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Show HN: The Shape of YouTube

Show HN: The Shape of YouTube

5 comments

·October 12, 2025

hide_on_bush

A project inspired by https://www.theshapeofmovies.com/ Submit a YouTube video and get a nice color analysis! 60 seconds maximum because I have a small server, but I hope you'll like it. I use a Python backend with yt-dlp, and ffmpeg + scipy for the frame processing.

CaptainOfCoit

I think why the shape of movies works is because it's taking the entire video, where each cinematic shot is almost visible because most (all?) frames are included in the generated image, while yours is less than ten frames so there is no patterns emerging that looks visually interesting and pleasing.

quapster

Interesting point about the color analysis! It kinda reminds me of how album art used to be such a significant part of music culture. I’ve noticed that with videos, especially on platforms like YouTube, the visual style can really draw you in or turn you off immediately. It’s wild how much emotion can come from a simple palette choice or color scheme.

Back when I was tinkering with some video editing, I became really fascinated by how specific colors can evoke specific feelings. After messing around with different filters and palettes, I realized it’s a whole language in itself. Wonder if this tool could track viewer engagement based on those color schemes? I mean, does a certain color set get more clicks or shares? Could be fun to see the data on that! And there’s always the ethical side—using someone’s video for this without their consent could lead to some interesting discussions in the community. Anyone else tried something similar?

xfeeefeee

I'm having a hard time understanding what exactly the graphs are showing. Is it just average pixel color per frame?

ruguo

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