ffmep

ffmpeg, as a Mac app that feels like it shipped with the Mac. Drop files in, pick a format, convert. Plus HEIC and WebP, Live Photos, and background removal that runs on your machine.

GitHub

macOS 14 or later Swift 6 Apple silicon required GPLv3

The ffmep window after converting eight cat photos to WebP with transparent backgrounds. Each row shows the old and new size, like 22.2 MB to 124 KB for a DNG, and the inspector on the right holds the format, quality, size, Live Photo and background settings.

Eight photos in, eight transparent WebPs out, 30.7 MB lighter. JPEG, HEIC and a RAW DNG
all in one batch, cut out with BiRefNet on this Mac.

ffmpeg can do nearly anything, as long as you remember the flags. ffmep is the flags, remembered. It uses stock macOS controls and Liquid Glass on macOS 26, so it looks like something Apple could have shipped.

It also does a few things ffmpeg alone makes awkward: photos from an iPhone, WebP in both directions, Live Photos, and cutting the subject out of a picture.

Install

From a clone of this repo:

scripts/build-ffmpeg.sh
VERSION=1.0.0 scripts/make-app.sh

The first script builds a static arm64 ffmpeg and ffprobe into vendor/. It takes a while the first time, and re-runs skip whatever already finished. It needs the Xcode command line tools and brew install cmake meson ninja pkgconf.

The second builds the app, bundles that ffmpeg, signs it ad-hoc and writes build/ffmep.app and build/ffmep.zip. Use CONFIG=debug for a debug build in build/debug/.

Needs an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 14 or later. Build with the macOS 26 SDK or newer to get Liquid Glass.

Tip

The build is signed ad-hoc, so Gatekeeper will refuse the first launch. Right-click ffmep.app and choose Open once, and it will start normally after that.

What it does

  • Video to MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM or GIF, as H.264, HEVC, ProRes, VP9 or AV1. H.264, HEVC and ProRes go through VideoToolbox when the Mac has a hardware encoder for them, so they finish in a fraction of the time.
  • Audio to MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC, ALAC or Opus, including pulling the soundtrack out of a video.
  • Images to WebP, JPEG, PNG or HEIC. Anything ImageIO can open goes in, RAW DNGs included. JPEG, PNG and HEIC are written by ImageIO directly, WebP by the bundled ffmpeg.
  • A file size instead of a quality. Turn on Limit File Size, type 10 MB, and ffmep works out the bitrate that fits. Or skip it and use the slider, with Small, Balanced and High to start from.
  • Resize, rotate, flip, change the frame rate, strip metadata, or squeeze out every last byte with maximum compression.
  • A queue that keeps moving. Images, audio, hardware video and software video each get their own lane with their own limit, so a slow AV1 encode doesn't hold up a folder of photos.
  • Save next to the originals, into a folder, or replace the originals. Replaced files go to the Trash, and only once the new file is safely written.

Live Photos

Drop in a Live Photo, the .HEIC and the .mov together, and it shows up as one row with a Live Photo badge. Export the still, the motion as an MP4, or the motion as an animated GIF.

An animated GIF of a grey British Shorthair sitting on top of a PC case, looking at the camera and blinking.

A Live Photo, exported as a GIF at 480p. No trimming, no Photos app, no third-party site.

Background removal

Set Background to Transparent or White and ffmep cuts the subject out before converting. Formats without transparency, like JPEG, get white instead.

It works straight away with Apple's Vision framework. The first time you use it, ffmep offers to download BiRefNet, a 408 MB Core ML model with much cleaner edges on fur, hair and anything thin. Either way it runs on your Mac, and the model can be removed again from Settings.

Four cat photos on top: one sitting on a PC, a tabby on wooden stairs behind a metal railing, a grey cat on a shaggy rug next to an orange ball, and a tabby belly-up on a striped rug. Below each, the same cat cut out on a transparent checkerboard.

Top: the originals. Bottom: what BiRefNet kept. The railing, the cables and the rug all go,
the whiskers and the ball stay.

The bundled ffmpeg

ffmpeg 9.0.1, static, arm64, linking nothing but system libraries. Built with x264, x265, SVT-AV1, libvpx, Opus, LAME, libwebp and dav1d, plus VideoToolbox and AudioToolbox. Exact versions are in vendor/BUILDINFO.txt.

Prefer your own? Settings can switch to Homebrew's ffmpeg or any path you like.

Development

swift test

The integration tests run real conversions and are skipped unless you point them at a folder of sample files:

FFMEP_FIXTURES=/path/to/fixtures swift test --filter IntegrationTests

They use the ffmpeg in vendor/ by default, or Homebrew's with FFMEP_FFMPEG=homebrew.

make-app.sh also fixes one thing SwiftPM gets wrong for this app. SwiftPM records the deployment target as the SDK version in the binary, and macOS 26 then runs the app in legacy appearance mode, without Liquid Glass. The script writes the real SDK version back in with vtool.

The BiRefNet conversion scripts live in scripts/birefnet, with usage notes at the top of convert.py.

License

GPLv3, see LICENSE. The bundled ffmpeg is built with --enable-gpl and --enable-version3, so it is GPLv3 too. Its license files are in vendor/licenses.