pruperting

FINALLY: A Bash Progress Indicator for ffmpeg that WORKS

I decided to write a progress indicator for ffmpeg video conversions. This was much much much harder than I ever anticipated. I was in for a tough time. Annoyingly, for what ever reason, ffmpeg doesn’t use Carriage Returns and Line Feeds in the expected way when it outputs its output during a conversion, resulting in two days of stress for a noobie bashophile like me.

Eventually, after hours of googling, I came across the solution. This script should be a very accurate indicator of the progress of a ffmpeg video conversion. It currently only tells you how far the conversion has progressed as a percentage, but I will soon add an ETA and time to it as well (now added, see update below). It does this, by looking at the number of frames your input video file has, and then reading what frame ffmpeg is currently on every ten seconds, and printing out the percentage.

You have to put in your own ffmpeg command if you want, mine is just for converting .mpg DVB-T recordings from MythTV to mkv files.
To use the script, call the script with the full path of the file to be converted afterwards, e.g.: “./ffmpeg-progress.sh /home/prupert/FIVE.mpg” and it gives you something like this:

UPDATE:

I have now added an ETA function, which, as far as I can tell, should be pretty accurate, I’ll be testing it tomorrow to see how well it works. It is based on the remaining number of frames to process and the current fps that ffmpeg is working at. I also plan to convert the script to python, if possible, to make it cross platform and give it a GUI. It will also be called YAFF (Yet Another Ffmpeg Frontend).

Essentially, the script turns ffmpeg output from this:

frame=42992 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 217692kB time=1717.72 bitrate=1038.2kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43002 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 217692kB time=1718.12 bitrate=1038.0kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43018 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 217756kB time=1718.76 bitrate=1037.9kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43036 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 217788kB time=1719.48 bitrate=1037.6kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43050 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 217820kB time=1720.04 bitrate=1037.4kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43062 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 217852kB time=1720.52 bitrate=1037.3kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43078 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 217884kB time=1721.16 bitrate=1037.0kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43090 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 217916kB time=1721.64 bitrate=1036.9kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43106 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 217948kB time=1722.28 bitrate=1036.7kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
Last message repeated 2 times
[mpeg2video @ 0x8f7ebf0]ac-tex damaged at 15 0
[mpeg2video @ 0x8f7ebf0]concealing 90 DC, 90 AC, 90 MV errors
frame=43122 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 217981kB time=1722.92 bitrate=1036.4kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43140 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 218045kB time=1723.64 bitrate=1036.3kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43155 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 218077kB time=1724.24 bitrate=1036.1kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43168 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 218141kB time=1724.76 bitrate=1036.1kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43182 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 218205kB time=1725.32 bitrate=1036.1kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43194 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 218237kB time=1725.80 bitrate=1035.9kbits/s dup=12 drop=0
frame=43207 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 218269kB time=1726.32 bitrate=1035.8kbits/s dup=12 drop=0

In to this:

/home/rupert/Downloads/Village of the Damned.mpg..mpg has 172447 frames, now converting
ffmpeg PID = 24868
ffmpeg: 43062 of 172447 frames, progress: 24% and ETA: 1h 42m 41s

Which must be a good thing in anyone’s book

The script is hosted at github, enjoy:

YAFF by Rupert Plumridge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License

Automatically Update FFMPEG and x264 From Source / SVN In Ubuntu

Whenever I wish to install and use the rather excellent video and audio transcode programs ffmpeg and x264 I have used FakeOutdoorsman’s excellent How To from the Ubuntu Forums. However, constantly typing out all the commands, especially when updating, is a pain in the arse.

I thus decided, with FakeOutdoorsman’s permission, to write some scripts to automate the task. They are, I hope, fairly comprehensive and allow a user to build and install the latest version of ffmpeg and x264, from source for Ubuntu Hardy, Intrepid, Jaunty, Karmic and Lucid. They allow this to be done automatically, after a few questions have been answered.

There are four scripts in total, one for the initial install, one for keeping everything up-to-date, one to reverse the changes with minimal impact and one to completely reverse all changes (this one I recommend no-one using, hence it is depreciated, but it is there in case some one wants it).

I am certainly not the best at bash, but I have done lots of Googling and I think the script is fairly robust, though I am sure there are errors.

