Kevin Deldycke » mplayer

Video commands

Kev — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 22:31:27 +0000

Here are some commands to get informations about the nature of a video:

mplayer -frames 0 -identify ./video.avi
tcprobe -i ./video.avi
ffmpeg -i ./video.avi
file ./video.avi

Mplayer / Mencoder

Change the aspect ratio of a film for the playback. Standard aspect ratio are : 1.33 (4:3), 1.66 (1.66:1), 1.77 (16:9) and 2.35 (2.35:1):
```
mplayer -aspect 2:1 ./video.avi
```

Play the video with subtitles:

mplayer -sub ./subtitle_file.txt ./video.avi

This will extract audio track no. 128, downmix the AC3 sound to PCM and write the results to file.wav:
```
mplayer -vo null -hardframedrop -aid 128 -ao pcm -aofile file.wav dvd://1
```
This will extract the audio, convert it to PCM and write the resulting wave file to audio.wav:
```
mplayer -vo null -hardframedrop -ao pcm:file=audio.wav myvideo.avi
```

Show all subtitles streams:

mplayer -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -v 2 dvd://1 >&1 | grep sid

Create a rotated copy of the file.avi video (rotate=1 : clockwise ; rotate=2 : anti-clockwise):
```
mencoder -vop rotate=2 -oac pcm -ovc lavc ./source.avi -o ./dest.avi
```
Preview a video composed of all jpeg files from the current folder at 15fps (mplayer only support jpeg, png, tga and sgi formats):
```
mplayer "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=15
```
Create a 15fps video from all jpeg files of the current folder:
```
mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=15 -ovc lavc -o ./dest.avi
```

Encode a SVCD to AVI file:

mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc vcd://1 -o ./svcd.avi

Transcode video to raw format (be carefull: usually the output video got annoying audio delay):
```
mencoder -oac pcm -ovc raw -ofps 25 -noskip ./video.wmv -o ./video.avi
```
Encode a video using the default mpeg4 codec at 400 kbps for video and mp3 codec at constant 32 kbps bitrate for audio:
```
mencoder -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:preset=32 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vbitrate=400 in.avi -o out.avi
```

Enhance the sharpness of the video:

mplayer video.avi -vf smartblur=.6:-.5:0,unsharp=l5x5:.8:c5x5:.4

Cut a video to keep the first 5.4 seconds:

mencoder big-file.avi -ss 0 -endpos 5.4 -ovc copy -oac copy -o cutted.avi

Cut a video to keep everything exept the first 5.4 seconds:

mencoder big-file.avi -ss 5.4 -ovc copy -oac copy -o cutted.avi

Show all mplayer filter list:
```
mplayer -vf help
```
Get help of a particular filter (eq2 in this example):
```
mplayer -vf eq2=help
```
Here is the filter I use to light up a video taken in the dark with my cheap camera. Of course it add noise but thanks to this we can distinguish shapes in the dark.
```
mencoder -vf eq2=1.61:1.95:0.54:2.43 -oac pcm -ovc lavc video.avi -o bright-vid.avi
```
And this is the command to preview the result of the filter used above:
```
mplayer video.avi -vf eq2=1.61:1.95:0.54:2.43
```

This is how I convert raw videos taken with my digital camera into ISO standard MPEG-4 (DivX 5, XVID compatible) videos [to encode in grayscale, add :gray option to -lavcopts]:

mencoder source.avi -ovc lavc -oac lavc -ffourcc DX50 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=400:v4mv:mbd=2:trell:autoaspect:dia=2:acodec=mp3:abitrate=32:vpass=1 -vf hqdn3d -o output.avi
mencoder source.avi -ovc lavc -oac lavc -ffourcc DX50 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=400:v4mv:mbd=2:trell:autoaspect:dia=2:acodec=mp3:abitrate=32:vpass=2 -vf hqdn3d -o output.avi

Play all videos of the current folder fullscreen at 4x speed with 50% more brightness:
```
mplayer -speed 4 -brightness 50 -fs ./*.avi
```

Extract audio stream from a video:

mplayer -dumpaudio -dumpfile audio.ac3 video_source.mpg

FFmpeg

Concatenate a series of videos and transcode the audio output to a flac file. This only works with certain multimedia container (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 PS, DV):
```
cat M2U01802.MPG M2U01803.MPG M2U01804.MPG | ffmpeg -i - -acodec flac output.flac
```

