// the find
diego3g/video-to-reels
Automatically edit videos to post on Instagram Reels
A shell-script-style Node.js tool that converts horizontal videos into vertical Instagram Reels format using FFmpeg, ImageMagick, and face detection via TensorFlow/face-api.js. It handles rotation, color grading, audio cleanup, and tries to center the crop on detected faces. Aimed at creators who want to automate the horizontal-to-vertical conversion pipeline without touching a video editor.
Face detection crop is the genuinely useful piece — using SSD MobileNet to decide where to pan the vertical frame beats center-crop blindly. Ships 30+ LUT files (.CUBE) for color grading, which is a real time-saver. Audio normalization and noise removal are wired in via FFmpeg filters, so the output is actually post-ready. ZX as the scripting layer keeps the FFmpeg command composition readable instead of a wall of shell escapes.
Last commit was March 2022 — four years abandoned, and the two most useful features (auto-cut on silence, subtitles) are unchecked stubs. Setup requires four separate system dependencies installed globally, and there's no Docker image or install script, so getting it running is manual grunt work. The video file path is hardcoded as a variable inside convert.mjs rather than being a CLI argument, which makes it awkward to use on more than one file without editing source. No error handling to speak of — if FFmpeg or face detection fails mid-pipeline, you get a raw crash.