Easy converting video files to iPod movies

Linux is a power :-) I made sure of this again when trying to find a legal way to convert various video files in Windows OS to QuickTime format acceptable by iPod. Actually I do not use Windows, but iTunes is working only on it and MacOSX, so I didn't have a choice. But googling gave nothing, so I turned on Linux and easily found an appropriate way.

The main magic of video processing in Linux is collected in FFmpeg solution. And it saved my life again. But before reading further please make sure that you will not violate any author rights and other license issues. Please examine the legal information on FFmpeg site. In most cases all video files you converted must by used only by you and can not be transferred to other users.

The process of converting is very simple - just run ffmpeg with required options (of course, ffmpeg package and all auxiliary packages should be installed):

$ ffmpeg -i /path/to/input_movie -f mov -sameq -s qvga /path/to/output_movie

The main magic is in ffmpeg options:

  • -f mov - convert to MOV format;
  • -sameq - output file should have the same quality as original;
  • -s qvga - resize to iPod resolution (320x240).

Now we embed converting command to GNOME context menu. KDE users can use similar technique and if you are interested in how to do it, let me know.

First of all, nautilus-actions package should be installed:

$ sudo yum install nautilus-actions

Secondly we have to register required action. Go to menu System->Preferences->Look and Feel->Nautilus Actions Configuration (or just run nautilus-actions-config command):

Click "Add" button and set up a new action (or you can simply import config provided below):

Edit a command for the action - select "Main" profile and click "Edit":

The Path should contain /usr/bin/ffmpeg. Parameters: -i %M -f mov -sameq -s qvga %M.ipod.mov.

That's all. Now just restart GNOME session, and after that you can convert any files via context menu:

The action will not show any windows - you will just notice a new file, that will be ready in few seconds (if a preview of the output file is generated then it is ready to view):

Happy converting!

DOWNLOAD: config.tar.gz (2.05KB)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Web application framework comparison by memory consumption

Memory consumption is slightly specific to my area of software development now, but I did some research recently and maybe these results can be useful for others. Of course, I know that precious comparison is very difficult to carry out, but actually I needed only overall picture. And let me admit that results are pretty interesting and even frustrated (at least for me). As a basis I took so-starving project, and measured initial RSS (Resident Set Size) of the each process (local development webservers). Platform: x86_64 Linux (latest Ubuntu with all updates). As a reference, here is the RSS of the interpreters in interactive console mode: Interpreter Version RSS (kB) stackless python 2.6.4 3916 ruby (via irb) 1.8.7 4664 python 2.7.1 5624 php 5.3.5 6924 v8 (via node.js shell) 2.5.9.9 8796 One more reference - the most simplest WSGI app ( example  in the Python documentation). It's RSS: 7336 Kb , so I assume it's almost impossible to consume l
Read more

Trac Ticket Workflow

Trac is the wiki and issue tracking system that is the most used for my software development projects. Let me share few hints about its ticket workflow, especially about the statuses, the roles of the participants, and let me give an example of the workflow config. But if you are interested in other things like Trac plugins, source browser, customizing, etc, let me know. All the information given below regards the workflow described at the end of the article. The original Trac workflow is missed vital features like the support for ticket verifying, or the required ticket statuses range, so I do not use it in my projects. The description of the main statuses: new - the ticket has been created; in-progress - the developer has began to work with the ticket; fixed - the ticket is fixed (the problem issued in the ticket is solved); verified - the ticket is verified (tester or PM has verified that the ticket is fixed correctly); closed - the ticket is closed (it's not
Read more

Shellcode detection using libemu

Shellcode can be seen as a list of instructions that has been developed in a manner that allows it to be injected in an application during runtime. Each security researcher face the shellcodes during their work, and in this article I'll show how to detect shellcodes using Python (via libemu Python binding). Few words about libemu : libemu is a small library written in C offering basic x86 emulation and shellcode detection using GetPC heuristics. Intended use is within network intrusion/prevention detections and honeypots. The information on the site is not actual in some places, so I'll give direct and clear instruction how to get and install libemu. Clone the git repository: $ git clone git://git.carnivore.it/libemu.git Firstly, configure, make and install libemu itself (without binding): $ autoreconf -v -i $ ./configure --prefix=/opt/libemu $ make $ sudo make install If you set up prefix as shown above, you have to add the library path to /etc/ld.so.conf file
Read more