this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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FFmpeg and handbrake do the latter two quite handily. The latter even has a nice program interface, rather than needing commands.
ImageMagick is capable of the first. I've had it go the other way before, and I should be most surprised if it couldn't convert a PDF to a jpg.
I don't have the knowledge or the time to learn to use these tools.
Then I suppose you're up shit creek.
Thanks for that deep analysis.
Let me tell you a little bit about all those various file converter tools, be it ffmpeg, pandoc, imagemagick, whatever.
The majority of them can be used like this:
magick inputfile.bmp outputfile.jpg.If all you need is this file in that format, that's how you do it. They're ridicluously capable, you can do editing and compositing and such with them and whatever. If you have a use case where you do that a lot, like you just always put a watermark on images or you always desaturate them or whatever, you can write a script, then just run that script.They're basically all like that. Fairly simple to use for basic format translation, shockingly capable if you want to write a script.
magick inputfile.bmp outputfile.jpg.
I don't think it worked.
They're command line tools. If you want to get something done you have to put in a little effort.
Strange, those online tools don't require any "effort".
This is learned helplessness. Especially for someone who took the time to go waste time on Lemmy in stead of Reddit, you could have learned it in the time it took to complain about it taking effort.
This is learned not-wasting-my-timeness. And no, I couldn't. I have tried, several times. I don't waste my time anymore.
Have some faith in yourself. You're not an idiot. Find a friend to show you or smth. I'm not a terminal advocate, I avoid it as much as possible, but in a thread about corporations and scammers relying on user ignorance, this behavior is defeatist.
I'm not an idiot. As I've already said, I just don't have the time. LOL @ the idea of any of my friends even knowing what a command line is, much less knowing how to use it any better than I do. You people live in this bubble where you think everyone on the planet is a software engineer. This is not reality.
You're free to use these tools that steal your data, nobody is stopping you.
Handbrake has a GUI, and it's relatively straightforward to use. VLC also works well. You can also use ffmpeg on the CLI like so:
imagemagick isn't really that hard, in most cases it's:
For example:
If that doesn't work, try
pdftoppm:I don't know of a good GUI for it, I recommend just learning to use either imagemagick or pdftoppm.
I downloaded it and it immediately did not work so I'm gonna have to disagree with you there, champ.
I've lost far too many hours to the CLI. I don't fall for that trick anymore.
You do you, I guess. Those are incredibly simple commands I provided, and you can intuit pretty easily how to tweak them for other formats.
I guess it's up to you. You can gamble with random services online, or you can spend a few minutes and learn to use a tool that's all but guaranteed to not have malware.
This is just a fucking lie and I'm tired of hearing it. What did I just say?
I've tried to learn this shit. It's a fucking rabbit hole. I type these commands, letter for letter, the terminal returns some completely useless error that provides me with no diagnostic information whatsoever, I spend hours searching and trying to understand why and come up empty-handed. I don't have time for that anymore. I already have multiple jobs. It's not how I prefer to spend my free time. And frankly, I don't believe it anymore when software engineers feed me this bullshit.
You know what those web services do? I just click a button and it does what the button says. Why is that so hard?
There's also a pretty big chance that they'll do more than what the button says, like inject malware. That's the whole point of the article.
I understand that but that's beside the point. It does what they advertise. It's incredibly simple and easy to use. Why can no one make something comparable that's FOSS?
They did, it's often a CLI interface because it's incredibly flexible. ffmpeg and imagemagick are quite easy for basic things.
Building a cross-platform GUI is a pain, and hosting a website costs money. Building a cross-platform CLI is incredibly easy, which is why it's so popular.
Some of these tools have GUI frontends or alternatives, some don't. The more niche you go, the harder it'll be to find a reasonable GUI, and I consider PDF to JPEG pretty niche.
It is indeed very difficult to type convert 001.jpg example.pdf and ffmpeg -i rock.mp4 rock.avi
TYPE IT WHERE!? WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS INFORMATION!? How are you so completely unaware of how non-sensical this information is?
The terminal? Your post history suggests you are quite familiar with Linux. But I agree that those who are most prone to use random file conversion sites because they need something as PDF for work will be very confused by those instructions.
I am familiar with Linux but I avoid it whenever possible. I dailyed it for a couple of years but I've unfortunately moved on to Mac due to their deep dependency on terminal. If I have a problem and go and look up support, 99% of the time the advice is to open the terminal and start running commands, which is almost never the case for Windows or Mac. I've been using a Mac for about a year and I don't even know where the terminal is. Even where there's a perfectly suitable GUI solution, they'll send you into the terminal anyway. Linux is made by and for devs and it is and will remain that way until the mentality of it's creators change. And I am not a dev.
I can follow instructions. The problem is #1 I'm told "don't type commands you don't understand" and #2 no one ever explains what any of these commands do, so I never learn anything, and #3 the commands don't work, and they return a generic error with zero diagnostic information, or sometimes just nothing at all happens. I don't have time for that. I just want something that works.
I understand that you may not know the commands you are told by strangers, but many of these are tools are meant for professionals. ffmpeg, for example, is used by many industries and companies worth millions of dollars to handle production workloads. They often have documentation to tell you what they do, though
There's a manual for ffmpeg for example: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html
Here's imgemagick's documentation: https://imagemagick.org/script/magick.php
Obviously you won't understand any of that because the command line doesn't work for you, but for those of us who do understand it and can use it, it's very informative.
I think handbrake is a gui wrapper on top of ffmpeg, but I never used it, I just memorized the ffmpeg commands and can type so much faster than i can click.
Then stop recommending them to random people.
How many times do I need to repeat "I don't have time for this" before you people will stop pestering me with this?
Im recommending them to anyone who wants free software and is willing to invest their time into understanding how to do things for free and without concern over their data. If you aren't willing to invest the necessary time it isn't for you and that's why I said it. It's okay if these don't work for you. That's valid. But it does, in fact, work for many others who are not you.
I mentioned the manual because you claimed you didn't know what the commands do. If you read and take the time to learn the manual like you said you can do, you will, in fact, understand how the commands work. Additionally, this is public forum, my post may have been a reply to you but I understand other people may read my comment. Other people may have your frustrations but are not aware of the manuals that tell them exactly how the commands work. It only takes a bit of elbow grease, perhaps people other than you are willing to apply it?
I'm not sure if you saw it, but I did mention a gui application for converting files. I admit, I don't use it, but many people also save a lot of money using it, so it might be helpful. I have no idea if it's useful for your needs though.
Here's "ffmpeg in 100 seconds" https://youtu.be/26Mayv5JPz0
Here's a video on ffmpeg and imagemagick: https://youtu.be/sKBM4M-kuCg
Additionally, you can just learn how to read man pages: https://itsfoss.com/linux-man-page-guide/
There's a neat little guide that'll help you learn how to read documentation.
Once you've read through that let me know what confuses you about documentation.
That's just "random people" with more words.
I keep telling you I don't have time for a new career and you keep replying to me with more reference materials. I appreciate the effort but it's misplaced. I've lost too many days trying to do things that people with no self-awareness (which may or may not be you, I don't know) assure me is "easy". I'm done. I'm not trying anymore. If a simple intuitive software is not available then I will just not do it.
convert 001.jpg example.pdf and ffmpeg -i rock.mp4 rock.avi
Lol, apparently it is hard. You were supposed to enter
And
By putting the "and" in the commands you just caused an error lol
I didn't put the "and" in the commands, I copied and pasted them from the comment above, but thank you for illustrating my point so very well.
Yes you did, but you copy pasted two different commands connected with "and".
The word "and" isn't meant to be typed into the cli. They're stringing together two different lines.
If your point was that it's easy to copy and paste I'm confused how I helped.
It is easy to copy and paste though. People generally format the commands like I did instead of in the middle of a sentence like OP did where you can make parsing mistakes.
My point is that if I had followed the instructions it wouldn't have worked. Which is what always happens.
Right, but I just pointed out to you why it wouldn't work and how to fix it.
So if you had followed my instructions they would have worked.
Would it? I'm not wasting anymore time to figure it out. Is there no point at which I'm allowed to give up? Am I forced to continue trying forever and ever because you want me to?
Oh sorry. You're right, you're allowed to give up.
I have 100% confidence that you personally had negative experiences in the past trying to get stuff like this working. Like I fully believe you.
I've just done this before you know? I know what these tools are and how easy they are! I use ffmpeg.
Im also 100% sure that, if you had put that aside the attitude that it would be a time waste and you had just given it an honest try, me or a bunch of different people on this thread would have easily helped you get it working by now.
Maybe it'd take a couple comments back and forth, but weve already expensed that effort arguing. And I know for a fact it would've taken less effort than we've spent so far.
It's okay for you to give up, but you gotta realize how it feels for us to hear you complain, for us to know with certainty we can help you, and not feel a little frustrated when you refuse the help while continuing to complain.
Everytime you keep popping up in the thread complaining about this non existent problem it just hurts cause it's so easily solvable.
But you're right, no matter how easy this is I can't force you to try. So, cheers!