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!
![5 HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed]()
When you say or read "HTML5", you half expect exotic dancers and unicorns to walk into the room to the tune of "I'm Sexy and I Know It." Can you blame us though? We watched the fundamental APIs stagnate for so long that a basic feature...
![Write Better JavaScript with Promises]()
You've probably heard the talk around the water cooler about how promises are the future. All of the cool kids are using them, but you don't see what makes them so special. Can't you just use a callback? What's the big deal? In this article, we'll...
![MooTools PulseFade Plugin]()
I was recently driven to create a MooTools plugin that would take an element and fade it to a min from a max for a given number of times. Here's the result of my Moo-foolery.
The MooTools JavaScript
Options of the class include:
min: (defaults to .5) the...
![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...
How do you get a transparent background?
Is it possible to build waveform image using
offlineAudioContext? Seems like the exact tool for the job.