How to play a random 1 minute within a video with MPV player?

linux1021 · 10-27-2017, 07:23 PM

Hi!

I have an MPV command line that plays random videos, at full screen, at 16:9 scale, with sound off, but I read the MPV man page and did not see a "random time seeker" kind of thing, that allow me to seek and play a random minute of the video playing. Any ideas?

The MPV command that I running right now is:

mpv --shuffle --really-quiet --no-audio --fs --video-aspect=16:9 --no-stop-screensaver
--wid=$XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW $HOME/"ScreenSaver Videos"/*

Thanks in advance for your time and help.

ondoho · 10-28-2017, 02:56 AM

you need to somewhat modify the above command.
wrap it in a script that

randomly chooses a video from that folder
determines the length of the video
chooses start- and endpoints inside the video's play time, 1 minute apart
use that in your final command

linux1021 · 10-28-2017, 06:36 PM

Hi! ondoho

Thanks for the reply. The command line already chooses a file at random with the option --shuffle, the trick is to tell it, to only play a random minute of the video that it is selected by the --shuffle option in command line. Any ideas? Thanks for your time and help.

ondoho · 10-29-2017, 03:49 AM

you need to disable mpv's --shuffle option because you need to safely determine the length of the video first.
then you can fill --ab-loop-a=<time>, --ab-loop-b=<time> with random values.

of course you can try to set the times randomly and see what mpv makes out of them when they are beyond the video's playing time.

linux1021 · 10-31-2017, 05:44 PM

Hi! ondoho

Thanks for the reply. The command line already chooses a video at random with the option --shuffle from my "Screensaver Videos", folder located in the home folder. The --shuffle command option has to be there. How can I tell mpv to generate the values for your two commands automatically to play 1 minute at random? Is the real problem. Hopefully I explain my self clearly. Thanks for your time and help in advance.

ondoho · 11-01-2017, 02:02 AM

here's some pseudo code for you:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

file="$(shuf -n1 -e $HOME/"ScreenSaver Videos"/*)" # chooses a random file

filelength=$(do something to get $file's playing time, maybe with mpv, maybe with ffmpeg...)
start=$(( filelength - somerandomvaluethatcannotbelargerthanfilelengthminusoneminute ))
stop=...you get the picture

mpv --really-quiet --no-audio --fs --video-aspect=16:9 --ab-loop-a=$start --ab-loop-b=$stop --no-stop-screensaver
--wid=$XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW "$file"

it needs work - it's not a working script! - but it should give you an overview of what needs to be done.
and you really need to study

Code:

man mpv