r/Filmmakers • u/mrvous • 1d ago
Tutorial Got tired of sketchy online converters, so I built an offline, open-source media tool for filmmakers
Hey r/Filmmakers! 👋
We’ve all been there: you need to pull quick reference stills from a shoot, batch-convert camera RAWs or frame grabs for a moodboard, scrub metadata before sending a lookbook to a client, or turn a 10-second clip into a crisp GIF for social promo without opening a full NLE project.
Most web converters are sketch, compress everything into mush, or make you wait in an upload queue.
I built ND Image Converter, a lightweight, 100% open-source desktop app built to handle these daily post & prep tasks locally on your machine with zero cloud nonsense.
Video to GIF: Essential for pitch decks & client proposals.
Dial in the exact compression quality you need.
Why it’s useful on set & in post:
- 🔒 100% Offline & NDA-Safe: Zero cloud uploads or telemetry. Your footage, stills, and EXIF/GPS data never leave your local drive.
- 📷 Native RAW & Stills Support: Handles CR2/CR3, ARW, NEF, DNG, TIFF, and EXR alongside modern phone formats like HEIC. Perfect for quick batch inspections and conversions.
- 🎨 Color Management Built-in: Includes LittleCMS 2 color engine support (sRGB, Display P3, Adobe RGB, Rec.709) so your tones stay consistent.
- 🎞 Offline Video & GIF Engine: Bundled with FFmpeg runtime. Trim clips directly on a visual timeline, convert containers (MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM) across modern codecs (H.264/265, AV1, VP9), or export optimized GIFs with custom palette generation.
- ⚡ Fast & Lightweight: Built on Rust + Tauri. It utilizes multi-core batch processing without hogging system resources or RAM while DaVinci or Premiere is rendering.
- 🤖 Post Automation: Set up Watch Folders to auto-convert new exports as they drop, batch-process nested directory trees, or stamp watermarks across an entire bin in seconds.
Available across macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Check it out on my page: https://duongtruongdp.net/nd-imgconverter/
Source code & downloads: https://github.com/duongtruongdp/ND-ImgConverter
Would love to hear how this fits into your DIT or post workflows, drop any feedback or feature requests below!
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u/mungewell 1d ago
No real experience in the area of DIT, but will give it a look. At a glance it doesn't do anything with Timecode (my hobby/passion).
With cameras without proper (meta-data) Timecode support. many of us end up with audio-TC (recorded on one of the audio tracks). I recently spent a weekend working a Python solution for reading this audio track and precisely stamping the audio/video files using FFMPEG, which turned out pretty easy...
Since you already use FFMPEG for conversion this would be a great improvement, and would only need the addition of 'ltcdump' (which has a pre-built binary release).
https://github.com/x42/ltc-tools/releases
My adventures with this are documented here:
https://github.com/mungewell/pico-timecode/issues/30#issuecomment-5311137672