chromecastize

Simple bash script to convert video files into Google Chromecast supported format.

Script identifies video and audio format of given file (using mediainfo) and converts it if necessary (using ffmpeg).

Filename of output video file is <original_filename>.mkv and original video file gets renamed to <original_filename>.bak.

Requirements

• mediainfo
• ffmpeg

Install requirements by running e.g. apt-get install ffmpeg mediainfo (Debian) or brew install ffmpeg mediainfo (MacOS with Homebrew).

Usage

./chromecastize.sh [--mp4 | --mkv | --stereo | --delete-on-success | --force-vencode | --force-aencode | --config=/path/to/config] <videofile1> [videofile2 ...]

Examples:

• ./chromecastize.sh /Volumes/MyNAS - converts all videos on your NAS (assuming that it's mounted to /Volumes/MyNAS)
• ./chromecastize.sh Holiday.avi Wedding.avi - converts specified video files

Options:

• --mp4 forces conversion to MPEG-4 container
• --mkv forces conversion to Matroska container
• --stereo forces conversion from multichannel audio to 2 channel stereo
• --delete-on-success deletes the original file on success instead of renaming it to <original_filename>.bak
• --force-vencode forces re-encoding of the video, if the codec is supported but the profile level is too high
• --force-aencode forces re-encoding of the audio
• --config=/path/to/config specify where to store configuration. When omitted the default folder ~/.chromecastize is used.

Changing default options

• Copy the example config.sh file to your config folder (default location: ~/.chromecastize).
• Uncomment the options which you wish to change by removing the leading # symbol.

Authors

• Petr Kotek (did the script save you some time? donations appreciated: www.petrkotek.com)