MONICA

Media Operations Navigator with Interactive Command-line Assistance

A simple, keyboard-driven interactive CLI application that makes FFmpeg easy to use without exposing FFmpeg syntax.

Features

• Interactive menu - No need to remember command-line flags
• Keyboard navigation - Arrow keys to move, Enter to select, Space to multi-select
• Auto FFmpeg setup - Automatically downloads FFmpeg if not installed
• Recipe-based operations - Pre-configured presets for common tasks
• Progress display - Visual progress bar during conversions
• Multi-file processing - Select multiple files and process them in queue
• Cross-platform - Works on Windows and Linux

Supported Operations

Category	Description
Convert Video	MP4, MKV, WebM, AVI with various codecs (H.264, H.265, VP9)
Convert Audio	MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, OGG, Opus
Extract Audio	Extract audio tracks from video files
Resize/Compress	Scale to 1080p, 720p, 480p, 360p or compress with quality presets
Remux	Change container format without re-encoding

Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10 or higher
• FFmpeg (auto-downloaded if not present)

Steps

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/monica.git
   cd monica

2. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Run the application:

   python main.py

On first run, MONICA will check for FFmpeg and offer to download it automatically if not found.

Usage

1. Place your input files in the /import folder
2. Run python main.py
3. Use arrow keys to navigate the menu
4. Select an operation (e.g., "Convert video")
5. Choose a preset (e.g., "MP4 (H.264)")
6. Select files to process using Space, then press Enter
7. Converted files appear in the /export folder

Output Naming

Output files are automatically named with a timestamp:

<original_name>_<YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS>_<FORMAT>_converted.<ext>

Example: video_20260108_143210_MP4_converted.mp4

Project Structure

monica/
├── main.py              # Entry point
├── requirements.txt     # Python dependencies
├── README.md           # This file
├── import/             # Input files go here
├── export/             # Output files appear here
├── logs/               # Log files
├── docs/               # Documentation
│   ├── introduction.md # Project specification
│   ├── usage.md        # User guide
│   └── recipes.md      # Recipe documentation
└── src/
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── ffmpeg_manager.py   # FFmpeg detection/download
    ├── menu.py             # Interactive menus
    ├── recipes.py          # Conversion presets
    ├── file_selector.py    # File picker
    ├── executor.py         # Job execution
    └── logger.py           # Logging

Configuration

Custom Recipes

You can add custom recipes by creating a custom_recipes.json file in the project root. See docs/recipes.md for details.

Dependencies

• questionary - Interactive prompts and menus
• colorama - Cross-platform colored terminal output
• requests - HTTP client for FFmpeg download

License

MIT License

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.