Documentation:Format String

From VideoLAN Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
VLC User Guide

Quick Start Guide
Installing VLC
History
Usage
Interface
Open Media
Audio
Video
Playback
Playlist
Subtitles
Video and Audio Filters
Snapshots
Hotkeys
Uninstalling VLC
Troubleshooting
Advanced usage
Using VLC inside a webpage
Command line
Alternative Interfaces
Misc

Appendix
Building Pages for the HTTP Interface
Format String
Building Lua Playlist Scripts
View this alone

Time

Starting with VLC media player 0.9.0, the following options specify a character formatted time string, rather than just a plain character string:

  • --marq-marquee
  • --snapshot-path
  • --snapshot-prefix
  • --sout-file-format
  • --sout-livehttp-index

Time variables are those defined by the strftime C function. The following expansions are most common:

  • %Y : year
  • %m : month
  • %d : day
  • %H : hour
  • %M : minute
  • %S : second

For an extensive list have a look at [1] (or the strftime manual page on Unix systems).

Input meta

VLC-specific meta-data expansions are available for the following options:

  • --input-title-format
  • --snapshot-path (in version 2.2.0 and later)
  • --snapshot-prefix (in version 2.2.0 and later)

The following expansion are performed:

  • $a : artist
  • $b : album
  • $c : copyright
  • $d : description
  • $e : encoded by
  • $f : total decoded frame count (since VLC started)
  • $g : genre
  • $l : language
  • $n : track number
  • $o : track total
  • $p : now playing
  • $r : rating
  • $s : subtitles language
  • $t : title
  • $u : url
  • $A : date
  • $B : audio bitrate (in kb/s)
  • $C : chapter (as in DVD chapter number)
  • $D : duration
  • $F : full name with path
  • $I : title (as in DVD title number)
  • $L : time left
  • $N : name (media name as seen in the VLC playlist)
  • $O : audio language
  • $P : position (in %)
  • $R : rate
  • $S : audio sample rate (in kHz)
  • $T : time code of the video
  • $U : publisher
  • $V : volume
  • $Z : now playing (artist - title)
  • $_ : new line
  • $<any other char> : <any other char> (for example: $$ transforms to $)

You can insert a space between the $ sign and the character to tell it to not display anything if the meta data isn't available. For example: $ T instead will display "" while $T would display "--:--:--", if no time is available. If a time is available, it would display something like "01_22_13" (for a snapshot from one hour, 22 minutes and 13 seconds in a video).

Source code

If you want to know how this works, check out src/text/strings.c (search for vlc_strfinput)

The variable b_empty_if_na refers to the leading space feature: Add option to format strings to prevent displaying dashes if the meta info was unavailable (ie: if time is unavailable, "$T" will display "--:--:--" while "$ T" won't display anything). This is of course completely untested :)

This page is part of official VLC media player Documentation (User GuideStreaming HowToHacker GuideModules)
Please read the Documentation Editing Guidelines before you edit the documentation
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.