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[–] 186 points 1 year ago

“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...

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  • [–] 87 points 1 year ago (79 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 51 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (9 children)

    The website mentions that there are fake offline converters that push malware as well.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Yes this can also happen. I should have written open source offline converter

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    What you recommend in terms of offline open-source converters?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    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

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    [–] 68 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    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!

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    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.

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    [–] 34 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    “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.”

    Mm hmm.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    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?

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The best is online CSR generators.

    Yes, I know people who have implemented private keys they have been given from random websites.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    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!

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    No way, lol

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