Remove the first 16 seconds of video and change container to Matroska:

ffmpeg -ss 16 -i ./MVI_8763.MOV -vcodec copy -acodec copy ./MVI_8763.mkv

Extract the first frame of a video (great to generate image preview):
```
ffmpeg -i video.mov -r 1  -t 00:00:01 -f image2 images%05d.png
```

Transcode the video stream to the lossless HuffYUV codec:

ffmpeg -i ./MVI_1714.MOV -vcodec huffyuv -sameq ./MVI_1714-lossless.avi

Transcode

Merge multiple video into one:

avimerge -i part1.avi part2.avi -o big-file.avi

Extract the raw subtitle stream. The -a 0x21 option correspond to the subtitle stream’s hexadecimal number (= 0×20 + id of the stream):
```
tccat -i /space/st-tng/dic1/ -T 1 -L | tcextract -x ps1 -t vob -a 0x22 > subs-en
```

VLC

Transcode the first video stream found in a m3u playlist to a 384 kbps MPEG-2 video and 48 kHz Vorbis audio, and serve the resulting stream ina Ogg container to http://localhost:8888. To save bandwisth we reduce by two the size of the video:
```
vlc -vvv http://mafreebox.freebox.fr/freeboxtv/playlist.m3u --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp2v,vb=384,scale=0.5,acodec=vorbis,ab=48,channels=1}:standard{access=http,mux=ogg,url=:8888}' -I ncurses 2> /dev/null
```

Others

Extract to chapter.txt the chapter file of the track n°1 of the DVD:
```
dvdxchap -t 1 /mnt/cdrom > chapter.txt
```
Test XV video driver output via gstreamer v0.10:
```
gst-launch-0.10 videotestsrc ! xvimagesink
```

How to wake up early, the geekest way

Kev — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:14:52 +0000

I was in a country far far away last month. So far that there was no broadband access (yes, this is possible). Anyway… Generally I use my mobile phone as a clock and as an alarm clock. Unfortunalty I brake it down just before my night flight.

So, to simplify, I was abroad in a hotel, the sun was down since a while, I was tired, and I had to wake up early. No electronic devices to help me, except my laptop… And then came the idea to combine cron and mplayer to automaticcaly play some MP3s at a given time.

Here is how I’ve done it. First, as root, create an empty file in /etc/cron.d/. Let us call it wake-up:

touch /etc/cron.d/wake-up

Then edit it to put the following command:

15 6 * * * root mplayer /home/kevin/music/CoolCavemen/AllCoolHits/*.flac > /dev/null 2>&1 /dev/null

This mean that mplayer will be launched at 6:15 and will play all FLAC files from the /home/kevin/music/CoolCavemen/AllCoolHits/ directory. I let you adapt those parameters to fit your needs.

Random Tips:

Take care of time zone (system time and local time are very different).
Check that your volume is not muted and crank the volume up !
Run the mplayer /home/kevin/music/CoolCavemen/AllCoolHits/*.flac > /dev/null 2>&1 /dev/null command alone in another terminal before you go to sleep to be sure it work (i.e. to check that all sound-related sub-systems are loaded).
Be sure that cron deamon is up an running (do a /etc/init.d/crond restart if you are not sure).

HowTo Compile and Use xvidcap

Kev — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 11:41:39 +0000

Compile gvidcap !

Get the last stable source code archive on xvidcap Sourceforge project page or download it from the CVS:

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xvidcap co -P xvidcap

Install required dependencies:

urpmi gcc automake libgtk+2-devel ffmpeg-devel liblame0-devel

Dirty compile:

make distclean [optional]
CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/include/ffmpeg LDFLAGS=-L/usr/bin/ffmpeg
./configure --with-gtk2 --with-forced-embedded-ffmpeg && make gvidcap
make gvidcap
make install [optional]

Quick test:

./src/gvidcap &

Use gvidcap !

Raw capture:

gvidcap --gui no -v --file ~/img_%04d.xwd --frames 0 --fps 10 --cap_geometry 1024x768+0+0

The following can be used but it slow down the machine (png compression require too cpu):

gvidcap --gui no -v --compress 9 --file ~/img_%04d.png --frames 0 --fps 10 --cap_geometry 1024x728+0+0

Convert .xwd images to .png images because mplayer only support .png, .jpg, .tga and .sgi image file format:

convert img_*.xwd img_%04d.png && rm -rf ./*.xwd

Preview the video:

mplayer "mf://*.png" -mf fps=10

Make a video from successive screenshots:

mencoder "mf://*.png" -mf fps=10 -ovc lavc -o ./video.avi

Documentation: