Shell Tutorials
YouTube, FFMPEG, and MP3 Conversion
Yesterday I published a quick post about a basic MPEG -> FLV video conversion method using FFMPEG. Today I want to share another great usage of FFMPEG: stripping a video's audio and creating an MP3. As an added bonus, I'll be ripping the audio from a great YouTube video using youtube-dl, a python script with loads of options for downloading YouTube videos.
Convert Video Formats Using FFMPEG
Getting a video into the format you like can be important when providing media to your users on the web. Unfortunately your customer or video source may not give you media in the desired format. No problem: use the FFMPEG library to quickly and easily convert your media from and to any format you'd like.
Reduce PNG Graphic Size Using PNGCRUSH
Now that I'm knee-deep in MacBook I love working with command line applications. There's a certain beauty in the simplicity of using the console instead of a nice GUI. One task I use the console for often is reducing the size of PNG files using the powerhouse that is PNGCRUSH.
Use FURL to Retrieve Website Headers
It's important to know what headers your website and its files are communicating. For example, if your website is providing a 404 status, you're probably streaking toward your computer to fix the problem. Using the FURL library, you may retrieve website headers from the command line.
Package Your Firefox Extension into an XPI
Yesterday I detailed the file/folder structure of a Firefox extension. Once you have your extension ready for testing, you need to package everything together into an XPI file. Luckily there's a quick and easy way to do so.
Create a GitHub Merge Batch File
Before I start updating my local clone of the MooTools More or Core libraries, I need to update to the most current version on GitHub. Call me lazy, but I'm tired of typing the commands lines into msysgit all the time. I've created a batch file that does the work for me.
Read PDF and Word DOC Files Using PHP
One of my customers has an insane amount of PDF and Microsoft Word DOC files on their website. It's core to their online services so it's not as though they're garbage files up on the server. My customer wanted their website's search engine (Sphider) to read these PDF files and DOC files so that their clients could get at the documents they needed without going through a bunch of summary pages to get them. I was successful in the task, so let me show you how to read PDF and DOC files using PHP.
Using Cygwin’s dig To Retrieve DNS Records
One of the most difficult parts of my job is managing DNS settings. It's not that DNS is a particularly difficult thing to manage, but it's somewhat foreign to me because they don't teach it in school and there are huge consequences for messing things up. Not only can a business' website be down, but their email as well. Whenever I need to retrieve DNS records from a nameserver, I use Cygwin and dig.
Download A File Using Cygwin and wget
Using Cygwin's cURL package isn't the only way to download a file. You can also use Cygwin's wget command to download any URL.
Download A File Using Cygwin and cURL
I'm starting to like using Cygwin more and more. Command line scripting allows me to get the information without all of the hassle. Why should I open Firefox, type in the address, deal with the ads, and click 5 links before I can get to what I want when I can use command line to download what I want? Here's how you can download a file using the cURL package from the command line.