ClipMash - Generate video compilations automatically (v0.21.0)

[a2c]

Hi,
sounds like a cool project and I would love to see this in action.

Sadly I got problems running the .exe.
The error message says:

←[2m2023-05-17T10:16:48.625990Z←[0m ←[32m INFO←[0m ←[2mclip_mash::service::stash_config←[0m←[2m:←[0m trying to load config file from C:\Users\renen\AppData\Roaming\soundchaser128\stash-compilation-maker\config\config.json
←[2m2023-05-17T10:16:48.626670Z←[0m ←[32m INFO←[0m ←[2mclip_mash::service::stash_config←[0m←[2m:←[0m no configuration found, or unable to load: The system cannot find the path specified. (os error 3)
←[2m2023-05-17T10:16:48.658007Z←[0m ←[32m INFO←[0m ←[2mclip_mash::service::download_ffmpeg←[0m←[2m:←[0m ffmpeg already installed, not doing anything.
←[2m2023-05-17T10:16:48.661727Z←[0m ←[32m INFO←[0m ←[2mclip_mash←[0m←[2m:←[0m running at [::1]:5174

Also I don’t have any option on the web page to configure my stash address.

Thanks for help

[soundchaser128]

Sorry, the stash configuration is broken in the latest build, but you could try the newest pre-release, it should be fixed there (plus, support for adding music is in, too).

edit: You might have to wait a few more minutes until the build is completed.

[soundchaser128]

New release: ClipMash 0.7.0

• New feature: Added support for adding music to videos.
  You can create PMVs now. You can either download songs from YouTube or upload them in the browser, then select their order within the video. The length of the video will be determined by the songs chosen.

I made an example PMV here: 199 MB file on MEGA
Download the release here: Release v0.7.0 · soundchaser128/clip-mash · GitHub

@PO0000OP Let me know what you think if you get a chance to try it out.

[PO0000OP]

I need an adult lol. I am a programming and GitHub noob.

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Per your usage instructions, I assume the binary for my OS is “clip-mash-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.”

When I download and unzip this I get “clip-mash.exe”

When I click on this, command prompt (I think) opens SUPER fast and then immediately closes before I can read anything.

[soundchaser128]

You’re doing it right, there’s a weird bug preventing startup, as a workaround, create a folder called “assets” in the same folder as the clip-mash.exe file. Then it should work. (at least it did for me)

[PO0000OP]

That solved it, thanks!

@soundchaser128 added some feedback for you. Thanks for sharing this tool with the world!

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Thoughts after messing around:

• Initial impression is that the UI is clean and intuitive. This looks fucking fantastic! 10/10
  
  

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• Marking scenes is pretty easy, BUT it would be nice to be able to manually enter timecode rather than having to scrub to in/out points
  

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• The marker names are meaningless? I meticulously marked 13 videos and kept the names consistent, BUT then I had two options. Grab clips in scene order or at random.
  
  

What I’d prefer would be something akin to AutoPMV’s ratios based on my markers. Give me 10% “Riding” marker, 20% “Blowjob” marker, 10% “Titjob” marker. Bonus points for something like the “Finish Ratio” here, which would dictate what the end of the video looks like (presumably pulling from my “Cumshot/Finish” markers)

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• LOVE the music download/upload options here. AND I can choose multiple? AND I can set the mix of source audio vs music? That’s brilliant! This is just
  
  

BUT this program has absolutely no sense of rhythm. The edits are totally random with no regard for the music. If the beat is a standard 4/4 - 1, 2, 3, 4 pattern, it will not do what you’d want/expect (1, 2, 3, 4, CUT, 1, 2, 3, 4, CUT, or some variation - 1, 2, CUT, 3, 4, CUT //// 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, CUT… etc.)

Still not clear? Check out this PMV. The visual effects demonstrate this idea of timing well.
https://spankbang.com/6ybx5/video/enter+the+goonstate+pmv+bias

Until this can detect/learn WHEN to make edits, the music is nice but kind of useless for PMVs in my opinion.

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The ability to preview this clips to be used in the video is AMAZING! I love everything about this! Let me adjust the ratio of what markers go here and mess with WHEN these clips show up in the video and I will be over the moon!

