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Starting with [[VLC media player]] 0.9.0, format string variables can be used with the following options:
* --marq-marquee
* --snapshot-path (when specifying a full image path, not a directory)
* --snapshot-prefix
* --image-out-prefix (or --scene-prefix in 1.0.0 and newer)
* --msn-format (windows only)
* file access output dst/url (like in std{access=file,mux=ts,dst='''THIS'''})

There are two kinds of format string variables: time variables and meta variables.

==Time==

Time variables are those defined by the '''strftime''' C function. Those include:
* %Y : year
* %m : month
* %d : day
* %H : hour
* %M : minute
* %S : second
For an extensive list have a look at [http://www.hmug.org/man/3/strftime.php man strftime].

==Meta==

Meta variables are VLC specific. The complete list is:
* $a : artist
* $b : album
* $c : copyright
* $d : description
* $e : encoded by
* $f : frame count
* $g : genre
* $l : language
* $n : track num
* $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
* $_ : 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 "" if no time is available while $T 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 who this works, check out src\text\strings.c  (str_format_meta function) http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=blob;f=src/text/strings.c

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