vcs documentation

Homepage: http://p.outlyer.net/vcs/

Documentation updated for version 1.12.2

VCS (Video Contact Sheet *NIX) is a script meant to generate contact sheets from videos, i.e. it creates an image composed of snapshots from the video.

It was written to run on Linux, and can run on other UNIX-like operating systems.

Two design decisions define the output: flexibility and quality preview. The contact sheet is configurable in many ways, even crazy ones in recent versions (flexibility); but it is also meant to provide as much information and represent the actual video quality as much as possible (quality preview), e.g. unlike most other video previewing software, the default snapshot size is not a thumbnail but the full video dimensions.

This is a one man project, a pretty big and complex (for a script) tool written in bash so it's bound to be buggy in one way or another, you're encouraged to submit any bug reports before ditching the script completely. I'm no native English speaker either so typos are also bound to appear in this docs ;)

Note this documentation is a work in progress

Throughout this documentation VCS will most often be referred to as vcs. Options are referred often, usually in their short form, e.g. “use -i 30” means “include -i 30 in the command line, as in $ vcs -i 30 file”. A full list of command-line options is available, with links to the appropriate sections.

Capture and snapshot refer to the same thing: the individual images captured from the video.

The usual UNIX documentation conventions apply: # command means run command as root user, while $ command means run command as any user.

• Contact sheet sections
• Usage
  Contents:
  • Default behaviour
  • Capture count modes
  • Number of columns
  • Capture size and aspect ratio
  • Adding a title
  • Output filename
• Time / Interval syntax
• Partial captures (restrict to a section of the video)
• Extended mode
• Manual modes
  Contents:
  • Manually added captures
  • Highlights
  • Manual-only mode
• Setting contact sheet colours
• Other modes of operation (“funky modes”)
• Configuration files (overriding default options)
  • Example configuration
• Profiles
• Other
  • Non-latin scripts in file names
• Troubleshooting

• List main of options (see Command-line options for the full list):
  • -n, --numcaps: Number of captures
  • -i, --interval: Interval of captures
  • -c, --columns: Number of columns
  • -H, --height: Capture height
  • -a, --aspect: Aspect ratio of captures

• Tips
• History
• Open and fixed bugs and feature requests
• Roadmap
• Indexes
  • All samples
  • Files used for testing
• Similar tools

• References

The following pages detail drafts for future developments:

• Configuration files syntax revamp
• Configuration options cleanup
• Plugins
• POSIX compatibility
• Bash versions support
• Transcode support
• Version renumbering
• Brainstorming