Tag CLI

How to run any program in Task Scheduler

Windows Task Scheduler is great for running background tasks, but a little confusing. If you just want to trigger a Windows batch file periodically you don’t need this guide. This guide will explain how to run any software without using…

Add text to a video with FFmpeg

If you want to add text to multiple video files in a bulk operation, FFmpeg is the way to go. You don’t want to manually edit a bunch of videos just to add the same stuff each time. Automation for the win! In this FFmpeg example, we will add some text to this video clip. As you can see, no text yet. We want to add “hard coded” text (that cannot be removed after it is added). We are not talking subtitles/captions. Here is the command, but hold on for a sec… The following command has been made simpler to read by breaking the long command into multiple lines. If you use this command you should remove all ^-symbols, so that everything is displayed in one line. Also don’t miss the spaces in there. This command is made for a Windows environment so it might look a little different if you are on another OS. You can also make the text with a little better position and padding like this: This is the result: Sources: https://superuser.com/questions/939357/ffmpeg-watermark-on-bottom-right-corner

Record microphone with FFmpeg in Windows

It’s easy to record your computer microphone with FFmpeg. The only tricky part (although not that tricky) is you just have to know the name of your microphone input. Before you begin make sure you have FFmpeg added to PATH. Let’s start by listing your recording devices. Amongst other things this will give you something like: The only thing you need to note is your device name. In this case it is Line (3- Steinberg UR44). To start the recording you just run the following code: To stop the recording hit CTRL+C. -f dshow means “DirectShow” and lets FFmpeg capture audio and video devices, video capture devices, analog tv tuner devices. -i audio="name_of_your_microphone" is the audio device you wish to record from. Replace name_of_your_microphone with the name of your input device. -c:a libmp3lame means FFmpeg will encode the audio with LAME MPEG Audio Layer III, also known as the MP3 format. -ar 44100 tels FFmpeg to record at a sample rate of 44,100 Hz. That is the standard for most audio nowadays unless you intend to use the audio for a video in which case you would use 48,000 Hz. -b:a 320k is the audio bit rate. The highest support for MP3 is 320 kbit/s. -ac 1 means the audio will be in mono as opposed to stereo streams. This makes sense as most microphones record in mono only. If you haven’t changed the directory in your command line you can always specify where to save the file. For example C:\output.mp3.

Convert subtitles from the command line with SubtitleEdit

We can use SubtitleEdit from the command line in Windows to do batch operations on subtitle files. Just install SubtitleEdit first. If you are using the portable version, make sure you put the exe in PATH. Example: Convert TTML to SRT: It’s even easier in a Directory Opus button. Just make sure it is set to run as MS-DOS Batch function: Output: Becomes this:

Get computer information with CMD

Get model name of the computer: Get the serial number of a computer: Get vendor/company of the computer: Get drive information. This basically shows the same as Disk Management but what is interesting is that if you have a drive…

Print list of files and folders in Windows

Here are a few ways you can get a list of files and folders on a computer. I won’t get into specifics on how to use them. I just wanted to give you the options. 😇 The DIR command (Simple way to list files and folders) Documentation: Microsoft Docs Articles: How-To Geek, SS64, Computer Hope, windows-commandline Advantages: Good if you just need list of files, types, sizes etc… Disadvantages: Not good if you need a visual representation of the file hierarchy. GUI Alternative: JR Directory Printer does pretty much the same with a GUI. Karen’s Directory Printer offers a little more options, but it is not portable. There is also DirLister that can export to Excel and other formats, but it is buggy and adds annoying text after each file/folder. TREE command (Make a directory structure tree) Documentation: Microsoft Docs Articles: SS64, Computer Hope Advantages: Very simple and limited. Good if you just need a tree of the directory structure Disadvantages: Not good if you just need a list of files, advanced filtering or if you need something more visually pleasing. Snap2HTML (Software to make dynamic HTML) Documentation: GitHub Download: Snap2HTML Advantages: A beautiful and eloquent way to share complex directory structures with other non-technical people. Also, the software is portable, free and allows you to export to CSV or JSON. Disadvantages: Requires HTML and a web browser. The template looks a bit outdated, but you can change it if you know HTML.