ffmpeg(X) - Automatic conversion

Hello All

I am used to record TV-shows with the Formac Watchandgo USB DVB-T receiver. This results in ordinary MPEG-2 files. It’s easy to cut them within the Formac software, e.g. cutting advertising. Then I used ffmpegX to convert the files into H264/x264 MP4 files and it works well manually using 512 x 288 for 16:9 and 512 x 384 for 4:3 recordings. The datarate is about 432 kbit/s, which I find pretty fine. It works well for the Internet because it results in a small file size.

It would be interesting if this could be scripted. First of all a detection if the movie is 16:9 or 4:3 then advising ffmpeg(X) to convert it by optimal or predefined settings.

Did anyone ever tried this or am I running on a new trail with this idea?

Any answer is appreciated.

Best regards,
Thomas

Model: Mac-Mini 1.42 G4 1GB RM
Browser: Firefox 3.0.1
Operating System: Mac OS X (10.4)

I have no idea if ffmpegX is scriptable or not or if you would have to resort to GUI scripting. Either way though it relies on unix commands which have to be installed so there is no reason you can’t just utilize those via a script. From what I can see the application itself is nothing more than a GUI wrapper.

Hello James

In your oppinion you are totally corect. ffmpegX is a GUI wrapper that offers the standard AppleScript Studio commands only. I know, that command line statements via “do shell script” are required. My question relies on that approach and if anyone already scripted ffmpeg that way in order to spare development time.

Best regards,
Thomas

Model: Mac-Mini 1.42 G4 1GB RM
Browser: Firefox 3.0.1
Operating System: Mac OS X (10.4)

I use ffmpeg to convert youtube vids to my iPod Touch,

you could use it like this (you need to have ffmpegX installed)

  1. Copy ffmpeg to /usr/local/bin
  2. sudo chown root:wheel /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg
  3. sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg

Then it would be easy to include a simple do shell script

Thank you mkh

I will give it a try. But it does not exactly fit my needs. The problem relies on detecting if the source file is 16:9 or 4:3. The command line argument for conversion I may find by the man-page of ffmpeg.

Thomas