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Video Tools
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Digital Video (DV) Tools
Here are some miscellaneous tools for taking DV and encoding it in a form that
you can burn to DVD. This is to be used in conjunction with
Kino, the
mjpegtools, and the
smilutils.
Included are a couple of different encoding scripts,
a tool to show the frame count on a smil file, and one to split a smil file into
several shorter files (useful for test encodes, as well as for being able to
avoid reencoding the whole thing if something goes awry someplace). There is
also a tool that uses mplayer to verify
that all the frames in the smil file were actually encoded, so you can fire off
a batch encode and come back later and make sure everything encoded. The included
README.TXT should get you started. Click
here to download.
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MPlayer YUV4MPEG output plugin
I'm a big fan of the mjpegtools toolkit (mjpeg.sourceforge.net)
for video encoding. Their tools expect the video stream in a YUV4MPEG format, which you can get from
the tools themselves, or from transcode. However, for anything coming from an AVI file, they use
libavifile, and that doesn't always seem to get along with things I feed it. MPlayer, on the other
hand, usually works fine on the same files. So this little plugin will give you a new output plugin
for mplayer to create YUV4MPEG streams that you can encode with mjpegtools.
Update The YUV4MPEG output plugin has been accepted by the mplayer developers, and is now included
in the CVS version of mplayer.
Now you can use the "-vo yuv4mpeg" option. Note that the video
stream is always written to "stream.yuv". If you like, you can pipe that directly to the
encoder by doing a "mkfifo stream.yuv" before running mplayer, then just run mplayer in one terminal,
and the encoder in another, pulling from the stream.yuv fifo.
Update There is a bug in the output plugin when playing YUV source material (DVD's) that can
be corrected by applying this patch.
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YUV Pixelate
This filter allows you to "block out" parts of a video by "pixelating"
areas. This is similar to what you see on various TV shows where the identity
of someone is concealed and they block out their face on camera.
To use it, just create an edit list -- a
simple text file that has the position, size, and start/end frames where you
want the video pixelated, and run the video through it. Works with the mjpegtools video
format, YUV4MPEG. It is designed to operate as a filter, like the other mjpegtoools
filters. The easiest way to build it is copy it to your mjpegtools source tree
in the "lavtools" directory, edit the makefile to add an entry for it, and build.
The source is here. (Note that this is a C++ source
file, so you'll need to link against libstdc++.)
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YUV 3-2 pulldown
This is used to convert a 25-fps video to a 30-fps video by using a 3-2 pulldown on it.
Note that with videos with a lot of motion, this produces a "tearing" in the video that
ranges from mildly annoying to totally unwatchable. Works with the mjpegtools video
format, YUV4MPEG. It is designed to operate as a filter, like the other mjpegtoools
filters. The easiest way to build it is copy it to your mjpegtools source tree
in the "lavtools" directory, edit the makefile to add an entry for it, and build.
The source is here. You'll need to use sox to
stretch the audio before muxing it back together. (Depending on the video, you may get a
better conversion by using the mplayer output plugin above and forcing a framerate of
24 fps. You still have to stretch the audio and remux.)
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Widgets
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FLTK editor widget -- A word-wrapping text editor widget for
FLTK.
Supports CUA-style editing keys, automatic scrollbar, load and save to file or buffer, and more. Includes
subclasses with status display, find and replace, etc. Also includes a couple of utility widgets -- a status panel,
and a progress bar. For more info, you can read the Readme,
browse the documentation,
or download the source archive. For changes made in the
most recent version, check the change log. For old versions or other
archive formats, check the ftp site.
Note that the latest source is designed to work with FLTK 1.1 or FLTK 2.x (CVS). It should build on
FLTK 1.0, but has not been heavily tested on that environment for a while. If you are running with
FLTK 1.0 and encounter difficulty, you may want to try the previous version.
Having trouble building MySQLGui? This is getting to be a FAQ, so
I put together some instructions. If you're having trouble building that, or Fl_Editor itself, you
might want to check these instructions.
