:
| For AudioData and VideoEncoder, it should be possible to
| enable webcodecs by setting dom.media.webcodecs.enabled to
| true in about:config.
|
| - https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-
| dev/blob/af09c55c0e6253ba8f...
|
| - https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-
| dev/blob/af09c55c0e6253ba8f...
| jampekka wrote:
| For VideoEncoder at least there's also a polyfill using
| WASM compiled libav (aka ffmpeg).
|
| https://github.com/ennuicastr/libavjs-webcodecs-polyfill
| AshleysBrain wrote:
| As I mentioned in another comment, in short, WebCodecs and File
| System Access API I believe. Both pretty essential for an app
| designed for editing large video files from disk.
| uh_uh wrote:
| The fact that he's a solo dev giving his project away for free
| (even for a limited time) is a good enough reason.
| martin293 wrote:
| We are not doubting his reasons. We were interested in why.
| sadops wrote:
| Probably the same features that computers have had since the
| 1960s, but nobody writes native applications anymore. Guess
| I'll have to pass on this one. I wish Chrome weren't the only
| operating system people chose to write software for.
| jampekka wrote:
| IME the features are often mostly there same but there are
| small implementation differences/bugs at least in the newer
| APIs. Firefox is no more buggy (often less), but it's easier to
| code for one set of bugs. Safari is by far the worst.
|
| I use Firefox for all my browsing, but do web app development
| with and for Chromium. I'd gladly do it for Firefox, but
| people, especially users, suck and sometimes one has to accept
| this.
|
| Glad to see no time is wasted for Safari/iOS support. It's a
| huge waste of time and people using Apple devices are to blame.
| Aldo_MX wrote:
| Why the entitled tone demanding "to clarify which exactly key
| features"?
|
| It is the right of developers to say "I don't want to support
| your browser" and you should respect that decision even if you
| disagree with it.
|
| As a reality check, see this ticket:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936
|
| It took Firefox 17 years of back and forth with developers to
| add parity with an Internet Explorer feature that Chrome
| supported since version 1. This late in the game IE is already
| dead for good.
|
| Not everybody has infinite time or infinite money to support
| Firefox, as an aside, you knew what you signed up for when you
| made Firefox your main browser.
|
| So please, change the "clarify why you don't support Firefox"
| tone with "I want to make the site work with Firefox, how can I
| help you?". And good luck making the Firefox team change their
| mind when they decide not to support X feature, because it is
| also their right to do not implement the whole spectrum of
| features that Chrome supports.
| padenot wrote:
| I (Firefox developer working on anything media related) got in
| contact with the dev on Twitter, and he told me that Web Codecs
| was missing (and we're shipping this in a month or so, it's
| been in Nightly for some time), and something to save project
| file to disk (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/Window/show...).
|
| So I spoofed the user-agent in a nightly build here on my Linux
| desktop workstation, then had to alias one method that we
| should have implemented years ago but only have with a `moz`
| prefix (`HTMLMediaElement.mozCaptureStream`). This is on us to
| fix.
|
| Then it looks like a worker script is served with the `Content-
| Type` `text/html` instead of `application/javascript` or
| something like that. We also have a pref flip to bypass that
| check, so I did that, but this is on the dev to fix.
|
| When you do this it works, I've loaded project demos containing
| videos, audio, various things composited on top, scrubbed the
| timeline aggressively in a debug build, moved things around in
| various bits of the interface and also in the rendering frame,
| etc., things seem to work as they should, perf is as I'd expect
| it to be (and again, I'm running it in a debug build with
| optimizations disabled for anything media related, enabled for
| other parts of the browser).
|
| What's missing is `window.showSaveFilePicker` and file system
| related stuff. It's possible to use
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...
| instead (that we ship, e.g. Photoshop on the Web uses it). We
| think that it's much less scary than giving access to the file
| system to a content process of a Web browser. Maybe because
| videos can sometimes be extremely big files, direct access to
| the FS could be of use there. Thankfully, we also ship
| extremely modern video encoders to make them tiny instead, but
| that's currently a limitation Firefox has, for better or worse.
