Documentation:Format String

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 :)

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