vcs

Originally reported by Pär: https://outlyer.net/2019-11-26:vcs-1-13-4-released/comment-page-1/#comment-60689

Another thing that is a little bit annoying, but isn't a very big deal, is the fact that videos made from a phone where the image is rotated in metadata, doesn't produce a correct aspect ratio. For example, a video that is stored as 1920×1080 (16:9), but shown as 1080×1920 (9:16), due to metadata rotation, vcs will create thumbnails in 1920×1080 aspect ratio (16:9) but show them rotated correctly, which means the image at 9:16 gets squashed to fit into 16:9. Like I said, not a very huge deal, but it looks somewhat silly and it would be great if it was possible to fix.
I've tried to see if I could set the aspect parameter but it doesn't seem to do much when the rotation is made in metadata. Metadata usually state something like:
>
> "`bash
Side data:
displaymatrix: rotation of -90.00 degrees
"`

Originally reported by Pär: https://outlyer.net/2019-11-26:vcs-1-13-4-released/comment-page-1/#comment-60674

Recently got an update of ImageMagick:

$ magick --version
Version: ImageMagick 7.1.1-33 Q16-HDRI x86_64 22263 https://imagemagick.org
Copyright: (C) 1999 ImageMagick Studio LLC
License: https://imagemagick.org/script/license.php
Features: Cipher DPC HDRI Modules OpenCL OpenMP(4.5) 
Delegates (built-in): bzlib cairo djvu fftw fontconfig freetype heic jbig jng jp2 jpeg jxl lcms lqr ltdl lzma openexr pangocairo png raqm raw rsvg tiff webp wmf x xml zip zlib zstd
Compiler: gcc (14.1)

Because of that, the "convert" command now gives a deprecation warning:

WARNING: The convert command is deprecated in IMv7, use "magick"

Trying to do that, replacing all the calls to 'convert' for 'magick', the temp images seem to be problematic (I've added a few printouts of the suspected code blocks):

[i] Capturing in range [04:49.49-19:17.95]. Total length: 20:25.35
[i] Generating capture #1/4 (04:49.49)...
magick: no images found for operation `-geometry' at CLI arg 7 @ error/operation.c/CLIOption/5479.
magick: magick -background 'transparent' -fill 'transparent' '/dev/shm/vcs.SGteWR/vcs-ZQ0dJj-cap-000001.png'   \( -geometry 267x200! \)  -flatten   \( -box '#000000aa' -fill 'White' -stroke none -pointsize '9'     -gravity 'SouthEast' -font '/usr/share/fonts/TTF/DejaVuSans.ttf' -strokewidth 3 -annotate +5+5     ' 04:49.49 ' \) -flatten -gravity None  -flatten  \( -background black +clone -shadow 50x2+4+4 -background none \) +swap -flatten -trim +repage  -flatten  '/dev/shm/vcs.SGteWR/vcs-zQhKDd.png'

If I try to cp those two temp images on the line below the 'magick' command, they become 0 byte files.

The video renderer ffmpeg has also gone through a couple of steps of upgrades over the years, I now have:

$ ffmpeg -version
ffmpeg version n6.1.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 13.2.1 (GCC) 20230801

So commands like '-vframes' is now '-frames:v' and so on. No errors, just friendly suggestions in the man page. I replaced those also, but still the same problem.

I should have listened more carefully when our kindergarten teacher went through Bash. ;) IOW, I'm sure it's something simple I am not understanding.

N.b. I can still use vcs with the normal 'convert' command, but depending on how "militia force" serious the ImageMagick gang is going to be about deprecation warnings and removal of old code, it might stop working at some point in the future and I think that would be sad.

Any ideas? Thanks! :)

Reported by Paul:

Hey,
I'm using VCS via Homebrew Install (https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/vcs#default) and since the last update of imagemagick (?) I get dozens of error messages:
convert: Expected operator at '.mean*100' @ error/fx.c/GetOperator/2408

Confirmed to happen on ImageMagick 7.1 on Linux, the contact sheet is generated but blank frame evasion is skipped

Should allow to disable it in both configuration and command-line.

HDR isn’t well supported as reported by remlap and ThaDr.

Their comments:

https://outlyer.net/2017-05-26:vcs-1-13-3-released/#comment-30901

Hi I am trying to thumbnail some HDR content is there anyway to insert ffmpeg filters in
-vf zscale=t=linear:npl=100,format=gbrpf32le,zscale=p=bt709,tonemap=tonemap=mobius:desat=0,zscale=t=bt709:m=bt709:r=tv,format=yuv420p

Thanks

https://outlyer.net/2017-05-26:vcs-1-13-3-released/#comment-32413:

I’m also trying to do some HDR content and pass the -vf info to ffmpeg. I can’t get it to work even using a wrapper script.

It always comes up with awk errors, starting with “unterminated regexp”.

Is there any chance of updating vcs to support manual passing of those -vf arguments to ffmpeg?

HDR content is very common nowadays…

https://outlyer.net/2017-05-26:vcs-1-13-3-released/#comment-32423

I’m using vcs 1.13.2 on ubuntu and ended up doing it by adding the line:

-vf ‘zscale=t=linear:npl=100,format=gbrpf32le,zscale=p=bt709,tonemap=tonemap=hable:desat=0,zscale=t=bt709:m=bt709:r=tv,format=yuv420p’ \

at line 2203, in the ffmpeg_capture() function where it sets the ffmpeg command line options.

Couldn’t work out how to do it with a wrapper script.

I.e. create file sample#.avi

Run vcs on sample#.avi -> sample#.avi.png is created.
Run vcs again. sample#.avi-1.png should be created, but sed generates an error.

No need for description

When a frame evasion is tried and given up, the chosen timestamp should be the original instead of the last attempt

/dev/shm isn’t really intended as an alternate temporary location, and VCS’ temporary files can easily grow too large for it too.

As a possible alternative offer a first-run choice of temp-dir (maybe suggesting /dev/shm).

References:
http://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/RunDirectory#Why_put_.2BAC8-dev.2BAC8-shm_and_.2BAC8-tmp_under_.2BAC8-run.3F http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9745281/tmp-vs-dev-shm-for-temp-file-storage-on-linux

See http://libav.org/, Jan 27 2012.
Also http://libav.org/index.html#fftools_rename for changes to the syntax.

Must change to avprobe/ffprobe and/or avconv.

Originally suggested by Dean: http://outlyer.net/2010-08-24:vcs-1_12-2-released/

” [...]

Second, my dvd-drive is useless atm, but i remember previously piping dvd-ouput from mplayer into ffmpeg via a fifo and finding the info generated to be much better than mplayer-alone – for one thing, it won’t ‘downmix’ 6-channel audio automatically. Don’t know if that would be useful to you. The syntax was something like:-

mkfifo piped.vob &&
mplayer dvd:// -dumpstream -dumpfile piped.vob & \
ffmpeg -i piped.vob

…See what you think…
”

See  FS#171 

Introduce new names in 1.12 ( FS#120 )

Remove old names in 1.13 or 1.14 (this)

The available configuration options need a serious review and renaming. Old names will be accepted with warnings for either two releases or six months.

Also, should provide a sample configuration file so that the syntax and options are clearer.

Great feature, implemented in mtn

http://moviethumbnail.sourceforge.net/

See also FS#126

-o is a GNU extension, supported in Linux and FreeBSD

Unsupported in SunOS, OpenBSD?

Originally requested by Phil Grundig

See vcs:devel:transcode