|
| https://paul.cx/public/pikimov-firefox-nightly.webm
| clementpiki wrote:
| Wow, so you do have a workaround for the missing
| window.showSaveFilePicker, that's promising!
| jesup wrote:
| Probably the dev needs to use a different method to save
| (effectively download), much as Adobe Photoshop does when
| it exports files on Firefox. Not hard to do at all. Likely
| the same for reading files, if this tool needs that.
|
| OPFS provides high-speed read and write for temporary files
| and non-exported files; again this is what Photoshop uses.
| There is a 10GB limit per domain currently. I'm not sure
| this particular app actually needs that, though
| mrandish wrote:
| Thanks for taking the time to investigate what's currently
| the gap with FF. As a long-time Firefox user, I'm hoping you
| can guide this dev regarding ways to get things working from
| his end while also using this app's needs to inform FF
| improvements from your end.
| dorkwood wrote:
| Is there an option for custom ease curves, like a graph editor? I
| love the idea of an After Effects alternative, but if it only has
| a few simple ease functions to choose from I can't see myself
| using it much, sadly.
| clementpiki wrote:
| Not yet, but it has already been asked several times, so I'll
| keep that in mind. There's balance hard to find: should I try
| to make it as complete as AE, or make it a simpler so it's more
| accessible.
| alt227 wrote:
| If you are advertising it as an after effects alternative
| (which it looks like you are) then you should be trying to
| include all features that after effects has.
| dewey wrote:
| If most people use 20% of the features of an app, and you
| create an app that covers these most popular feature really
| well I think it's fair to call it an alternative. It
| doesn't say "full clone" or "feature parity".
| clementpiki wrote:
| I could not seriously pretend of a 'feature parity', if I
| can match 10% of features, that should good enough for
| most users. I'm not expecting the next Marvel movie to
| get its SFXs done with PIkimov.
| vlugorilla wrote:
| this is awesome. I hope some video editor comes up that can
| compete with Premiere. Then with pikimov and photopea, I could
| totally ditch Adobe for one. Have you considered open sourcing
| the app to benefit from contributors and build a community?
| akanet wrote:
| There are many editors that compete with Premiere, which at
| this point is a janky unusable mess for me. Resolve has been a
| joy to work with.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Few realize that for many AE is the real jewel in the Adobe
| crown, Photoshop and Illustrator and Premier all have viable
| alternatives. AE however stands alone as the only tool with it's
| unique feature set.
|
| Yeah other compositing tools exist but they lack the
| animation/mograph tools of AE, or animation tools exist but lack
| the scripting/filters/compositing.
| david033 wrote:
| Nice, but too many animations/chaos on the landing page for my
| taste. Keep it simple.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Can I export projects to use in other places? Or import projects
| from other places? Blender comes to mind.
|
| But also, I would like to use motion graphics in an app where the
| software engineers don't have to re-implement each asset in code.
| alok-g wrote:
| Side comment:
|
| Comparing a web-based software that runs on your own computer vs.
| installing a (say native) software and frequently updating, isn't
| it interesting that the former is faster to do? When using a web-
| based software to ru on your own machine, you are effectively,
| momentarily, installing it and are able to uninstall by clearing
| the cache.
| conception wrote:
| Well, it's rarely "running" on your machine but is just a
| client for the server it is running on.
| sbarre wrote:
| The app is client-side Javascript, it's most definitely
| "running" on your machine.
| crazygringo wrote:
| And when you start a web app you might not even be "installing"
| 5% of the code, which is great for speed.
|
| You can load+interpret JavaScript files dynamically as the user
| accesses certain features.
| whartung wrote:
| This is just a testament to the maturity of the platform, and
| the work that has gone into the portable engine segment.
|
| Targeting Chrome targets all of the platforms, and the machines
| and platform is "fast enough" to do the job without having to
| dig deep into specific nature of the platforms.
|
| It also leverages, I'm assuming, the deep knowledge the
| developer has of doing other things for the browser platform.
|
| They probably could have targeted some other portable GUI
| toolkit, but this was more familiar. It may well be an even
| smoother experience than using other cross platform GUI
| toolkits, plus, of course, the platform is free.
