[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] ffprobe integration

[Artur Bodera]

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Stefano Sabatini <
stefano.sabatini-lala at poste.it> wrote:

> Also remember that ffprobe is meant to be simple, that is it should be
> a thin C wrapper for exposing the information provided by libav*, for
> other manipulations I believe we should use some higher level
> scripting language, which would allow everything you are proposing.
>
>
So there are 2 cases here - one is readability by a human, the second one (I
voted for) is related to machine readability. If ffprobe is meant to be very
simple, there is no place for templates I proposed. Even if there is no
place for templates, there is still a need for parsability of the output.

I recommend implementing a "-raw" or "-dump" flag that would produce a very
verbose and easy to parse message. This could go on as you proposed:
foo=x
bar=y


... given that the format is always [ alphanum + "=" char + actual value +
NL ]. Making scripts around that would be a child's play. Regading time
formats, this verbose mode should result in outputing time in all known and
reasonable formats, ie:
LENGTH=14.01192
LENGTH_SECFRAMES=14.2
LENGTH_FRAMES=336

This way, all future scripts will be happy and users will be happy. Any
additional logic would end up in scripts and ffprobe would end up being just
what you proposed - hair-thin wrap around libav* vel data dumper.

Regards.

A.

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