Tool kits for real jobs

A recorded episode starts as a raw WAV and ends as whatever a hosting platform will actually accept. Trim the dead air and flubbed takes, normalise loudness to -16 LUFS -- the exact preset this catalogue's own WAV normaliser labels 'Podcast' -- convert to the MP3 every host expects, and pull a waveform image for a social teaser. None of these re-encode until the format itself has to change.

A file carries more than the picture or the sound: a JPG's EXIF block can hold the GPS coordinates of where it was taken, a PNG's text chunks can hold the authoring tool's name and a filesystem path, an MP3's ID3 frames and a FLAC's Vorbis comments can hold the same. Each of these four tools rewrites only that structure and copies the image or audio data across untouched, so what changes is what the file says about itself, not what it contains.

Game developers routinely deal with engine archives, raw sprite sheets, and specialized GPU texture compressions. Extract Godot PCK and Ren'Py RPA game packages into ZIPs, convert Valve VTF and DirectDraw Surface DDS textures to transparent PNGs, and export Aseprite animations without launching heavyweight game editors.

Digital preservation often runs into forgotten 8-bit and 16-bit binary formats from the 1980s and 1990s. Decode 1984 Apple Macintosh MacPaint graphics, Commodore Amiga Deluxe Paint IFF bitmaps and 8SVX audio samples, classic MS-DOS PCX images, and PlayStation 1 TIM textures into modern PNG and WAV assets entirely in memory.

Streaming platforms, web players, and media archives all mandate different caption formats. Convert legacy SubRip SRT files to HTML5 WebVTT with styled cue positioning, transcode anime Advanced SubStation Alpha ASS/SSA styling into standard text, and parse legacy SAMI and MicroDVD files for universal video sync.

Modern web mapping tools and geospatial APIs rely on GeoJSON, while GPS trackers, drones, and Google Earth export KML, KMZ, GPX, and Garmin FIT binary files. Parse waypoint trails, boundary polygons, and fitness metrics directly to GeoJSON or CSV without installing QGIS or running Python scripts.

When dealing with orphaned help manuals, offline web archives, email backups, and proprietary tablet notebooks, cloud tools often fail or leak sensitive records. Unpack Windows Compiled HTML Help CHM files, extract Outlook MSG emails to standard EML, convert GoodNotes notebooks to PDF, and unpack WebArchive files locally with zero network leakage.