|
| Finally, distribution is familiar and likely easier, it's truly
| cross platform (no need to build executable on the individual
| platforms, even if its all from the same source base), etc.
|
| No bundling, no signing, no app stores. Just a URL shared in a
| tweet and you're on your way. If it was OSS, it could be parked
| on a Github page for all eternity.
|
| Overall, it's a really attractive platform for developers, just
| not yet fully embraced I think, as client based applications I
| mean.
| kennydude wrote:
| Looks fantastic, and the comment about Photopea. Photopea is such
| a gem, and can't wait for their Vectorpea to launch as it's got
| me out of trouble so many times when I don't need an Adobe
| license for opening a file once a month or so (I just wish
| Photopea was OpenSource)
| clementpiki wrote:
| You will be happy to learn vectorpea.com has been online for
| many monthes already
| kennydude wrote:
| ah nice :) will have to give it a go someday when i need to
| deal with an illustrator file
| anovc wrote:
| looks impressive!
|
| What are your plans for further development? I guess for this
| complex project to evolve in order to meet the needs of the
| professional users it will require lots of
| work/team/resources/etc.
|
| Do you plan to monetize it somehow in the future? or how are you
| going to sustain it?
|
| Another free alternative to AE (targeted at more casual users)
| that comes to mind is CapCut... which is obviously a ByteDance
| product. And they already offer tons of features for free, so the
| competition could be tough...
| kypro wrote:
| Given it's free, it might be worth open source the project, or
| at least opening it up to community plugins so that community
| can build & fund additional functionality.
| wdb wrote:
| Doesn't seem to work in Safari?
| alfl23 wrote:
| I really hope you charge money for it and make it awesome, it's
| about time Adobe gets disrupted and this is a wonderful idea!
|
| It will take significant resources, cash and teams to make this
| into a serious contender, and folks that have problems to solve
| will always be happy to pay decent dollars for great software.
| majani wrote:
| He's clearly trying to follow the photopea playbook and make
| money through ads
| martin-adams wrote:
| This is a very nice project and any competition to After Effects
| is very welcome.
|
| One model I'd love to see is a web based front end, but all video
| processing happens in the backend.
|
| Then ship the app as a combined front/backend, or just the front
| end that connects to a remote backend. That backend could be a
| server in a studio with beefed up specs, or offloaded to the
| cloud for solo animators working on complex projects.
|
| Seeing a project like this give me hope that we could decouple
| what the app does, vs how to control the app.
| langitbiru wrote:
| A good idea is the backend or the cloud could be a paid feature
| for this application.
| pier25 wrote:
| This model would be great even for some desktop apps. Imagine
| you could offload rendering Blender projects to the cloud
| automatically.
| clementpiki wrote:
| Don't they call it 'render farms'? I will add cloud features,
| I don't want to deal with massive files hosting. Maybe login
| box to G. Drive or 1Drive could be a solution.
| martin-adams wrote:
| It's more subtle than that, imagine being able to edit a high
| poly count mesh on a low spec machine. So not just final
| rendering, but really the main application state. This is
| what something like After Effects could benefit from.
|
| When I tested a full ray-traced FPS demo in the browser and
| never noticed that the render was done server side, that's
| when I believed this is possible.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Very cool! Although other more complex open source solutions
| exist, for me the sweet spot between capable and not overwhelming
| is perfect. I prefer Photopea over Photoshop for that same reason
| (..just don't go crazy on the anti-adblocker like Photopea did)
| tombert wrote:
| Which open source solutions exists as an alternative to After
| Effects?
| jdiff wrote:
| AFAIK, the only thing that can even be stretched in a motion
| direction is Blender, but an AE alternative it is not.
| emigrantdd wrote:
| also interested
| bibelo wrote:
| I heard of Natron, looks promising but it seems slow
|
| https://natrongithub.github.io/
| gaudystead wrote:
| +1 for Photopea.com. I don't even bother with Adobe anymore. I
| just wish their subscription could be implemented on a usage
| basis instead of time based because I use it off and on but the
| ad blocking is occurring on the network level via a PiHole, and
| I'm not turning all of that off just to let them serve me ads
| for a couple hours once every couple months.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Any reason you couldn't bundle this into an Electron application?
|
| It's cool, and free. But what happens when you get bored and take
| the site down ?
