meme-maker

A small collection of personal yt-dlp + ffmpeg tools for quickly making clips, music stings, and captioned memes from YouTube.

Originally created while making memes for a personal project that spiraled into a general-purpose clip and meme toolkit.

Now reasonably robust, portable, and easy to install on new machines (especially cachyOS/Arch).

What's in here

Script	Purpose	Notes
mememaker.sh	YouTube slice → captioned GIF or MP4	Best one. Two-line text support
video.sh	Download clean trimmed video clips	Fast quality encodes
music.sh	Extract trimmed audio (mp3)	Great for stings & samples
build.sh	HTML → video/GIF using puppeteer	Advanced: capture browser animations
lib.sh	Shared utilities	Used by the main scripts
Memes/mememaker.sh	Old-school standalone version	Self-contained, good for copying

Quick start (recommended)

git clone https://github.com/SudoDEMON/meme-maker.git
cd meme-maker
./install.sh

The installer will:

• Install yt-dlp, ffmpeg, fonts, and Node.js (where possible)
• Symlink the tools into ~/.local/bin
• Optionally set up npm deps for build.sh

After that you can just run mememaker, video, music, etc. from anywhere.

Manual / no-install route

# Make sure you have yt-dlp + ffmpeg + a decent font
./mememaker.sh --help
./video.sh --help

Requirements

• yt-dlp
• ffmpeg
• A decent bold sans-serif font (DejaVu Sans Bold, Noto Sans Bold, etc.)
• Node.js + npm (only needed for build.sh / capture.js)

On cachyOS / Arch:

sudo pacman -S yt-dlp ffmpeg ttf-dejavu noto-fonts nodejs npm

On macOS (with Homebrew):

brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg node

Usage examples

# Make a meme (outputs to gifs/<id>.gif by default)
mememaker Ee4oHnkXRnM 8:33 8:37 gif "TAKE THAT" "YOU 5 TON BEHEMOTH"

# Make a meme with a custom name (still placed in the right dir + correct ext)
mememaker haX-hC7Tfdc 8:22 8:31 gif "RIP" "GRANDMA" "RIPGRANDMAMEME"

# Grab a video clip (defaults to videos/<id>.mp4 if no output given)
video dQw4w9wgccc 0:42 1:17 funny-bit.mp4

# Grab some audio (defaults to audio/<id>.mp3 if no output given)
music dQw4w9wgccc 1:05 1:22 bass.mp3

• mememaker will create gifs/ or videos/ as needed and name the file after the video ID (or your custom stem) + the right extension.
• video and music do the same with videos/ and audio/.
• Passing an explicit output filename (as the last argument) gives you full control over path and name.

All scripts support -h / --help.

Environment variables

• FONT=/path/to/font.ttf — force a specific font in mememaker
• MM_DEBUG=1 — extra debug output

Moving to a new machine (cachyOS, etc.)

1. Clone the repo (or copy the scripts + lib.sh)
2. Run ./install.sh
3. Done

Or just copy the files and run the individual scripts directly.

Project structure (the important bits)

.
├── lib.sh              # Shared helpers (don't run directly)
├── mememaker.sh        # Main meme tool (the good one)
├── video.sh
├── music.sh
├── build.sh            # HTML → video using puppeteer
├── capture.js
├── install.sh          # The magic migration/installer
├── package.json
├── Memes/
│   └── mememaker.sh    # Old standalone/self-contained version
└── README.md

Everything else (media files, frames/, node_modules/) is either output or generated.

Philosophy

These are personal tools that grew over time. They are intentionally simple and a bit chaotic. The goal is "I want a meme/clip in 10 seconds" not "perfectly engineered media pipeline."

Pull requests that make them more reliable without making them complicated are welcome.

License

ISC (same as the original package.json)

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Made with too much yt-dlp and stubbornness.