from Hacker News

Astrofox – Turn Audio into Videos

by GenericCanadian on 7/7/22, 7:47 PM with 38 comments

  • by mcao on 7/8/22, 12:49 AM

    Hi everybody, I'm the creator of Astrofox. Surprised to see this here, but I'll be glad to answer any questions.

    Astrofox has been my side project for several years now. It's basically my playground for trying out things like Electron, React and WebGL. It's open-source, MIT licensed, and totally free to use.

  • by GenericCanadian on 7/7/22, 7:49 PM

    Found this today when looking for something to turn short podcast clips into something more visual. Anyone have any other open source tools they like? I've heard of using ffmpeg (https://lukaprincic.si/development-log/ffmpeg-audio-visualiz...).

    Youtube video of Astrofox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbvuniqNPPw

  • by kebman on 7/7/22, 10:17 PM

    Slightly reminiscent of old school demo scene stuff. Or perhaps like a static version of WinAMP? I want more scrollers to greet peeps in trippy space tunnels! xD

    Digression about the Atari demo scene: Amazingly they still keep cranking them out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QginSr9V7A

  • by processing on 7/8/22, 3:03 AM

    This is fantastic - will be using in the next Dystopian Disco mixtape series

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Mxban54mM&list=PLFyd_83HK5...

    Is it possible to set the effects run time for a set period & if so would it be possible to have the effects modulated?

  • by tekni5 on 7/8/22, 12:07 AM

    Looks incredible, I could really use this I've been using stock footage for my music videos with various effects/transitions. Can I overlay the effects over videos or only static images? I already have a ton of ideas.

    https://youtu.be/k2NAtIo8Wcs

    https://youtu.be/BRMywh9yHWY

    https://youtu.be/-89K59xrYmY

    https://youtu.be/TCw7Bcwpsfw

  • by jalino23 on 7/7/22, 9:01 PM

    I love this so much! I've always wanted to build one. but struggle with the math to turn music frequency into something beautiful visually
  • by TedDoesntTalk on 7/7/22, 9:49 PM

    Is there a package like this that renders real-time rather than to a video for sharing? (like winamp visualizations used to do)
  • by lateralux on 7/8/22, 9:55 AM

    I also recommend Le Biniou an open - source, user - friendly, powerful music visualization & VJing tool https://biniou.net/
  • by ronyfadel on 7/8/22, 5:42 AM

    I made a similar product on iOS [1]. It’s not there yet in terms of polish, but soon it will be.

    [1] https://podbuddy.app/

  • by echelon on 7/8/22, 9:13 AM

    Can you run this headlessly from the command line? It would be powerful to generate videos at scale.
  • by oferzelig on 7/8/22, 3:47 AM

    @mcao - this is fantastic! Finally a free and a really robust replacement for Headliner and such. It's so great for podcasts. Thanks!

    EDIT I now realize it's been out for 2 years now and never heard of it before!

  • by Mixtape on 7/7/22, 9:39 PM

    The one thing that I would like to see added to this would be the implementation of IO streams for audio and video. I'd love to find a piece of software that could be selected as the sole output for either a system's audio or a specific application, keep a buffer of the audio stream for processing, create an AV output, and then allow that to either be captured or streamed to something like OBS or VLC. Realistically, I can see latency being a bit of an issue of course. Audio fidelity may also take a hit if you exceed the buffer's capacity, but trying to implement a direct passthrough for the audio may desync the it from the visualizer.

    Maybe it's just a pipe dream, but has anyone created/worked with a project like that before? I'd be interested in seeing what's out there.

  • by cassepipe on 7/7/22, 9:58 PM

    I just recalled windows media player animations seeing this. (Is this thing still kicking ? I wouldn't know. I ditched Windows quite some time ago)
  • by perch56 on 7/7/22, 11:22 PM

    Looks similar to the FL Studio built in ZGameEditor Visualizer. Of course the advantage here is that you can use it independent from a DAW.
  • by nikolay on 7/7/22, 9:45 PM

    The latest version seems broken. It's not available on Homebrew either.
  • by BizarroLand on 7/7/22, 9:06 PM

    Could be a useful tool to generate snippets for a larger project.
  • by arriu on 7/8/22, 11:37 PM

    Any plans to take this to mobile?