Video Tiler

This program is intended to extremely easily generate tiled screenshots of videos. Useful if you have a tendency to download heaps of randomly named files form the internet :-).

Installation instructions

Make sure you have Java 6 installed.
Download the videotiler.jar file.
Download MPlayer (get the standard version, not SMPlayer) and put the executable in the same folder as videotiler.jar. Alternatively, if you already have MPlayer or wish to put it somewhere else, you may specify the path in the settings window (see below).
Run videotiler.jar

Usage

This program has been designed to be simple, and operation should be intuitive. The application opens with main window showing a directory tree on the left, and a screenshot visualization panel on the right :

Main window

The file browser only shows video files, filtered by extension. By default, the accepted extensions are : .bin, .dat, .mpg, .mpeg, .vob, .avi, .asf, .wmv, .qt, .mov, .mp4, .rm, .rmvb, .ogm, .mkv, .nsv, .fli, .m4v, .divx, .xvid, .flv, .swf, .vob, .ts, .ts2, .m2t, .mts, .m2ts, .dv, .3gp, .m1v, .m2v, .m3v, .mpv, .mxf. You can add additional extensions in the settings window.

Clicking on a file on the left will automatically show tiled screenshots on the right, generating them if needed. The screenshots are then saved to disk.

The toolbar on top of the window provides the following functionnality :

Forces the captures to be regenerated. Useful if you changed the settings.
Plays the currently selected file in MPlayer.
Shows the logs window.
Opens the settings window.
Displays credits and contact information.
Exits the program.

Clicking on the settings icon will bring the following window :

Settings window

This should be quite self-explanatory. The path to MPlayer can be absolute, or relative to the directory containing videotiler.jar. Changing the list of allowed extensions will require a restart, but all the other parameters are effective when you click on "Save".

If you leave the cache directory empty, the images will be saved next to the video, under the name .jpg. Otherwise, they will be saved in the specified folder. Please note that if you move the videos to another directory, the programm will have to regenerate the captures again.

Future

Implement a better resizing algorithm. Current one (Java built-in high quality bicubic) causes too much aliasing.

Got a suggestion, a feature request, or just a comment ? Don't hesitate to contact me.

Changelog

v1.3
- New advanced layout feature.
v1.2
- Greatly improved resizing algorithm.
- Made the quality of the saved JPEG image configurable.
- Improved start up response time.
v1.1
- Possibility to customize text and background colors.
- Added an option to save images in a separate directory.
v1.0
- First release.

Known issues

When viewing short videos, the frame count can be lower than the minimum number of frames setting. This is due to the fact that MPlayer can only seek to keyframes, and short videos usually have only a few. This can't be fixed for now.
When processing large resolution videos with max width set to 0 (disabled), memory requirements can be too high, resulting in an error. In this case, create a script (.bat or .sh) in the directory where videotiler.jar is located with the following contents :
java -Xmx512m -jar videotiler.jar
Running this script will allow the program to use up to 512MiB instead of the default 64MiB.

In the case you find a bug not listed here, please send an email containing a detailed description and steps to reproduce to vic@bidouille.org.