I've finally open access to the documentation wiki for vcs (and also mp3plot and nautilus-follow-symlink). It's far from complete, with a lot of stuff to add, but I'm moving there all documentation progressively so there's the place to look for help.
I started using MediaWiki but later scaled back to DokuWiki.
mp3plot 0.6.0 is out. It started as a bugfix release for a nasty bug when dealing with free-format or broken files (reported by Tricky Trix, thanks pal 🙂 ) and eventually led me to (finally) implement support for "MP1" (MPEG-1 Layer I), "MP2" (MPEG-1 Layer II) and all three layers of MPEG-2. Such files can be found sometimes as disguised mp3s so this should be useful.
Also some other fixes including longstanding (brown paper bag) bugs. There's no doubt more of them in there, so report if you find something weird.
So in short previous versions should be ditched in favour of this one 😛
There's a refreshed version of nautilus-follow-symlink. Nothing new (after all there's little to be added), but I'm finally letting GNOME set the icon instead of force-feeding it, so it should, hopefully, display an icon matching the user-chosen theme. And it should also be friendlier to build.
mp3plot 0.5.1 is out, I've finally got a graphical output I sort of like and fixed some bugs, see the changelog for details.
The older colourscheme is still available as an option (--old-colorscheme)
I've published a snapshot of VCS in the state I commented in the last post, i.e. it works on FreeBSD and possibly more OSes than before, but output is less refined there. But since I've been a bit sidetracked I've opted to publish now and update later on 😛
As I wrote on the last update, I've been working on making vcs work on FreeBSD (and hopefully other non-GNU systems), there were quite a few problems that made it unusable outside GNU variants, but it's already working. Sort of:
There's still some wrong details:
Like 
instead of 
or 
instead of 
But that's definitely better than not running at all 😛
The other major problem is I've no clue how the size of removable media should be retrieved (in a portable way). That's required when working with a real DVD (i.e. not a DVD ISO). The previous version used a method I disliked (fdisk -s) and that most probably would fail on everything but GNU. SO if you know of a right way of do so, drop me a line 🙂
Anyway, I'll publish this version RSN, even with this ugly bits and will look on how to fix that stuff later on.
Before the next release I'd like to make VCS work better in other OSes beyond Linux. Linux is my (current at least) OS
of choice and the one I'm not familiar with so it's also obviously the OS in which I develop and test VCS.
Thanks to virtualisation
gaining a lot of momentum I'm now able to try operating systems I've never worked with (and which I'm pretty sure
will make VCS choke in ways I never expected); e.g. the very last major feature, DVD vidcapping, is written in a way not compatible
with, at least, FreeBSD. I'll focus on making vcs work better (or at all) on ther systems for a while, let's see
how it turns out.
New version released, finally implementing DVD support (both ISO and DVD devices should work).
Also JPEG 2000 output, a more Polaroid™-like
polaroid mode 😉 (the older one has been renamed to photos); the timestamp is now reduced
for smaller captures plus the usual batch of fixes/tweaks.
Capturing from DVDs is a bit tricky, the filename is passed as an argument to -V while
the title number must be provided as if it were the file to capture, e.g.: $ vcs -V /dev/dvd 1
will capture the first title from the inserted DVD.
Passing 0 as DVD title will use the longest title in the disc (which is usually the main title):
$ vcs -V someiso.iso 0
DVD support *requires* lsdvd and fdisk (fdisk is used to detect the size of DVDs)
in this first version.
JPEG 2000 output (*.jp2 files) is used by passing the -j2 or --jpeg 2
option.
As for bugfixes: I finally came across the previously unreproducible bug that made the polaroid
and overlap modes place all images on the same spot. Guess it was a problem with a newer version of
ImageMagick since I've also encountered a lot of problems with some of the commands I was using.
I've fixed all I was able to find.
As a side effect, I've reworked once again the alignment of the different sheets.
This will be renamed as 1.1.0 if it works well enough for others.
New version released, it fixes highlights, which were broken in the last version and a couple of long-standing cosmetic bugs.
Also now requires minimum length before using the "end offset" i.e.: will only ignore a bit off the end of the video
if it's long enough, by default 19'30" (the default value was chosen based on the fact that most series are at least 20' long,
and since the automatic end offset is intended to skip credits, it's most useful with series and films). Your input is welcome
as always.
To change the minimum length set the desired value to variable MIN_LENGTH_FOR_END_OFFSET in your configuration file, e.g.:
echo MIN_LENGTH_FOR_END_OFFSET=\'1h30m\' >> ~/.vcs.conf # for 1h 30'
I just noticed a bug while editing this page :/ and it's been there for quite awhile… great… whatever, most probably few people, if anyone
suffered it, since it required a pretty specific timestamp format being used in the command-line.
Finally I've also re-added the black border after the highlights, which was removed a long time ago due to it breaking vcs back then.
See the changelog as usual for full details.
New version released with a couple fixes and cosmetic touches.
Fixes include a workaround for cases in which mplayer outputted all-black (or all-equal) captures. Also slightly better
support for older/tighter systems (e.g. Damn Small Linux).
Most notably in the cosmetic side is better thumbnail alignment in extended mode (-e), slightly less padded captures and drop of milliseconds
when using mplayer (since they aren't meaningful at all).
See the changelog as usual for full details and credits.
I'm also providing a debian package now.
I was holding off a bit this release since there's still some known stuff to fix or refine but I'll rather publish now what I've
since, well, who knows when will be the next release 😉
Important note: this version's support for highlights (-l) is broken,
This version is deprecated for this reason, use the last version instead.
I'll update ASAP but if you need them
(does anyone use them anyway?) please use 1.0.10.