[MPlayer-users] Analyzing media streams

[Rick Harris]

On Mon, 9 Jul 2007 05:25:08 am Fredrik Johansson wrote:
> Hi!
>
> This "problem" is not really 100% mplayer specific, but I belive that
> you guys are good at these kinds of stuff and perhaps able to give me
> a few pointers and tips. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!
>
> The basic thing I (in an automated way) want is to analyze different
> media streams that I have on file. The streams could be different kind
> of transport streams (mpeg2/4, windows asf etc), elementary streams,
> pes'es, and so fourth. I want to investigate the video stream, all of
> the included audio streams (because these could all, in theory, be
> coded with different encodings such as mpeg/mp3, aac, ac-3 and such,
> right?) and the included subtitles.
>
> What I do right now is to use mplayer at the command line with the
> following flags: "mplayer -identify -frames -0 -ao null -vo null
> _filename_here". That gives me much, but not all that I want to know.
> And I don't know how it would work if I for example had a stream with
> different audio tracks coded in different ways?
>
> Other tools that I've tried is dvbsnoop (to determine the "service
> method", although I don't know if this is the best way to do it),
> mminfo (that is included in a bigger package, that I don't remember
> the name of now, perhaps freevo or something related to that?).
>
> So, basically, what do I want to know?
>
> 1. Good (free) tools to analyze media stream files (mainly mpegs, but
> other formats as well)
> 2. Ways to do this in mplayer, that I've missed
> 3. Other places on the Internet where people know this kind of stuff
> (if your not able to help me, which i doubt ;))
>
> Things I need to know through the analysis are listed below. I'm a
> newbie so everything might not even be possible to analyze, through
> any program.
>
> Video (mostly):
> * Service method (DVB, ATSC etc)
> * File format (TS, ES, Program stream etc)
> * Video encoding
> * The video frame rate
> * Average video bitrate
> * Aspect ratio
> * Color system
> * Format (1080i/p etc, the big thing here is of course it the video is
> interlaced or progressive)'
>
> Audio:
> Encoding (mp3, acc etc)
> Bitrate
> Sample rate
> Dual mono (or not)
> Language
>
> Subtitles
> Type (dvb-subtitling, teletext or both?)
> Language


This won't give much detail in regards to subs or dvb material, but the 'file' 
utility is also worth a mention for short one-liner media summaries.

find /some_dir_with_videos/ -type f -exec file -Lkz '{}' \;


Rick