[MPlayer-users] Re: Automating recording of VHS cassette

[John Brown]

RC writes:

> 
> On Sat, 10 Mar 2007 11:46:50 -0500
> "John Brown" <johnbrown105 <at> hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > but can MPlayer/MEncoder recognize that the video is
> > just static, or a blue screen?
> 
> No, but if it's a solid color, the bitrate (listed in the status line)
> will probably drop down to almost nothing.  You could use that to script
> something.
> 

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, it seems that the status line shows 
the *average* bitrate, not the current bitrate. When I stopped playing, the 
bitrate started to dwindle very slowly from the 5000 where I set it, losing 
about 1 kilobit per second, maybe less. It would have taken forever to reach 
the < 200 kbps that the blue screen requires, even though I only recorded 
approximately 5 minutes. 

I suppose that the next step would be for me to make the status line show the 
current bitrate. I looked in mencoder.c and found some lines with:
mp_msg(MSGT_AVSYNC,MSGL_STATUS,...
but I did not really understand any of it. Perhaps someone can point me in the 
right direction?