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Any reason you couldn't bundle this into an Electron
| application?
|
| I know people hate on Electron (sometimes rightfully so), but
| this does seem like a nice use case, meet your users wherever
| they are, even offline!
|
| As for when I need something native, Kdenlive is pretty nice:
| https://kdenlive.org/ (it's FOSS, they could probably also use
| a donation https://kdenlive.org/en/fund/)
|
| Oh and DaVinci Resolve, even though effects aren't the main
| focus (it's a fully featured editing suite):
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
| vunderba wrote:
| This is exactly why I would hands down always prefer an
| electron wrapped application over a web app if given a choice
| between the two.
|
| This is even more important if the app uses some kind of
| proprietary project file format, since if the website goes down
| you won't even be able to recover your project (without heavy
| reverse engineering potentially).
| Rizu wrote:
| congrats op, would you mind sharing the techstack used in
| creating this
| qingcharles wrote:
| This is amazing. I just installed AE yesterday after I decided
| that I needed to add "motion graphics creator" to my skillset in
| order to make decent Instagram stories.
|
| What's needed now is a page where people can share the templates
| they've created.
| blueboo wrote:
| What would it take to support AE plugins? Nail that and you have
| something to make Adobe nervous.
| jampekka wrote:
| Very impressive, and very needed. Current open source video
| editors uniformly suck.
|
| Glad to see browser technology being put to use. Browser is by
| far the best API for desktop applications too, despite the very
| common ignorant complaints on HN.
|
| Kudos!
| lancesells wrote:
| Congrats OP! I don't have Chrome to test, but this is really nice
| from what I can see.
| enobrev wrote:
| This is excellent!
|
| Several years ago I built a prototype of a video renderer on
| nodejs (v0.8-ish). It's a silly thing to do, rendering video in
| javascript (especially a decade ago), but it worked well enough
| to prove that it could be done and a startup pivot was born - one
| that was eventually acquired by Vimeo.
|
| While a colleague (and now friend) was working on porting my
| silly little renderer to C/C++ to try to get closer to real-time,
| I built out a UI to allow us to "templatize" dynamic video for
| our users. This made it possible for our designers to design the
| video experience for the videos that were dynamically generated
| for our users' content.
|
| That UI very much resembled Flash. Since then I've always wanted
| to do what you've done here. Before acquisition, I was asking our
| designers to walk me through how they use After Effects, in the
| hopes of building our tools in that direction, but then Vimeo
| showed up and... not too long after I left to start a travel
| startup. I haven't revisited the video space since.
|
| I love this. I _knew_ that it could be done - especially now that
| WASM is stable - and I'm excited to see someone has done it. And
| free, no less!
|
| Edit: Thought it was open source - thanks for the correction.
| Also I was way off on the node version.
| wavewash wrote:
| It is free to use but not open source according to the faq:
| https://pikimov.com/faq/
| ramses0 wrote:
| 2006: Flash-based, online/web NLVE, focused on clipping /
| remixing (eg: "TikTok / Stitch Me").
|
| https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/jumpcut.gi...
|
| ...sadly, acquired by Yahoo, and you know what happened next.
|
| I can't find a lot of screenshots / video from the era, but the
| one above should give you a sense of it.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Dang, the level of feature depth you've achieved here is amazing,
| and the UX is great if you have some experience with other video
| editors. This is definitely workable, at least for smaller
| projects.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| What's that little blue bird icon in the top right corner? Seems
| to go to X, but I'm not sure why.
|
| ...jk!
|
| On a serious note, this is REALLY cool. Great job.
|
| Tiny feedback, your console is extremely chatty. I get this is a
| beta, but it still might be worth disabling that logging for
| production deploys.
|
| I hope to see this evolve into a commercial product I really
| think it fills a need and it seems to work incredibly well.
