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Then I used the find command to run the Python script on all the video files:įind *.264 -maxdepth 1 -exec. The BASH script would create the title cards and clip separators using ImageMagick, and then call the appropriate FFmpeg commands to create and concatenate the video.Ĭonvert -size 704x480 -background SteelBlue1 -fill black -font Helvetica -pointsize 72 -gravity center label: titlecard.jpg But I needed to do this hundreds of times! I wrote a Python script to generate the appropriate BASH script based on the input filename. Now I had title cards, clip separators, and 8-second video clips that I could combine into a single video. (The pix_fmt flag was to set the correct color space, and the an flag ignores the audio channel.) However, I discovered a much easier method of creating a video from a single image using the loop flag:įfmpeg -f image2 -loop 1 -r:v 7 -i image.jpeg -pix_fmt yuv420p -an -t 2 image-movie.mpeg At first I created a JPEG and turned it into a 1-frame video, concatenated it with itself to create a 2-frame video, and then 4, 8, 16, etc. This worked, although the BASH script was convoluted and very particular.Īnother thing I wanted to add to the video was a separator–some static frames to divide each 8-second clip–and a title card. I tried the other suggested method of concatenating videos, using named pipes. However, MPEG-2 doesn’t support the framerate (7 fps). The first method–concatenating MPEG-2 files–seemed like the easiest option. This is such a relatively common use-case that FFmpeg has instructions in their FAQ, How can I join video files?. I added a flag to specify the framerate:įfmpeg -f h264 -r:v 7 -i input-video-file.264 -ss 180 -t 8 output-video-file.mp4Īfter running this a few times for different 8 second segments, I needed to put the segments back together again. The source videos included a timestamp, and about 4 seconds ticked by every for every second of video! It turned out that the source videos were recorded at 7 fps (frames per second). However, when I played back the output, it played much too fast. The above example takes 8 seconds of the input video starting at the 3-minute (180-second) mark. To select just the relevant portions of the video, I used the -ss (start/seek position) and -t (time/duration) flags, e.g.:įfmpeg -f h264 -i input-video-file.264 -ss 180 -t 8 output-video-file.mp4 I recompiled FFmpeg with the –enable-libx264 and –enable-gpl switches:

NIGHTOWL 264 FILE TO AVI FOR MAC OS X

I was actually unable to compile YASM from the Git repository, although I was able to compile it following the instructions in this Handbrake for Mac OS X guide. That means I needed additional H.264 support–or, at least, I thought I did–from the x264 project.

NIGHTOWL 264 FILE TO AVI MP4

Also, I want to save them as H.264-encoded MP4 files. However, the videos I’m dealing with are raw H.264 video files from a Night Owl K-44500-C surveillance system. Welcome to Dependency Hell, now featuring bureaucracy! To get those you have to sign up for an Apple Developer account. To get GCC on OS X, the official Apple way, I needed XCODE from the Apple Developer Tools. (The audio is irrelevant for my use case, so I didn’t bother with LAME.) But I couldn’t compile FFmpeg because, apparently, OS X doesn’t include GCC. One how-to for FFmpeg on OS X docs suggest that I’d also need LAME in order to process audio.

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The developers recommend using the latest version from Git (which finally forced me to install Git, something I’d been meaning to do anyway).

NIGHTOWL 264 FILE TO AVI SOFTWARE

Unfortunately, it’s not the most user-friendly software package in the world. Since you compile FFmpeg from source code, it should run on any system with a C compiler, including my OS X box. FFmpeg provides much of the underlying processing functionality for other popular video tools, such as Handbrake, Miro, and MPlayer. To my knowledge, the best tool for the job is FFmpeg, an open source video tool. I’ve posted my notes from this process below for my own reference, and in case it should prove useful to anyone else.

This should allow her and her colleagues to analyze the videos quickly and using precise time-points (instead of using a slider in a video player to locate and estimate time-points). My goal was to take the videos (~30 minutes each) and cut out only the relevant sections and splice them together, including a static marker between each segment. My wife has a research project in which she needs to analyze brief (8-second) segments of hundreds of much longer videos.

Nightowl 264 file to avi