tcprobe(1)						      General Commands Manual							tcprobe(1)

NAME

       tcprobe - probe multimedia streams from medium and print information on the standard output

SYNOPSIS

       tcprobe
	      -i name [ -B ] [ -M ] [ -T title ] [ -b bitrate ] [ -H n ] [ -f seekfile ] [ -d verbosity ] [ -v ]

COPYRIGHT

       tcprobe is Copyright (C) by Thomas Oestreich.

DESCRIPTION

       tcprobe is part of and usually called by transcode.
       However, it can also be used independently.
       tcprobe reads source (from stdin if not explicitely defined) and prints on the standard output.

OPTIONS

       -i name
	      Specify input source.  If ommited, stdin is assumed.
	      You  can specify a file, directory, device, mountpoint or host address as input source.  tcprobe usually handles the different types
	      correctly.

       -B     Binary output to stdout for use in transcode.

       -M     Use EXPERIMENTAL mplayer probe, useful for streams that tcprobe doesn't recognize  elsewhere.  With  this  option  enabled,  tcprobe
	      merely acts as a frontend for mplayer; of course mplayer binary needs to be installed and avalaible somewhere in PATH.

       -T title
	      Probe for DVD title

       -H n   This  option  tells tcprobe to scan n MB of input data. Default is to scan 1 MB. To detect all subtitles and audio tracks (if avail-
	      able) it is highly recommended that this n should be at least increased to 10 or even higher. Very  often  only  some  audio  tracks
	      start  during the first MB of a VOB or DVD file so transcode cannot detect them if not called with a higher value.  Please note that
	      transcode(1) has a similar -H option as well which has the same meaning.

       -s n   Skip the first n bytes of the input stream. Default is to skip no bytes.

       -b bitrate
	      Set audio encoder bitrate to bitrate

       -f seekfile
	      Read index/seek information from seekfile. This is especially useful for AVI files when it takes a long time to probe when there	is
	      no index in the AVI available. Also see aviindex(1).

       -d level
	      With  this  option you can specify a bitmask to enable different levels of verbosity (if supported).  You can combine several levels
	      by adding the corresponding values:

	      QUIET	    0

	      INFO	    1

	      DEBUG	    2

	      STATS	    4

	      WATCH	    8

	      FLIST	   16

	      VIDCORE	   32

	      SYNC	   64

	      COUNTER	  128

	      PRIVATE	  256

       -v     Print version information and exit.

NOTES

       tcprobe is a front end for probing various source types and is used in transcode's import modules.

EXAMPLES

       The command tcprobe -i foo.avi will print interesting information about the AVI file itself and its video and audio content.

AUTHORS

       tcprobe was written by Thomas Oestreich
       <ostreich@theorie.physik.uni-goettingen.de> with contributions from many others.  See AUTHORS for details.

SEE ALSO

       aviindex(1), avifix(1), avisync(1), avimerge(1), avisplit(1),  tcprobe(1),  tcscan(1),  tccat(1),  tcdemux(1),  tcextract(1),  tcdecode(1),
       transcode(1)

tcprobe(1)							 12th October 2003							tcprobe(1)