| SillyUsername wrote:
| Where did you get the time to do this as a hobby? I spend
| evenings and weekends working on a project for the last 6 months
| and it's only half as good. 10x developer maybe, small team,
| millionaire? xD
| clementpiki wrote:
| I had previous experience doing editors, and I am not ashamed
| to admit ChatGPT gave me a hand on some features I was not
| comfortable with, like editing audio in javascritt for example.
| emigrantdd wrote:
| Omg I've tried this it's really amazing. I see how many thing you
| did here, how many hours did u spend to build that?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| This is from my point of view as an experienced developer and VFX
| artist, including in-depth knowledge of AE. A
| 30fps limit is surprising 23.976 as an fps does not seem
| to be dealt with gracefully Clicking report bug should
| take me to a bug report form with info Interacting with
| "rectangle" is surprising because the corners aren't draggable.
| Probably should default to full size I should be able to
| wind input fields by clicking and dragging on them, such as for
| rotation When I drag keys around in the dope sheet, and
| let go with momentum, they appear to keep moving and "settle" in
| a sort of random place. They should not do that I see
| that this momentum behavior is also in the play head in the
| timeline. It really should not do that. Putting in a
| value in the dope sheet should be enabled, and it should
| automatically set a key I liked the visualizations of the
| easing, but it should probably be communicated with the
| keyframe's icon shape in the dope sheet like it does in AE.
| It is difficult to move a key to the beginning of the timeline.
| Architecturally, the preview rendering probably has to work the
| way it does in After Effects. Guaranteeing a real time
| visualization is pretty important.
|
| I kind of stopped there because it's a bunch of goal-less
| fiddling. This is really great, there is a tremendous amount of
| product development. Hopefully you will think deeply about your
| audience and objectives, and the amount of product development
| that goes into After Effects.
| clementpiki wrote:
| Thank you for your feedback, the 30fps limit is temporary,
| until I have fully tested perfs with video files at a higher
| framerate can you tell me more about 'and let go with
| momentum', not sure what you mean? Is it about loss of
| precision, not being responsive, bad snapping to closest frame?
| mubu wrote:
| Have you considered opening a staging or experimental branch
| on a subdomain perhaps? I think people would definitely be
| interested in testing out new features before they're
| released without hosting it themself, and I believe you said
| hosting Pikimov is very cheap.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| When I click and drag on the timeline play bar or a key frame
| widget in a layer; then, if I release the mouse button with
| velocity; the play head and key frame keep moving for a
| little bit, even though I am not dragging them anymore, as
| though they have momentum and are being dragged to a stop;
| the widgets should not behave this way.
|
| The big picture feedback is that often there is an alignment
| between "I have a lot of ideas for unique UX I want to
| implement" and "I want to wake up this morning and work on
| this all day." IMO just copy AE's UX affordances first if
| your goal is to make something you want other people to use.
| Blender spent a decade in the doldrums until it found an
| audience the moment they relented and copied Maya and Unity's
| superior, conventional controls.
| jancsika wrote:
| > IMO just copy AE's UX affordances first if your goal is
| to make something you want other people to use.
|
| @clementpiki I second this advice and strongly suggest to
| document it as a guideline for your project as soon as
| possible. Surf on the shoulders of AE's UI giants!
|
| Otherwise a small but vocal number of devs users who
| implicitly love FOSS software will end up rationalizing all
| the little UI quirks as features. Worse, their lack of
| expertise in UI design will be proportional to their level
| of energy and post length on all your communication
| channels. It's the epitome of bike-shedding. But if you
| just standardize on "whatever AE does" nobody will spend a
| moment advocating for putting quirks _into_ the UI. (Plus
| they 'll be very forgiving about quirks since it's obvious
| that getting the UI to work exactly like a proprietary
| piece of software is a very difficult problem.)
| 1668911361 wrote:
| First of all, this is really really cool! Great job!
|
| Would you consider building in support for color spaces into the
| software? It looks like the working color space is linear sRGB,
| but it'd be nice to at least know, and also support other color
| spaces as well.
