[packman] where did smplayer2 go?

[Martin Herkt]

On Monday 23 March 2015 02:12:56 Felix Miata wrote:
> I don't know what you mean by "using" streaming software either. I've been
> collecting these .ts streams several years off of FTA DVB satellite
> receivers that have no editing functions and minimal competence in playback
> of the recorded streams they themselves collected on their own internal HDs
> or on USB HDs. Each has little/poor to no ability to play streams from the
> others, which means if player malfunctions or dies, the file is useless,
> until I find Linux PC software I can figure out how to use.

I see. Well, I use tvheadend with a DVB-S2 receiver card (TeVii S464), which 
works really well for scheduled recording or just watching TV.

If it is set to record to the Matroska (mkv) container format (the default), 
it will also insert chapter marks where the stream parameters change
(e.g. a change from 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9), which can be useful.

> Most of these I've saved are from MPEG4 H.264 DVB-S2 8PSK sources. Some are
> not H.264. Some are MPEG2. From all of these I want to eradicate commercials
> and save in a format most players can play and skip F/R and play F/R and
> find index marks in same manner as DVDs and their players behave. I've made
> attempts with Kdenlive, MythTV and a few other listings from
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_editing_software without
> ever making meaningful progress understanding even the basics.

If you only need to cut these files, using mkvmerge (it also has a GUI program 
called mmg) from the mkvtoolnix package, or ffmpeg, will probably work, 
although it might be a bit cumbersome. mkvtoolnix will only remux files, not 
transcode them, and as such you lose no quality, but cutting is not frame-
accurate (snapped to the nearest video keyframe). FFmpeg can do the same, but 
will also let you transcode.
mpv can also transcode and can be used with its own kind of edit decision list 
to cut and splice things, but it can't remux.

If you need real video editing capabilities then you can try using VapourSynth 
(a scriptable video editing framework similar to AviSynth - warning, steep 
learning curve) plus FFmpeg, or Blender's video sequence editor if you want 
something graphical.
The latter is actually very good (better than pretty much all other GUI NLEs 
on Linux), just a tad bit lacking when it comes to encoder settings.
Note that Blender will have to be built with FFmpeg support for this to work.

For pretty much all video editors to work reliably, you need to get rid of the 
MPEG TS container, because nothing is frame-accurate with that (can result in 
cuts at the wrong frames and video corruption). To do that, you can try this:

    ffmpeg -i input.ts -map 0 -c copy output.mkv

Explanation:

    -i input.ts - an input file
    -map 0 - tells ffmpeg to map all streams from input file 0 to the output
    -c copy - direct stream copy, no transcoding
    output.mkv - the output file

Or with mkvtoolnix:

    mkvmerge input.ts -o output.mkv

The result should already work perfectly with most software players as well.

> Suggestions that have good instructions (man pages don't work for me) really
> would be welcome.

See above. I know all this video stuff can be a lot to stomach, and there's an 
almost infinite number of things to avoid, so if you need any help or further 
advice with this, feel free to email me directly or ask me on IRC
(lachs0r @ freenode).