Explanation Video: https://youtu.be/l03Os5uwWmk?si=xgZPNMrvs_aDcWE5
YC Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47012964
Stores files onto YouTube by encoding them into lossless video and decoding them back to the original file. Supports both a command-line interface and a graphical user interface.
- File Encoding/Decoding: Encode any file into a lossless video (FFV1/MKV) and then decode it back to the original file
- Fountain Codes: Uses Wirehair fountain codes for redundancy and repair
- Optional Encryption: Encrypt files with a password using libsodium (XChaCha20-Poly1305)
- Selectable Checksum: Choose between CRC32 (default) and xxHash32 for packet integrity verification
- Batch Processing: Queue multiple files for batch encoding (GUI)
- Progress Tracking: Real-time progress bars and status updates (GUI)
Visit my CI/CD pipeline, and click "Login as Guest". Visit the yt-media-storage project, click on the latest passing build, and click "Artifacts" to download the latest build artifacts for both the CLI and GUI. You may need to install some shared libraries (FFmpeg, Qt6, libsodium) to run the executables.
- CMake 3.22
- C++23 compiler
- FFmpeg
- libsodium
- OpenMP
- Qt6 (Core and Widgets)
sudo apt update
sudo apt install cmake build-essential qt6-base-dev \
libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libswresample-dev \
libsodium-dev libomp-dev ffmpegsudo dnf install cmake gcc-c++ qt6-qtbase-devel ffmpeg-devel libsodium-devel libgompsudo pacman -S cmake qt6-base ffmpeg libsodium openmpbrew install cmake qt@6 ffmpeg libsodium libompvcpkg install ffmpeg libsodium openmp qt6Or install Qt6 separately via the Qt Online Installer and FFmpeg/libsodium via vcpkg.
mkdir build
cmake -B build
cmake --build buildThis produces two executables and one shared library:
media_storage— Command-line interfacemedia_storage_gui— Graphical user interfacelibmedia_storage.so/media_storage.dll— Embeddable shared library
./media_storage encode --input <file> --output <video> [--encrypt --password <pwd>] [--hash <crc32|xxhash>]
./media_storage decode --input <video> --output <file> [--password <pwd>]
| Flag | Short | Description |
|---|---|---|
--input |
-i |
Input file path (required) |
--output |
-o |
Output file path (required) |
--encrypt |
-e |
Enable encryption (encode only) |
--password |
-p |
Password for encryption/decryption |
--hash |
-H |
Checksum algorithm: crc32 (default) or xxhash (encode only) |
The checksum algorithm is embedded in each packet's flags, so decode automatically detects which algorithm was used —
no need to specify it again.
./media_storage_gui
-
Encode a file to video:
- Click "Browse..." next to "Input File" to select the file you want to encode
- Click "Browse..." next to "Output File" to choose where to save the video
- Click "Encode to Video" to start the process
-
Decode a video to file:
- Click "Browse..." next to "Input File" to select the video file
- Click "Browse..." next to "Output File" to choose where to save the decoded file
- Click "Decode from Video" to start the process
- Click "Add Files" to add multiple files to the batch queue
- Select an output directory for all encoded videos
- Click "Batch Encode All" to process all files in sequence
- The progress bar shows the current operation progress
- Status label displays current operation status
- Logs panel provides detailed information about each step
- All operations run in separate threads to keep the UI responsive
The shared library exposes a C API (media_storage.h) so you can integrate encoding/decoding. Link against
libmedia_storage and include the header:
#include <media_storage.h>
int progress(uint64_t current, uint64_t total, void *user) {
printf("Progress: %llu / %llu\n", current, total);
return 0; // return non-zero to cancel
}
int main(void) {
ms_encode_options_t opts = {0};
opts.input_path = "myfile.bin";
opts.output_path = "myfile.mkv";
opts.hash_algorithm = MS_HASH_CRC32;
opts.progress = progress;
ms_result_t result;
ms_status_t status = ms_encode(&opts, &result);
if (status != MS_OK) {
fprintf(stderr, "Error: %s\n", ms_status_string(status));
return 1;
}
printf("Encoded %llu bytes -> %llu bytes (%llu frames)\n",
result.input_size, result.output_size, result.total_frames);
return 0;
}After installing with cmake --install build, use find_package:
find_package(media_storage REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(your_app PRIVATE media_storage::media_storage_lib)Or add this repository as a subdirectory:
add_subdirectory(media-storage)
target_link_libraries(your_app PRIVATE media_storage_lib)- Encoding: Files are chunked, encoded with fountain codes, and embedded into video frames
- Decoding: Packets are extracted from video frames and reconstructed into the original file
- Video Format: FFV1 codec in MKV container (lossless)
- Frame Resolution: 3840x2160 (4K) at 30 FPS
- Encryption: Optional XChaCha20-Poly1305 via libsodium
- Checksums: CRC32-MPEG2 (default) or xxHash32 (streaming) per packet; algorithm is stored in the packet flags for self-describing decode
- Qt6 not found: Ensure Qt6 development packages are installed
- FFmpeg libraries missing: Install FFmpeg development packages
- libsodium missing: Install libsodium development packages
- OpenMP errors: Install OpenMP development packages
- Cannot open input file: Check file permissions and paths
- Encoding fails: Ensure sufficient disk space for output video
- Decoding fails: Verify the input file is a valid encoded video
- Encode Error: failed to write header: Make sure you have at least FFMPEG version 8 in-order to use FFV1 encoder on mp4. Otherwise, use mkv instead.
- Encoding streams chunks and uses only a few MB of RAM regardless of input file size.
- Decoding holds all decoded chunks in memory before writing the output file.
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.