[MPlayer-users] Analyzing media streams

[Nico Sabbi]

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)
>  
>
easy to add

>* File format (TS, ES, Program stream etc)
>* Video encoding
>  
>
codec?

>* The video frame rate
>* Average video bitrate
>* Aspect ratio
>* Color system
>  
>
do you mean 4:2:0 vs 4:2:2 ?

>* Format (1080i/p etc, the big thing here is of course it the video is
>interlaced or progressive)'
>  
>
forget it, video streams carry the wrong info most of the time

>Audio:
>Encoding (mp3, acc etc)
>Bitrate
>Sample rate
>Dual mono (or not)
>  
>
this is missing

>Language
>
>Subtitles
>Type (dvb-subtitling, teletext or both?)
>Language
>
>Puh, that was a long email, I hope I didn't lost you halfway there. As
>I said, I would gladly appreciate any help that you could offer, even
>if your not able to give me the perfect solution right away :)
>
>  
>
the closest thing that you can get is a patched mplayer (patch welcome 
of course)
that -identify all demux_streams rather than only one.
I'm not aware of any software that already does what you need, but 
mplayer lacks
very little