pconv

A terminal: pconv long.mp4 web.mp4 –profile best –loudness youtube draws one line that changes as it works: a braille spinner and measure 1/3, then encode 2/3 with a dotted bar filling up, the percent, the speed in fps and the ETA, then verify 3/3; the line clears and pconv prints web.mp4 and the loudness before and after.

pconv is a small, easy to use tool over ffmpeg, part of PITO MD. You name the input and the output, and it picks sensible settings: H.264 or VP9 deliveries with the colour right, looping GIFs and animated WebPs for a README, audio levelled to YouTube’s loudness, and clips joined into one file without a re-encode when they match.

pconv clip.mp4 readme.gif

That is a looping GIF, 800 px wide at 12 fps.

The numbers


README GIFs	2.5× smaller and 1.5× faster than ffmpeg’s palettegen and paletteuse on a terminal clip; 2.6× smaller and 1.8× faster on a talking head
Joins	90 s of 1080p joined in 0.42 s by stream copy, 52× faster than re-encoding it (21.6 s)
The binary	843 KB, one file, Linux, Windows and macOS
The code	about 4,350 lines of Rust outside the tests, 5 direct dependencies

Measured once on 2026-10-14 with pconv 0.14.2 and 1.0.0 on Linux, an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X busy with other work; the GIF guide shows the GIF runs and how they were made.

Where to go next

Install pconv and ffmpeg on Linux, Windows or macOS, and make a first GIF.
Deliver a video for the web: H.264 or VP9 with the colour tagged right.
Make a README GIF or WebP.
Level the audio to YouTube’s loudness.
Join clips into one file, copied when they match.
Drive pconv from scripts and agents: JSON, exit codes, no progress noise.
Use pconv as a Rust library.
The command line and the JSON outputs in full, and the changelog.