mimictools 1.0.1 and mimicdecoder 1.0.1.1

[plitter]

I have downloaded and installed the packages which are mentioned and transcode, but when I decode it to xvid I dont get anything. I apologize in advance for the probable lack of information regarding the problem but i am a newbie....

[Galak Fyarr]

Seriously, could SOMEONE make a video guide on how to install and run these tools?

I'm using a mac computer with virtual Ubuntu Machine, I have NO idea how this works, please, anyone care to give  a clear (and Ubuntu noob) walkthrough? thanks...

[afv]

Code:

gksu gedit /usr/share/mimictools

at line 148 try:

Code:

cmd2 = 'ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pix_fmt bgr24 -s %ix%i -aspect 4:3 -r 4 -i - -f avi -vcodec libxvid -s %ix%i -aspect 4:3 -y "%s"' % (w, h, w, h, path)

instead of:

Code:

cmd2 = ENCODER[1] % { 'width': w, 'height': h, 'path': path }

[marc2009]

It seems libmimic is farsight isn't it ? ( as it's on the farsight page )

[kakaroto]

marc2009, if you go to the farsight page.. then you should read about it.. no it has absolutely nothing to do with farsight.. it was just hosted there for some time... libmimic is a codec, and farsight is a gstreamer pipeline building tool.

[Galak Fyarr]

still nobody to actually explain how it works?

I installed the packages, and end up with two folders. Where's the app? I don't get the interface you see in the screenshot, actually I get nothing... how. does. it. work?

[kakaroto]

noone explains because noone knows.. the original author is not part of the amsn team, it's just a user contribution and he seems to be away or something.. I don't know how to works and I don't plan on trying to figure it out..
What I use instead of this is :

Code:

/usr/share/amsn/utils/cam_to_avi.sh ~/.amsn/email/webcam/whatever@hotmail.com.cam ~/webcam.avi

If you have gstreamer installed with the mimic plugin (mimdec gstreamer element), it should work..

p.s.: mimdec comes with gst-plugins-bad 0.0.13 and later...

[Galak Fyarr]

noone explains because noone knows.. the original author is not part of the amsn team, it's just a user contribution and he seems to be away or something.. I don't know how to works and I don't plan on trying to figure it out..
What I use instead of this is :

Code:

/usr/share/amsn/utils/cam_to_avi.sh ~/.amsn/email/webcam/whatever@hotmail.com.cam ~/webcam.avi

If you have gstreamer installed with the mimic plugin (mimdec gstreamer element), it should work..

p.s.: mimdec comes with gst-plugins-bad 0.0.13 and later...

well at least this might get me a little further    thanks i'll try that

[Flyzone]

For who is using Debian Lenny (stable), just a little tip to don't waste time....
Marillat multimedia packages in these last years give me too many problems (vlc cannot read avi, dependencies broken), so I decided to don't use it as repository for additional packages...compile by myself transcode is two time problematics and require many packages that the debian stable doesn't offer, and xvid remember me some unwanted library.....

for who thinks like me, edit /usr/share/mimicdecoder at line 29 to use ffmpeg (installed with lenny) and with mpeg1 codec (support colors):

Code:

ENCODER = ('rgb', 'ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24 -s %(width)dx%(height)d -r 4 -i - -f mpeg -vcodec mpeg1video -r 24 -y "%(path)s"')

[snipe2004]

noone explains because noone knows.. the original author is not part of the amsn team, it's just a user contribution and he seems to be away or something.. I don't know how to works and I don't plan on trying to figure it out..
What I use instead of this is :

Code:

/usr/share/amsn/utils/cam_to_avi.sh ~/.amsn/email/webcam/whatever@hotmail.com.cam ~/webcam.avi

If you have gstreamer installed with the mimic plugin (mimdec gstreamer element), it should work..

p.s.: mimdec comes with gst-plugins-bad 0.0.13 and later...

Hi,

Excuse my question, but has this cam_to_avi.sh tool disappear? Using aMSN SVN, I have no file called "cam to avi" neither anything approaching.


I also encounter another problem, using mimicdecoder this time, I hope anyone could help me. When I try to transcode a cam file (made two years ago) to avi using this application, I got an error in the terminal :

arnault@arnault-laptop:~$ mimicdecoder
sh: transcode: not found
mimic2rgb: Premature end of file or other error!

Does anyone know how to fix it?

For other cam files, more recent, I have another problem, the same as for another two years old cam file :

sh: transcode: not found
mimic2rgb: End of file.

But aMSN can prefectly read them, so I guess they're ok but aMSN doesn't stop when it faces a little problem in the file. Any way to force mimicdecoder to transcode?

Thanks A LOT in advance,

and sorry for my very poor english :/

[Flyzone]

Any way to force mimicdecoder to transcode?

