Enjoy Vuvuzela-Free Football Matches With VLC And Mplayer

This football Worldcup in South Africa is notorious for two things until now. Boring football games and the annoying sound of the vuvuzela, the blaring horn that drowns all other background noises out.

Some football watchers helped themselves by turning off the sound of the TV while others played around with their TV’s equalizer to reduce the impact of the vuvuzela on the overall sound.

The developers of VLC Media Player have now posted instructions on how to reduce the sound of the vuvuzelas while watching soccer.

This does however mean that only users who watch football in VLC will be able to enjoy the games without those sounds.

This basically means that users who use a TV card in their PC can benefit from the startup parameters, as do users who watch recorded games on their PCs.

VLC Media Player needs to be started from the command line with the following parameters to remove the vuvuzela when watching the world cup.

vlc –audio-filter=param_eq –param-eq-f1=233 –param-eq-f2=466 –param-eq-f3=932 –param-eq-gain1=-20 –param-eq-gain2=-20 –param-eq-gain3=-20 –param-eq-lowf=100 –param-eq-lowgain=15 –param-eq-q1=10 –param-eq-q2=10 –param-eq-q3=10

The parameters can be added to a batch file that needs to be placed in the VLC directory so that the commands are executed without having to issue them on every startup.

Just download this batch file and extract it into your VLC directory. Execute it whenever you want to watch football.

A similar option is available for Mplayer users, they need to issue the command

mplayer -af an=1:0.5:0.5,sinesuppress=233:0.01,sinesuppress=466:0.01,
sinesuppress=932:0.01,sinesuppress=1864:0.01,sinesuppress=232:0.01,sinesuppress=465:0.01,sinesuppress=931:0.01,sinesuppress=1863:0.01,sinesuppress=234:0.01,sinesuppress=467:0.01, sinesuppress=933:0.01,sinesuppress=1865:0.01 name-of-video

This command can be added to a batch file as well. It does however require the video file name as a parameter which means that it needs to be edited whenever the video changes.

stop vuvuzela mplayer

Have you found another way to stop the annoying sounds of the vuvuzela? Let us know in the comments.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday June 15, 2010 -
Tags:mplayer, south africa, vlc, vlc media player, vuvuzela, world cup

Responses so far:

1. Mind Booster Noori says:

   June 15, 2010 at 7:15 pm

   Here’s a puredata patch, appliable anywhere:

   http://joaomartins.entropiadesign.org/2010/06/15/vuvuzela-filter-a-puredata-approach/#comment-4106

   Reply
   • Martin says:

     June 15, 2010 at 9:19 pm

     There is a general tool for this available now as well: http://isophonics.net/content/whats-all-about-vuvuzela

     Reply
2. mssl says:

   June 15, 2010 at 10:28 pm

   Here is another approach:
   http://linuxundich.de/de/ubuntu/vuvuzelas-pulseaudio-filtern/

   Reply
3. Tom says:

   June 16, 2010 at 9:40 pm

   Glad to see so many people working on this problem. Those horns are atrocious! The Lifehacker solution using a stereo equalizer to fix live broadcasts is also very interesting.

   Reply