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Test video:

43.19 MB file on MEGA

Unfortunately, something went wrong? The video just stops playing at 01:15. Even if you skip past that point it just pauses on whatever frame you skipped from. When I open the video in Premiere, it just pops up as 01:15 duration, like the additional 2 minutes of video simply don’t exist.

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FINAL THOUGHTS:

So my overall opinion is that this has tons of potential and it is infinitely better than anything I know how to make. I know very little about the actual nuts and bolts of how this works, so my feedback is purely from a user’s viewpoint.

Personally, I’d like to see more control over what actually ends up in the finished video (via markers), but I also image that’s difficult as hell to implement. I’d love if you could give this thing a sense of rhythm and a knowledge of HOW to edit video lol. Again, I imagine that’s a tall order. Basically, I am asking you to make a robot video editor. Easy, right?

I REALLY REALLY REALLY want you to know that I appreciate this. Please don’t be discouraged by anything I have said here. Even if I personally don’t have a use for this tool yet, I am hopeful that others will and/or that as you keep working on it, it will become more useful to my needy ass

[soundchaser128]

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback.

I haven’t gone through all of it yet, but being able to set a ratio of what’s included based on the specified markers should be pretty easy. Then, I’ve been thinking about letting the user specify points where to cut within the markers. That might also help.

Actually, nevermind, reading what you wrote again, you basically just want the cuts dictated by the BPM of the video, right? So, after every measure (for example) you want to have a cut. Still not 100% sure how to do this, but this sounds doable.

And yeah, the generated videos are kind of weird, I think something gets messed up with the timestamps when concatenating the clips together at the end, but I haven’t really been able to find out what exactly.

[PO0000OP]

@soundchaser128

you basically just want the cuts dictated by the BPM of the video, right? So, after every measure (for example) you want to have a cut. Still not 100% sure how to do this, but this sounds doable.

Precisely. Unfortunately, I am absolutely useless when it comes to figuring out how to make that happen lol. Thanks again!

[soundchaser128]

I looked into this a bit, and it seems doable, there’s libraries for doing beat detection for music. So, you could feasibly do something like the following:

• Detect the beats of the song(s) to be used, this will give a list of timestamps where beats occur
• Let the user specify the time signature used (beats per measure)
• Then, I guess, you could also let the user specify how often to cut (every measure, every 2nd measure, somewhat randomized etc.)
• Once the cuts have been determined, we know how long each clip will be.
• Then, I think, the rest of the logic should work the same as the regular PMV clip creation, just with fixed clip lengths instead of randomized like now

[PO0000OP]

If you manage to make that work well, it would be incredible.

[soundchaser128]

I might have something: Release v0.8.0-pre.0 · soundchaser128/clip-mash · GitHub

It now detects the beats of the song and will sync the edits to the beat (currently it assumes 4 beats per measure and will cut every 4 measures, so every 16 beats). Some testing I did looked pretty promising. I could also add something that would let you tap in the beat, in case the automated detection doesn’t work right.

[PO0000OP]

I’ll take a look, thanks! Either way, that beat tapping method sounds great for more user control. I’m blown away by how much work you’re putting into this.

[ptipi]

thank you for this software
the fact to have made it independant from stash is a very good idea. i had already asked on the ghitub of stash to add an end point to the marker and to allow to make a playlist and to extract a compilation you are making it possible

as already said by PO0000OP the interesting functions to add would be for me :
-To be able to select the markers to integrate in the compilation via their name
-Be able to save a project in progress
On the preview
-The possibility to delete a clip from the compilation
-Rearrange the order of the clips by dragging them to the right or to the left or via numbering

the fact to keep the markers is great, the ideal would be to integrate a possibility to save and migrate the database in case of moving the files
If you add the possibility to add performers and eventually tags on the videos it would be perfect to make a compilation of markers xxx +yyy of the videos with the performer zzz + www would be really useful

the functioning compared to the first version is much better, thanks for your work

[soundchaser128]

@ptipi

-To be able to select the markers to integrate in the compilation via their name

That’s probably a good idea, yeah. Currently, all videos with all markers are included in the compilation if you use local files.