Well..."not found" for me means that you haven't installed the transcode program.
Check your installation/distribution if includes it or download and install from here.
Other possibility...could be that is installed but it not in the path of the OS (mmm very unusual  :wink: )

[kakaroto]

yeah, you should just install the transcore application. In debian, it's called 'transcore' hehe...
about cam_to_avi, I don't know, maybe your Fedora core doesn't include it in the package, but the file is really simple :

Code:

#!/bin/bash
gst-launch filesrc location="$1" ! mimdec ! ffmpegcolorspace ! videorate ! ffenc_mpeg4 ! avimux ! filesink location="$2"

you'll need gstreamer tools and the mimic gstreamer plugin as well as ffmpeg encoder for mpeg4.

[snipe2004]

Thanks for your answers!

What's strange is that it works without transcode for some cam files... But it's possible.

I applied both your ideas, and here's what I got :

KKRT's one : I still got an error

Définition du pipeline à PAUSED...
Le pipeline est en phase de PREROLL...
Le pipeline a terminé la phase PREROLL...
Passage du pipeline à la phase PLAYING...
New clock: GstSystemClock
ERREUR : de l'élément /GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstFileSrc:filesrc0 : Erreur interne de flux de données.
Information de débogage supplémentaire :
gstbasesrc.c(2378): gst_base_src_loop (): /GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstFileSrc:filesrc0:
streaming task paused, reason error (-5)
Execution ended after 193401343 ns.
Définition du pipeline à PAUSED...
Définition du pipeline à READY (prêt)...
Définition du pipeline à NULL...
Libération du pipeline...
.

And Flyzone, I also get another error

transcode: unrecognized option '--use_rgb'
'transcode -h | more' shows a list of available command line options.
mimic2rgb: Premature end of file or other error!

For the first file. It ends by 70% of the decoding.

and

transcode: unrecognized option '--use_rgb'
'transcode -h | more' shows a list of available command line options.
mimic2rgb: End of file.

For the second. It ends by 99% (perhaps 100% but I'm not sure), but there's no file test.avi (as I named it) in the directoy I mentioned in the app.
(in fact, there are two files because the stream failed and had to be started again)


But for both of those I have not yet look for an answer on google, so I'll look for it and go back for further help if I can't find anything, or for feedback if I solve the problem.

Thanks a lot for your help.!

[kakaroto]

internal flow error means the file is 'corrupted' or contains something that shouldn't be there..  maybe when it goes from one webcam session to another, there's an issue. I guess you'll get your file but incomplete.

[snipe2004]

So here I am, after days and nights of inefficient efforts.

It seems I face two different problems, one being perhaps able to solve the second.

First one, when I use mimicdecoder. In console, I get a :

[probe_ffmpeg.c] critical: unable to open '/dev/stdin' (libavformat failure)

(...)

mimic2rgb: End of file.  21.14 fps, CFT: 0:00:07,  ( 0| 0|20)
[decoder.c] cancelling the import threads0:00:10,  (16| 0| 4)

[transcode] encoded 42 frames (0 dropped, 0 cloned), clip length  10.50 s

So it looks like something is broken in my ffmpeg/libavformat install. But I dunno what. I changed from libavformat-extra-52 to libavformat52, without any success. Installed many -dev packages, without any success.
I've no idea how to solve this one...

Which, once solved, could perhaps - or not :/ - transform my .cam in .avi *_*

That brings me to my second problem :

Using many other "cam to avi" possibilities (Mobile Media Converter, AviDemux, VLC,...), I can transform some other old .cam files into .avi files.
But some files, including the one I need to get in avi, are somehow corrupted. What sounded strange to me, was that aMSN log viewer was perfectly able to read them.
So I investigated a bit, and got these results :
1) aMSN has one file for one month logs, per e-mail address of course.
2) Inside the log viewer, we have the different days and hours of every cam session of the month. I guess this is related to the .dat (index?) file that's created with every .cam file.
3) In this very case, every other transcoder fail after 8 seconds.
4) Inside aMSN log viewer, I realized that if I started the viewing from the very beginning, after those 8 seconds the viewer also fails to show the movie (it suddenly stops, and the little cursor move from the beginning of the bar to its end).
5) But I never suffered of that before, because those first 8 seconds are of no interest, so I always pointed the cursor a few minutes later.
6) So it seems aMSN, even if it fails to read when it starts from the beginning, is able to display the rest of the movie if we don't go through this damned 8th second.
7) So perhaps is it any way to "cut" the .cam file after 10 seconds? Or if I can cut it into different files, every one of them being a different cam session, as aMSN shows them? Unfortunately, avidemux and every prog' I could think at weren't able to even open the .cam file.

But bay me one of those amsn genius would have a brilliant idea on how to do so ?