README for csc-media
Elana Hashman
November 3, 2014
--------------------


These FFMPEG scripts are intended to help you cut and compress assorted videos: 
in particular, the MTS raw output from the CSC's video camera.


How to use the scripts
======================

1. First, prepare your video files. To merge files, if you are using MTS 
   format, simply cat the files together, i.e.

   cat vid1.mts vid2.mts vid3.mts > the_whole_vid.mts

   If you need to trim the files, you can use the cut-mts.sh script:

   ./cut-mts.sh vid.mts  00:05:00    00:10:00
                input    start-time  length

2. Run encode.sh on the file you're interested in compressing. This will run a 
   two-pass compress and encode to produce a final video file.

   Caveats:
   - encode.sh must be run in the same directory as the video files
   - encode.sh's dependencies need to be in the same directory
   - Therefore, you should clone a copy of csc-media into any directory you 
     want to run the job.
   - You can only run encode.sh on one file in one directory. Otherwise, the 
     video cues from the first pass will be overwritten. If you want to run 
     simultaneous encoding jobs, clone a copy of the scripts into each 
     directory with each file you want to encode.

   Invoke the script like this, preferably in a screen session due to job 
   length:

   ./encode.sh vid.mts  vid                   ""
               input    prefix, output files  extra ffmpeg flags (usually null)

3. Wait.

4. Wait.

5. Check htop, keep waiting.

6. Wait.

6. Voila, your videos have been compressed and encoded! Additionally, the 
   scripts will even kindly provide you with jpg thumbnails for the website.


Notes
=====

All compression schemes except mp4 are currently disabled in ./encode.sh. None 
of the other scripts are currently verified to be working.

These scripts use a copy of ffmpeg in Peter ``BOFH'' Barfuss' home directory. 
If those become unavailable for some reason, you will need to set it to the 
system-wide binary.