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 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.
Have you found another way to stop the annoying sounds of the vuvuzela? Let us know in the comments.
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Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?