MediaConvert
An ImageOptim-style drag-and-drop desktop app for Linux that batch-converts images, video, and audio: drop a mixed folder of files, get them auto-sorted into per-type groups, and convert everything with one click.
I kept reaching for the same handful of ffmpeg and magick invocations to convert a batch of photos or clips into a different format, and got tired of retyping them. MediaConvert wraps that in a PySide6 window: drop files (or a whole folder) on it, pick a target format, hit convert.
GoalA batch image/video/audio converter for Linux that's as effortless as dragging files onto ImageOptim.
InspirationImageOptim's drag-and-drop simplicity, applied to the wider job of format conversion instead of just compression.
From one rejected batch to three groups
The first version treated a drop as a single all-or-nothing batch: mix an image in with a video, or include one file with an unrecognized extension, and the whole thing got rejected with an error. That’s the kind of friction that makes a “just drop it in” tool stop feeling effortless.
The redesign splits a mixed drop into up to three independent sections, one each for video, image, and audio, every section with its own file table and target-format dropdown. Files with unsupported extensions are quietly dropped from the batch and reported as “N other files ignored” instead of blocking everything else.
categorize.pyClassifies each file by extension and buckets a mixed batch into per-category groups, instead of the old scheme that raised on anything not uniformly one type.
converter.pyA small dispatch layer: resolves the output path (numbered suffix on any collision, even same-format self-conversion), calls the right backend, and preserves the source's mtime on success.
image_convert.py / media_convert.pyImageMagick for general image formats with a libwebp bridge for WebP output (cwebp/gif2webp), and ffmpeg for everything video/audio, including animated GIF/WebP export and audio-only extraction from a video source.
Keeping the UI honest while it converts
Conversion used to block the GUI thread, so the window would visibly freeze, and there was no sense of progress beyond a single row’s status flickering. Both got fixed by moving conversion onto a QThread worker that only ever talks back to the main thread through Qt signals, since widgets themselves aren’t safe to touch off-thread. The main window just wires those signals up to update a row’s status and a running “Converting 2 / 5 audio files, 45 remaining”-style message, so the tables stay scrollable and responsive the whole time.
Convert All vs. one fileRight-click any file (or a multi-selection) to convert just that, alongside a global Convert All and per-section Convert/Clear buttons that only appear once more than one file type is present.
Skip what's already doneConvert All skips files already marked Done, so converting a section individually first and then running the whole batch doesn't redo work.
Format change = new jobSwitching a section's target format resets its rows back to Ready, since a different output format is effectively starting over.
Folder dropsDropping (or picking) a folder expands it into its files; if it contains subfolders, a single prompt for the whole batch asks whether to include them or stay top-level only.
Result & impact
In daily useIt's what I actually reach for now instead of retyping ffmpeg/magick commands, including for the day-to-day case of just cleaning up a phone-camera export folder.
Packaged properlyShips as a PKGBUILD with a desktop entry, app icon, and MIME associations, so it shows up in the app launcher and as a right-click Open With target for the formats it handles.
Most of the interesting work here wasn’t the conversion itself, ffmpeg and ImageMagick do the real work, it was the UI decisions around it: how to fail soft on a mixed batch instead of rejecting it outright, and how to keep a genuinely long-running operation from making the app feel broken while it runs.
Source’s on GitHub.