Hollerith Parameters.

It seems that MPlayer on Linux can accept hollerith parameter strings for when things get complex. So, you can run

mplayer -ao pcm:file=%10%C:test.wav test.avi

where the %n%... part says to take the next n characters as a single parameter. Alas, this isn't built into the shell, so one still has to escape spaces and such.

Call This One a Win for Linux

One of the various worries I've had about moving to Linux from Windows has been the entire question of video processing tools. I do a fair amount of video transcoding and editing and my last experience with Linux was that it was sorely lacking in tools for video watching, editing, analysis and what-not.

I'm very pleased to see that the opposite is now true and some of the tools available for these tasks appear far superior to their Windows counterparts. I AM going to have to learn complex details about a whole new bunch of tools, but its now clear that some of the tasks I was unable to do reliably in Windows should be far easier in Linux. For example, on neither OS can one find an automated DVD to MKV conversion tool that can rip a DVD stream to a single file while preserving all commentary tracks, chapter marks, alternate angles, subtitles and language tracks. But, in Linux it seems clear that one can write a perl script to link together the half-dozen tools needed to do the job while the problem is pretty much unsolvable in Windows without a major development effort.

As well, thanks to the MKV folks working on a spec for embedding DVD-like menu systems inside MKV files, soon one will be able to rip an entire DVD to a single MKV file while keeping all features intact, but perhaps transcoding the sound and video to more compressed formats. This makes me very excited as I'm finally now in a position to build the MythTV box that I've wanted for the last 25 years, and this kind of functionality is something I want.