/ 
Mplayer-NowPlaying-0.010
River stage one • 1 direct dependent • 1 total dependent
/ Mplayer::NowPlaying

NAME

Mplayer::NowPlaying - query a running mplayer process for now playing metadata

SYNOPSIS

use Mplayer::NowPlaying;

...

my $current = now_playing;

if(exists($current->{artist})) {
  print "Current artist is $current->{artist}\n";
}

DESCRIPTION

Mplayer::NowPlaying was born because the author runs mplayer daemonized, controlling it via named pipes. I wanted a simple way to retrieve various 'now playing' metadata for the currently playing media.

Mplayer::NowPlaying supports two modes:

Normal

Start mplayer in normal mode and redirect STDOUT to a file:

mplayer *.mp3 > ./mplayer_log

Get the current title:

# 'normal' argument optional; this is the default
my $now_playing = now_playing("$ENV{HOME}/mplayer.log", 'normal');

printf("Current title is %s\n", $now_playing->{title});

Mplayer produces a lot of output in normal mode, effectively making our metadata retrieval slow very fast (10 files played or so). Therefore it's really recommended to use identify mode.

Identify

Start mplayer with the -identify switch:

mplayer -identify *.mp3 > mplayer_log

or the preferred

mplayer -quiet -msglevel all=0 -identify *.mp3 > mplayer_log

Get the current title:

# note 'identify' argument
my $now_playing = now_playing("$ENV{HOME}/mplayer.log", 'identify');

printf("Current title is %s\n", $now_playing->{title});

By using -msglevel all=0 -identify the amount of output from mplayer is reduced to a minimum, making the retrieval very fast. This is recommended.

EXPORTS

now_playing()

Parameters: ($logfile | $filehandle), ($mode)

Returns: \%metadata

my %metadata = %{ now_playing($logfile, 'identify'); };
my $artist = $metadata{artist};

now_playing() takes two arguments (the last one optional):

* The logfile (or filehandle) output from mplayer is directed to

* 'normal' or 'identify' mode. Normal is the default.

The hash will be filled with the available metadata for the current media. A typical result might look like:

album    => "Me and Simon",
artist   => "Laleh",
audio    => 44100,
bitrate  => 128000,
channels => 2,
chapters => 0,
codec    => "mp3",
demuxer  => "audio",
file     => "~/Laleh-Me_and_Simon/01-big_city_love.mp3",
format   => 85,
genre    => 1,
id       => 0,
length   => "1288.00",
seekable => 1,
start    => "0.00",
title    => "Big city love",
year     => 2009

Possible keys include:

title
artist
album
year
comment
genre
bitrate
codec
format
id
channels
chapters
audio
demuxer
length
seekable,
start
file

AUTHOR

Magnus Woldrich
CPAN ID: WOLDRICH
magnus@trapd00r.se
http://japh.se

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2011 Magnus Woldrich <magnus@trapd00r.se>. This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

mplayer(1)