Create a Waveform Image with ffmpeg
Waveform images have a variety of uses and I've started seeing waveform images overlaying at the bottom of videos. That type of feature seems useful if you want to see identify music in a video or specific spaces in a video which feature action. If you're creating an audio-centric app, you may have a dozen uses for the waveform image.
You can easily create a waveform image using the amazing ffmpeg utility with a very short command:
ffmpeg -i input -filter_complex "showwavespic=s=640x120" -frames:v 1 output.png
The image you'll get back will look similar to:

There are a variety of customizations you can create for waveform image as detailed in the ffmpeg waveform documentation. Take some time to experiment with all of the features provided by ffmpeg -- you can do amazing things with media!
![Camera and Video Control with HTML5]()
Client-side APIs on mobile and desktop devices are quickly providing the same APIs. Of course our mobile devices got access to some of these APIs first, but those APIs are slowly making their way to the desktop. One of those APIs is the getUserMedia API...
![Create a Sheen Logo Effect with CSS]()
I was inspired when I first saw Addy Osmani's original ShineTime blog post. The hover sheen effect is simple but awesome. When I started my blog redesign, I really wanted to use a sheen effect with my logo. Using two HTML elements and...
![PHP IMDB Scraper]()
It's been quite a while since I've written a PHP grabber and the itch finally got to me. This time the victim is the International Movie Database, otherwise known as IMDB. IMDB has info on every movie ever made (or so it seems). Their...
![CSS pointer-events]()
The responsibilities taken on by CSS seems to be increasingly blurring with JavaScript. Consider the -webkit-touch-callout CSS property, which prevents iOS's link dialog menu when you tap and hold a clickable element. The pointer-events property is even more JavaScript-like, preventing:
click actions from doing...
How do you get a transparent background?
Is it possible to build waveform image using
offlineAudioContext? Seems like the exact tool for the job.