Comment on FBI warnings are true—fake file converters do push malware

MemmingenFan923@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• horrorslice@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  The website mentions that there are fake offline converters that do it as well.

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  • MemmingenFan923@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Yes this can also happen. I should have written open source offline converter

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    • amphy@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      What you recommend in terms of offline open-source converters?

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      • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Pandoc for documents, ffmpeg for video , imagemagick for images

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      • AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        What are you looking to convert?

        Usually what i do is look for any converter and look for open source alternatives to it on alternative.net and hopefully one of the top 3 alternatives fits your use case

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• Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Which offline converter? I find myself often trying to convert:

  • PDF to JPEG
  • AVC to MP4
  • OPUS to MP3

  etc. I have no idea how to do that but if I type it into a search engine there’s usually tools there.

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  • T156@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    FFmpeg and handbrake do the latter two quite handily. The latter even has a nice program interface, rather than needing commands.

    ImageMagick is capable of the first. I’ve had it go the other way before, and I should be most surprised if it couldn’t convert a PDF to a jpg.

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    • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I don’t have the knowledge or the time to learn to use these tools.

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      • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Then I suppose you’re up shit creek.

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      • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        It is indeed very difficult to type convert 001.jpg example.pdf and ffmpeg -i rock.mp4 rock.avi

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  • kava@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    imagemagick handles almost all image files

    images ) ls
    001.jpg  002.jpg  003.jpg  004.jpg  005.jpg
    images ) convert 001.jpg example.pdf
    

    ffmpeg handles almost all video files

    ex ) ls
    rock.mp4
    ex ) ffmpeg -i rock.mp4 rock.avi
    

    if you use gnome there’s a nice little feature of the file explorer where you can just drag and drop scripts into ~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts/

    for example

    make a fish script (ignoring error checking for brevity here, my real script had a couple guard rails)

    #!/usr/bin/env fish
    set file $argv[1]
    convert $file (basename $file .png).pdf
    

    then when you right click on a file in your gnome file explorer you can click the scripts option

    example

    and the script is right there so you can just easily convert with the press of a button

    example

    note, i crossed out some stuff that includes client names

    tldr: there are so many ways to do what you need to do there’s no reason to trust random websites you don’t know. there’s a lot of slimey people out there wanting to take advantage of people. and everybody should strive to be at least a little computer literate. the examples i gave here aren’t complicated. they’re simple commands

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    • cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Thats a pretty sweet feature in gnome. Ill need to see if there is something similar for kde

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  • vithigar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    PDF to JPEG

    Don’t most pdf viewers have an export to image option?

    AVC to MP4

    Do you actually have files with an .avc extension? AVC is a codec that can be used in many different container formats, including MP4. Where did these files come from?

    OPUS to MP3

    I actually agree that most audio conversion tools are needlessly awkward. Audacity will convert these just fine, though doesn’t really do bulk conversion. Foobar2000 will do it in bulk if you’re on windows.

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    • AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      On the PDF to JPEG, you can also open the PDFs with an image editor, such as Inkscape or krita, and then save the image on the format and quality needed. This method also has the benefit that on some cases you play with the assets if needed. (Depends on how was the PDF generated)

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    • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Don’t most pdf viewers have an export to image option?

      Don’t know, I never looked! But I will, thanks.

      Do you actually have files with an .avc extension?

      Yes

      Audacity will convert these just fine, though doesn’t really do bulk conversion.

      I’ll give this a try on Tenacity. I didn’t realize they had file conversion on there.

      Only helpful comment in this thread, thanks.

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  • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Video and audio conversion can be done with Handbrake or Shutter Encoder, both are nice GUIs

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    • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Handbrake won’t load the file and Shutter won’t even open. But thank you.

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  • ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Foobar2000 is good with audio file conversions, once you have installed the relevant codecs.

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  • kipo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    You could try Permute. It’s a pretty simple app for converting video and audio. Permute is my go-to for quick video conversion.

    DBPowerAmp has an easy-to-use audio converter that supports pretty much every audio format and does batch file conversion as well. DBPowerAmp is my go-to for audio conversion.

    Both of these are paid apps.

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    • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Thanks, I’ll check those out.

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  • zerofk@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I can’t comment on the others, but PDF to JPEG should be easy enough. ImageMagick, which another commenter suggested, is possible but not user friendly. However you can just open the PDF in many applications and export it as an image. Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop can do it. GIMP probably too.

    I’m a last ditch effort you can even just open the file and screenshot it.

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    • shottymcb@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Open/Libreoffice can do that too

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• gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I tend to just whip up a script of some sort that employs widely used libraries for the conversion. I know that’s more technical than most people would have the tolerance or aptitude for, but for me, it’s the least ambiguous and most secure way to do stuff like that. And then I can squirrel it away in a utility scripts directory and use it later if I need it again.

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