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C++ Tools
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INI File Tools (STLINI) -- I know there must be at least
a million people who have written code to read/write Windows-style INI files under Linux, but when I went
looking for one, I couldn't find one that fit what I wanted and didn't include a lot of extra stuff I
didn't want. So here
is a simple set of INI file management routines that should work on any platform that supports the C++ STL
(Standard Template Library), including Linux. You can read and write INI files all you want with just four simple
function calls -- LoadIni, SaveIni, GetIniSetting, and PutIniSetting. The whole set of functions is less than a hundred
lines of code. Includes a test program and build instructions (for Linux).
Click here to download it
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Perl / CGI scripts
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Photo Album -- If you just can't help yourself, and you just have to put
your family pictures online for the world to look at, this script makes it a little eaiser. It generates
web-based photo albums "on the fly", taking thumbnails and captions from files it finds in a directory. Easy to
set up and use, and makes maintenance of your album a snap, since all you have to do is add or remove files
to a directory. See it in action here, or download it
here (tarball format) or here (zip format).
There is also a PHP version available. The PHP version has more features, including
the ability to view only new pictures since last visit, sort the pictures by various
criteria, uploading pictures, etc. It comes ready to deploy (just unpack and drop it
on your web server someplace), and comes complete with documentation. You can see
that version in action here, and
download it here, or in zip format here.
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Font Tools -- Do fonts under Linux drive you crazy? Well, you're not alone.
For a font to be fully useful under Linux, your X server has to know about them, your printer driver has to know
about them, and in many cases your applications have to know about them. Here is a collection of tools
that will make life easier in that regard. This archive includes
type1inst, a perl script by James Macnicol that generates font
maps for X and Ghostscript, afmmaker.ps, a postscript tool by Yeong Yu
that creates AFM files for postscript fonts, and finally makeafms, a
perl script by me, Robert Kesterson. Makeafms.pl reads the Ghostscript font map and uses ghostscript and
makeafms.ps to generate AFMs for all the fonts Ghostscript knows about. Then it puts them in the proper places
based on your ghostscript environment. The point of all this is that by running two scripts and copying a couple of
text files, you will be able to use your Postscript fonts on screen and in print! Now you can dress up your
documents in Applixware,
Star Office,
WordPerfect, etc.
If you need to download the pieces individually, visit the
ftp site.
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Bodyfat Calculator -
For the computer geek who has everything. This is little perl script that asks
you several questions (age, gender, weight, and several skinfold measurements). It then
plugs it all into a couple of equations and prints out your current bodyfat
percentage, your lean mass, and your fat mass. It also asks for your desired
bodyfat percentage, and tells you how much fat you have to lose to hit that
percentage (assuming the same lean mass). You can download the script
here. It should run on any platform that
can run perl.
Please note that this is not a CGI script, just a standalone perl
script.
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Miscellaneous
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Via VT6410 Patch -- Some time ago, I got
a nifty new Asus P4P800 Deluxe motherboard. Unfortunately, the chipset it uses for the IDE
RAID controller is not supported directly in the Linux kernel, and the driver on Asus' website
only works with Redhat 7.2. Fortunately, I found a patch online that turns on the IDE
functionality. No hardware RAID support, but fortunately,
Linux has software RAID that works quite well
if you need it. With this patch, I am able to attach a 200G ATA133 drive and get transfers
of 52Mb/sec from it in udma6 mode. I also have a DVD burner on that interface and it works
fine. I have not encountered any problems so far.
I did not write the original version of this patch. I am
just providing it here
since it seems extremely hard to find (I can't even find where I originally got it). My thanks
to whoever wrote it, and apologies for not being unable to give you proper credit.
I've tried to keep the patch up to date for newer kernel versions. The
patches below will generally apply to kernel versions newer than the patch
listed, up until the next patch. So, for example, the 2.6.7 patch will
apply all the way up through 2.6.10, until you hit 2.6.11-rc4, when you'd
switch to the later patch.
The functionality of this patch is already included in the main linux
kernel versions 2.6.15-rc2 and later.
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