@ptipi

-Be able to save a project in progress

That’s also a good idea, the question is whether just saving it in the browser’s localStorage instead of sessionStorage as is now would be enough. Basically, this would just mean that instead of living as long as the tab is open, the data would still be around if you restart the browser or close the tab. I think this should probably suffice.

@ptipi

-The possibility to delete a clip from the compilation

This should already work. There’s a toggle below the video player that lets you exclude a clip from the final compilation.

@ptipi

-Rearrange the order of the clips by dragging them to the right or to the left or via numbering

I’ve also thought about that, and I made a issue for that already: Allow reordering clips · Issue #13 · soundchaser128/clip-mash · GitHub

@ptipi

the fact to keep the markers is great, the ideal would be to integrate a possibility to save and migrate the database in case of moving the files

The database file is saved in your AppData folder if you’re on Windows (see the logs on startup in the terminal, the path is logged there). If you want to back up your database or move to a new computer, currently you need to move the videos.sqlite3 file. Keep in mind that the file path must match exactly.

@ptipi

If you add the possibility to add performers and eventually tags on the videos it would be perfect to make a compilation of markers xxx +yyy of the videos with the performer zzz + www would be really useful

In a vacuum that sounds nice, but I feel like I’d just be building a worse version of Stash. I think at the moment I’d rather invest my time in other features, and if you want more features for organizing your collection, I’d recommend you to set up Stash, but that’s not set in stone.

[soundchaser128]

Quick update, the clip generation based on the song’s beats is almost ready, I think. I will add the “tapping in” feature (pressing the space bar to the beat to determine BPM) in a next step, I think.

I’ve published a preview release here: Release v0.8.0-pre.2 · soundchaser128/clip-mash · GitHub

I’ve made a couple UI adjustments as well, the settings relevant to the clip preview page are now also located there, so you can quickly adjust the settings, apply and see the results:

And these are the settings for generating videos with backing music, which allows you to control how long each clip is (in number of measures, can also be randomized).

[soundchaser128]

New release: ClipMash 0.8.0

• New feature: Generate clips based on a song’s beats: Instead of generating clips with a random length, you can now choose to have the clips be generated based on the song’s beats. You can choose after how many beats the cut should occur (fixed amount or randomized). In addition, I’ve moved the clip options to the clip preview page, where they make more sense.
• New feature: Allow selecting markers for local files: Up until now, you could not select, which markers to actually use in your compilation when using local files, it would always pick all of them. There’s now the same marker selection page as on the stash side.

Download the release here: Release v0.8.0 · soundchaser128/clip-mash · GitHub

@PO0000OP This release might be relevant to you

[ptipi]

@soundchaser128

@ptipi

-The possibility to delete a clip from the compilation

This should already work. There’s a toggle below the video player that lets you exclude a clip from the final compilation.

I hadn’t seen the option, you should have left it in the last release.

It would also be handy to have an image of the video on the marker creation and selection page.
in any case, selecting the names of the markers included in the compilation is a big plus.

thanks again

[soundchaser128]

Yeah, I removed that toggle for now, because it’s actually a little more complicated when music is enabled. I’ll keep it in mind, though.

@ptipi

It would also be handy to have an image of the video on the marker creation and selection page.

Agreed, but that’s a bit more complicated (need to create screenshots for the markers and save them somewhere). Will put it on my list.

[PO0000OP]

It just keeps getting better and better.

Just for fun, I ran the same clips from my last test through this version. I didn’t narrow them down at all. Just used the same tags, told it to edit to the beat and keep clips under 6 seconds. This was the result:

100.29 MB file on MEGA

MUCH BETTER. If I actually put some time into this, I could probably end up with something quite good!

Two notes:

1. The marker selection feature is EXCELLENT. I would still like to see the ability to select ratios of how much of each marker the software will use in the final video, but this is a huge step in the right direction.

2. The the file freezes at the 3 minute mark. Something similar happened in my last test. Is this a known software issue or something on my end?

[soundchaser128]

@PO0000OP

The the file freezes at the 3 minute mark. Something similar happened in my last test. Is this a known software issue or something on my end?

It seems like in your video, the music goes for longer than the video clips, which is odd, that should be prevented in the UI in the newest version.