|
| Frequently, when I'm rendering from blender, the raw renders will
| have out-of-gamut colors, which I'll then correct and bring back
| into sRGB when compositing.
| czhu12 wrote:
| Having never used after effects, I would like to say that
| photopea has probably been my favorite piece of software in the
| last 10 years.
|
| I diligently disable Adblock on that website and have donated a
| few times in the past to support them.
|
| I hope to see many more alternatives on the market, and lend my
| support to anyone building!
| deweywsu wrote:
| Wonderful. You just "created" this?! This seems like it took many
| years and lots of hours. Great work!
| mrandish wrote:
| Wow! This is wildly impressive and deeply inspiring - a truly
| incredible achievement. Even more unbelievable that it's by a
| solo dev. Please keep up the amazing work on this project. AE is
| powerful and feature rich but also bloated with decades of legacy
| code and niche professional use cases to support, so there's a
| huge need for what you've built. Not everyone is a high-end
| animator or special effects compositor. Many of us just want to
| make cool motion graphics for personal videos, social media and
| art projects.
|
| Based on the great response you've gotten so far, I'd suggest
| focusing on ways for the community to expand on what you've built
| with templates and plug-ins.
| JackYoustra wrote:
| Just curious - why not open source?
|
| (really cool btw, super impressive)
| aio2 wrote:
| You're crazy. This is really cool.
| green-eclipse wrote:
| Side note: I just wanted to comment on the variance of HN
| submission popularity. OP submitted this same amazing tool as a
| "Show HN" 20 days ago, with very similar title and shorter
| description [0]. It got no votes.
|
| Today this submission is climbing rapidly. Was the tool very
| different 20 days ago? I honestly don't know! But you never know
| how submissions will perform here. It feels pretty random, which
| makes sense, and also is part of the fun of HN.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40645009
| jrhizor wrote:
| It went viral on Twitter this weekend, which is probably why
| more people are noticing it now.
| ssahoo wrote:
| Also never imagined "NO AI" to become a feature so soon.
| pvg wrote:
| I saw it posted on HN by someone other than the author,
| noticed it had a recent show hn submission and emailed
| hn@ycombinator.com to see if it might be worth sending the
| author a repost invite. The author then reposted it.
| fellerts wrote:
| If you see something you like that drowns in the new page, you
| can submit it to the second chance pool:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
| flutas wrote:
| It's likely due to the time more than anything else.
|
| I have no insight into HNs peak active times, but posting right
| before them greatly increases the chance of a post taking off
| (works on other platforms too).
|
| My speculation is, more people check HN when first arriving at
| work to kick off the day, and that's why his post today is
| doing well vs the previous one.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| This is amazing! I have not been able to find a good free AE
| alternative yet and this looks quite promising!
| dinglestepup wrote:
| This is incredibly impressive! Both the UI and the feature set
| are fantastic.
| richardfulop wrote:
| on another note if anyone is searching for an AE alternative for
| motion design I highly recommend Cavalry by Scenegroup
| ihgdeb84865 wrote:
| Maybe not fair but as a design tool this will be (first) judged
| by the impression the site makes. I am only saying this as I wish
| the very best for your project and hope your hard work will bring
| results: the site looks very low quality not building trust at
| all. I advise you to invest in a UI designer or use a quality
| template. Wish you the best for your ambitious project!
| bibelo wrote:
| Je suis franchement impressionne when I see a single person
| accomplishing that type of tremendous work!
|
| Keep up the good work
| MoonObserver wrote:
| This is incredible work! Is a desktop version planned?
| codelord wrote:
| I thought this is using AI so I was gonna dismiss it. But then
| saw the No AI sign and immediately signed up. Seriously though
| why is "No AI" a "feature" worth mentioning on top?
| eamonobr wrote:
| Adobe had some clause where they could train AI based on your
| creative, effectively building a model that can ultimately
| plagiarize your work. No AI is a nice appeal in this context.
| That and it being simple, fully offline, not at the whims of
| execs trying to bump their share price with AI features that
| put the user second.
| codelord wrote:
| I wish people stopped equating AI with Adobe's content
| policy.
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