This tool is intended to create reference video test patterns with on-screen timecode to ensure technical quality of production.

Tsmm2 can generate color bars in SMPTE ECR 1-1978 and SMPTE RP 219:2002 style, line patterns and add a frame number + timecode overlay. The configuration if flexible and the geometry of the resulting video variable.

Despite the name, tsmm2 only creates a video frame sequence which can then be encoded into a movie-file using e.g ffmpeg or mencoder or similar tools. This allows to derive multiple format/codec combinations from the same image sequence. Upon completion, tsmm2 suggests a simple ffmpeg encode command.

Short .webm and .mp4 snippets are available in the examples folder. A complete collection of pre-rendered movies is in the making.

• 25fps, 640x360, 10sec, vpx8/vorbis/webm
• 25fps, 640x360, 10sec, x264/aac/mpeg4

  git clone git://github.com/x42/tsmm2.git
  cd tsmm2
  make
  sudo make install PREFIX=/usr
  
  # test run
  tsmm2 -v -f 30/1 -H 720 -d 60 /tmp/tsmm2
  ffmpeg -r 30/1 -i /tmp/tsmm2/t%08d.png /tmp/tsmm2.mp4

For details please see the included man-page or run tsmm2 --help.

The source-code includes a small shell script gen.sh which exemplifies batch video creation as well as generating and multiplexing a 1KHz tone.

Tsmm2 only provides consistent numbered frames and timecode. The accuracy of the actual test-video depends on video-encoder and settings used to encode the video. Freedom from defects depends on the complete tool-chain. Please refrain from publishing generated videos that are not verified to be correct or include settings and version of the tools used to create the video to document specific behaviour.

To Martin Schmalohr and the amazing collection of files at http://av-standard.irt.de/wiki/index.php/Referenzclips which lend themselves as inspiration for the display.