I will be adding to the script over time, adding new features, combining things, adding better error checking etc, so for now consider them BETA releases. They have been tested on Lucid and Karmic only, but they appeared to work.

Please submit any questions here or at the project hosting page.

So, where are the files?

You can get all the scripts here:

http://code.google.com/p/x264-ffmpeg-up-to-date/

Have fun!

How To Use FFMPEG To Transcode Video For The PS3

So, it seems my last post actually wasn’t the best solution. Although using Mediatomb and VLC worked some of the time, often I found that the audio and video was out of sync, making it impossible to watch the movie.

So, I looked for another alternative. I already use HandBrakeCLI to transcode my videos, but that is essentially a front end to ffmpeg and x264. They are moving away from providing decent support for transcoding videos on the Playstation 3, so I decided to use ffmpeg directly. I used this guide to install the latest svn versions of ffmpeg and x264 on my Ubuntu 8.04 server. I then spent about two weeks trying to find an up-to-date command to actually use ffmpeg to create a PS3 compatible file. It seems most of the instructions on the web are way out of date and use commands that ffmpeg no longer accepts. Finally, after lots of trying I finally asked on the IRC channel #ffmpeg. This very nice dude called relaxed suggested the following:

ffmpeg -t 120 -i $input -vcodec libx264 -level 41 -vpre hq -crf 24 -threads 0 -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -ac 2 output.mp4

Sadly I had problems with this code, since the .mpg files I was using (I am now using MythTV instead of MediaPortal, but that’s another post) were not accepted by the libfaac codec.

However, with a little modification, I got the perfect command. So, without further ado, the best command I have found to convert ANY video accepted by ffmpeg into a PS3 compatible file using x264 that is good quality and low file size is:

ffmpeg -y -i "$1" -vcodec libx264 -level 41 -vpre normal -crf 24 -threads 0 -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -ac 2 -ar 48000 "$1".mp4

Obviously change $1 into your input file and “$1″.mp4 into your output file. If you want to send the command line output to a log file so you can see what is going in, use:

ffmpeg -y -i "$1" -vcodec libx264 -level 41 -vpre normal -crf 24 -threads 0 -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -ac 2 -ar 48000 "$1".mp4 > /where/you/store/your/logs/ffmpegprog.log 2>&1

Now, when I first saw this I thought, hey, its got hardly any switches (all the -XYZ stuff), therefore it must be cack.  However, the key is the “-vpre normal” switch.  This tells ffmpeg to use some of its built-in presets, or in this case built-in x264 presets that are created when you build x264 from SVN. I was initially told, as you can see from above, to use the “hq” preset, but I found this resulted in files that were quite big. Using the “normal” preset seemed to produce files that were of great quality compared to my original source (SD DVB-T transport streams in MPG format) but much smaller files size, for example, a .mpg transport stream movie that is originally 2.5GBs in size gets reduced to around 650 MBs, awesome.

So, this is the command I now use to convert all my videos. I also use comskip run via Wine to check for commercials and mp4box to mux in the chapter markers from comskip. Weirdly, I do find that when playing these resultant files via VLC they appear to have their audio and video out of sync, but on the PS3 they are fine. Whether this is due to me using an old VLC or my PC being too slow to play em, I don’t know, but hey, if it works.

So, if you are looking for the best ffmpeg command to transcode video files for the PS3 using ffmpeg and x264, I am pretty sure this is it.

As an aside, I also built HandBrakeCLI from SVN and it now also has a basic preset, called Normal, that also produces PS3 compatible files. I will play with them to see how they do, though I find that occasionally HandBrake can crash, and get stuck, so I try to avoid it. Sadly though, the HandBrake dev’s wont help you with this, since you are using the HandBrakeCLI and it is not the CLI that is crashing so they wont look into it for you. In fact (<rant>) I am really shocked at the rudeness and arrogance that the HandBrake devs demonstrate on their forum. I have read so many well worded and polite posts from confused people on their forums, where the devs (mainly a guy called jbrake) just answers back incredibly sarcastically and very rudely, providing little to no help. Maybe they get loads of annoying whiny posts from people who haven’t RTFM, but still, there is no need to be rude about it. In fact, that is the main reason I don’t want to use HandBrake, since I don’t like the attitude those guys have (</rant>).

Anyway, hope this awesome command for a recent SVN ffmpeg and x264 version to convert video files for PS3 works for you!