Another minor update, although the last few versions have contained a really stupid bug that prevented the temporary files from being removed (leading to a lot of stale, possibly big, files), so upgrading is highly recommended. Thanks to Jason Tackaberry for pointing the bug.
Note though I'm still on holidays so this is a quick and dirty release (with little testing).
Changes:
Bugfix: Fix cleanup of temporary files (regression introduced in 1.11.2)
A very small update this time. It's only been delayed by real life stuff.
Only worth mentioning:
Workaround for cases in which GAWK uses comma as decimal separator. Many European languages use commas but only a few versions of GAWK do actually print them (and newer versions don't anymore). People encountering this bug will have certainly noticed since it results in all kinds of errors.
As with 1.11 many of the changes are pretty radical and might break but it's been working fine for me so far.
The changes are quite a few so I'll try to explain as best as I can. Documentation for the new stuff is on the way.
New in this version:
Profiles
On-demand loading of custom configuration files
Heading, footer and title based on actual font size
Configuration generation from the command-line
Relative end-offset
More reasonable command-line arguments to capture from DVD
Configuration syntax enhancements and more sensible names for settings
→ Profiles
Command-line: --profile <NAME> and -p <NAME>
Profiles allow saving a group of settings and then reusing them by using their name.
They can be saved to ~/.vcs/profiles/ or /usr/share/vcs/profiles/ as name.conf, and then invoked with a command-line like: $ vcs -p name video.avi
They can also be combined, e.g. $ vcs -p black -p mosaic video.avi
A list of available profiles can be displayed with $ vcs -p :list
The deb, rpm, arch package and tarball include some sample profiles.
→ Configuration file loading
Command-line: --config <FILE> and -C <FILE>
A lot like profiles but settings can be loaded from any file on any directory. The only extra condition is the file should contain "vcs:conf:" inside comments towards the beginning or the end of the file.
$ vcs -C /tmp/mysettings.txt video.avi
→ Configuration (and profile) generation
Command-line: --generate config
By adding --generate config to the command-line, the effective settings are printed in a format that can be saved to a configuration or profile file.
All active settings with an appropriate config setting will be printed, no matter if they come from the command-line, profiles or configurations.
Examples
$ vcs -n4 --generate config
Will produce a configuration for 4 captures and fixed number of captures:
Will merge profile "myprofile" and file myconfig.cfg, disable end-offset and print the combined settings.
Big warning
In case you aren't familiar with shell redirections, DON'T try to overwrite an existing configuration like: $ vcs [...] --generate config > myconfig.cfg
This WILL WIPE your configuration BEFORE reading it.
Side-effect
Pre-existing configurations can be "upgraded" to the new names by running without extra arguments: $ vcs --generate config
→ Relative end-offset
The end offset now accepts percentages and is 5.5% by default. It is now applied always unless disabled.
With the length detection workarounds in 1.11 and relative end offsets, the whole MIN_LENGTH_FOR_END_OFFSET nonsense is gone for good. Good riddance.
→ DVD capture
Handling of DVDs is now like that of normal files. --dvd (or -V) enable the DVD mode and take no arguments anymore:
$ vcs --dvd /dev/dvd
$ vcs --dvd --dvd-title 1 /dev/dvd
Multi-input is also accepted now:
$ vcs --dvd --dvd-title 1 --dvd-title 2 /dev/dvd /dev/dvd somedvd.iso
Will capture titles 1 and 2 from /dev/dvd, and the longest title from somedvd.iso.
DVDs and video files can't be mixed though (it's either DVD mode or no DVD mode for all input files).
→ Configuration syntax enhancements
Finally, configuration files are now easier to read and write:
— Settings are case insensitive now
— Names are easier on the brain (e.g. "height" instead of "th_height")
— Comments no longer need their own line
Also a sample configuration file is provided with all available settings for easier writing of your own if needed.
→ Dynamic heading/footer/title
In previous versions heading and title size based on font pointsize. This lead to a few rare fonts displaying cropped. Footer was a fixed size so it was even worse at that. 1.12 probes the font size and (hopefully) sizes sections accordingly. Example:
Before: 1.11.2After: 1.12
The font displayed is akaFrivolity in case you're wondering
A new small update to vcs is available to download. This should be the last update before 1.12 (which will take a while to be ready) but the massive changes in 1.11.x still need more testing so who knows.
Changes in 1.11.2:
Some Real Audio codec names (v4, v5 and v6)
Bugfix/Feature: Fallback for default font on systems that don't register fonts with ImageMagick
Bugfixes: Clean up correctly extra temporary dirs, fix for non-GNU awk (e.g. mawk)
After a user report I noticed I should clarify: If you add, e.g. numcaps=10 to your configuration file you're changing the default number of captures but the default mode of operation is to capture at fixed intervals so to actually use this value you also have to add timecode_from=$TC_NUMCAPS to your configuration, which the changes the mode of operation to a fixed number of captures. E.g.:
Finally a new version of vcs, and it brings a truckload of changes. So many in fact that it will probably break in new and unexpected ways but so far it has been working quite fine.
The major improvement will probably be the tweaks to video duration detection that should get rid of the dreaded "Failed to capture…" on the last capture.
Other new features worth mentioning:
Height can be defined as a percentage (-H 25%) or set configuration files (th_height=160)
Output filename can now be set manually (-o file)
Lots of small cosmetic tweaks, from default font and heading background, to tighter padding or smaller timestamps. And the ability to tweak or disable padding.
Support for DVD has been revamped and should work much better now.
FreeBSD users are now (mostly) first class citizens for vcs 😉
More concise --help output, added --fullhelp for the whole bore
Handling of non-latin filenames makes a lot more sense now
And last but not least, the usual lot of bugfixes, better detection of video features, better aspect ratio detection, new codec names, etc.
On a more mundane note, no longer both MPlayer and FFmpeg are required, either one will do (although both will render best results), bc is no longer required.
Also, I'm providing an rpm package too this time around.
And finally this version will work on bash 2.05b, in case you're using some tight system like DSL.
Important I forgot to add warnings about this: If you're using a configuration file, there's been some renamings: DEFAULT_NUMCAPS is now numcaps, DEFAULT_INTERVAL is now interval and DEFAULT_COLS is now cols.
Edit:1.11.1 fixes this: warns about their usage and accepts them for now.
A note for everyone (but specially for porn aficionados)
Please, if at all possible link directly whenever you discuss vcs. I know many communities prefer to use link redirections to keep referrer hidden but knowing how people is using or what they're saying about vcs helps me in improving and fixing it.
I know full well such a script caters to pr0n uploaders and I'm not offended, no need to hide 😉
Conversely, if you know of any discussion about vcs feel free to let me know so that I can jump in or steal get ideas from it.
BTS and Documentation
Finally, in case you didn't notice, the documentation site has received a lot of love and now is much more useful, and I've also opened a bug tracker in case you prefer it to e-mail.
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'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.
