.TH tcprobe 1 "12th October 2003" "tcprobe(1)"
.SH NAME
tcprobe \- probe multimedia streams from medium and print information on the
standard output
.SH SYNOPSIS
.TP
.B tcprobe
.B -i
.I name
[
.B -B
] [
.B -M
] [
.B -T
.I title
] [
.B -b
.I bitrate
] [
.B -H
.I n
] [
.B -f
.I seekfile
] [
.B -d
.I verbosity
] [
.B -v
]
.SH COPYRIGHT
\fBtcprobe\fP is Copyright (C) by Thomas Oestreich.
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B tcprobe
is part of and usually called by \fBtranscode\fP.
.br
However, it can also be used independently.
.br
\fBtcprobe\fP reads source (from stdin if not explicitely defined) and
prints on the standard output.
.SH OPTIONS
.IP "\fB-i \fIname\fP"
Specify input source.  If ommited, \fIstdin\fP is assumed.
.br
You can specify a file, directory, device, mountpoint or host address
as input source.  \fBtcprobe\fP usually handles the different types
correctly.
.IP "\fB-B\fP"
Binary output to stdout for use in transcode.
.IP "\fB-M\fP"
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.
.IP "\fB-T \fItitle\fP"
Probe for DVD
.I title
.IP "\fB-H\fP \fIn\fP"
This option tells \fBtcprobe\fP to scan \fIn\fP MB of input data. Default
is to scan 1 MB. To detect all subtitles and audio tracks (if available) it is
highly recommended that this \fIn\fP 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.
.IP "\fB-s\fP \fIn\fP"
Skip the first \fIn\fP bytes of the input stream. Default is to skip no bytes.
.IP "\fB-b\fP \fIbitrate\fP"
Set audio encoder bitrate to \fIbitrate\fP
.IP "\fB-f \fIseekfile\fP"
Read index/seek information from \fIseekfile\fP. 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).
.IP "\fB-d\fP \fIlevel\fP"
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
.IP "\fB-v\fP"
Print version information and exit.
.SH NOTES
\fBtcprobe\fP is a front end for probing various source types and is used in \fBtranscode\fP's import modules.
.SH EXAMPLES
The command
.B tcprobe -i foo.avi
will print interesting information about the AVI file itself and its video and
audio content.
.PP
.SH AUTHORS
.B tcprobe
was written by Thomas Oestreich
.br
<ostreich@theorie.physik.uni-goettingen.de> with contributions from
many others.  See AUTHORS for details.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR aviindex (1),
.BR avifix (1),
.BR avisync (1),
.BR avimerge (1),
.BR avisplit (1),
.BR tcprobe (1),
.BR tcscan (1),
.BR tccat (1),
.BR tcdemux (1),
.BR tcextract (1),
.BR tcdecode (1),
.BR transcode (1)