/ 
Mplayer-NowPlaying-0.024
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.

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.

Mplayer::NowPlaying::now_playing() 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.

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

now_playing_stream()

Parameters: $logfile | $filehandle

Returns: \%metadata

now_playing_stream() takes a single argument; the logfile (or filehandle) to be used.

If the stream being played supports ICY info, a hash reference will be returned with artist, album, title and ICY keys and their corresponding values, like so:

artist => "Suzanne Vega",
album  => "Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega",
title  => "Left of Center",,
icy    => "Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega - Suzanne Vega - Left of Center",

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::NowPlaying::Genres