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I’ve noticed that some ffmpeg filters omit the name of parameters for certain parameters. For example, you can write: ffplay -f lavfi -i 'color=red' rather than using color=color=red; or ffplay -f lavfi -i 'color=white:size=1024x512, drawtext=hello, scale=500x300' How do I tell which parameter is the “default parameter”?

When I wanted to redirect the stdout of the ffprobe command, I got a surprise: the usual stdout > (file) didn’t work. After a few web searches, I found the answer: I had to use stdout > (file) 2>&1, and it was OK: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29680391/ffmpeg-command-line-write-output-to-a-text-file. What could explain why the usual […]

Suppose I have a list of values like so: 1 2 3 4 5 6 I want to find every combination that involves consecutive members of this list, for e.g.: ( // every combination of one element 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, // every combination of two con. elements […]

I’m experimenting with Docker images having 20..70 GiB in a single layer (yes, the software/compiler is so fat). To improve the download and decompression efficiency of Docker, I’m splitting this fat layer into multiple layers of 3..6 GiB. I wrote a script writing one file per layer, containing one file […]

Recently I installed Thunderbird on an HP Pavilion dv6 notebook, running Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon. I was interested to see that Thunderbird hoovered up over three hundred messages, finding messages that were deleted as long ago as 2012. Unfortunately the computer crashed soon afterwards (not a surprise—it was always prone […]

I’m trying to remove my Chromebook from the enterprise enrollment, and I’ve gotten as far as the boot-up screen after factory resetting, but when I try to enter dev mode (according to some other questions on this site, this will kick me off the enterprise enrollment) it gives me the […]