This repository consists of a bunch of random utility scripts that use, or are associated with, Howdy. Howdy is an SDK used to manage movies, television shows, and music located on a Plex server. Its relatively comprehensive documentation (missing documentation on two of its GUIs) lives in the Howdy documentation page.

This module depends explicitly on howdy and mutagen. This module will not install and run without ffmpeg, ffprobe, and mkvmerge. This module will install without HandBrakeCLI, but with reduced functionality -- no transcoding in convert_mp4movie_to_mkv.

Installing this software is unusual but straightforward. Just run this command, using pip3 (pip for Python 3),

pip3 install --user --upgrade git+https://github.com/tanimislam/howdy_grabbag#egg=howdy_grabbag

And then these executables (convert_mp4movie_to_mkv and fix_permissions for now), will live in ~/.local/bin.

The documentation starts with a description of each command line tool in this README, and grows from there. As this repository evolves, the documentation may become more organized. Right now, it is what it is.

This converts an MP4 movie file, with optional SRT English subtitle file, into an MKV movie file with appropriate metadata -- movie title and release year -- with an SRT English subtitle as a stream. Optionally, this executable can also transcode the larger MP4 file into an MKV file with much smaller size but with no noticeable loss in video quality; it uses HandBrakeCLI for that functionality. The help output, when running convert_mp4movie_to_mkv -h, produces the top level help,

usage: convert_mp4movie_to_mkv [-h] --mp4 MP4 [--srt SRT] -n NAME -y YEAR
               [--outdir OUTDIR] [--keep] [--noinfo]
               {transform} ...

positional arguments:
  {transform}           Option of transforming (using HandBrakeCLI) to smaller
            size MKV file.
    transform           Use HandBrakeCLI to transform to different quality MKV
            movie. Objective is to reduce size.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --mp4 MP4             Name of the MP4 movie file name.
  --srt SRT             Name of the SRT subtitle file associated with the
            movie.
  -n NAME, --name NAME  Name of the movie.
  -y YEAR, --year YEAR  Year in which the movie was aired.
  --outdir OUTDIR       The directory into which we save the final MKV file.
            Default is /home1/tanimislam/.local/src/howdy_grabbag.
  --keep                If chosen, then KEEP the MP4 and SRT files.
  --noinfo              If chosen, then run with NO INFO logging (less
            debugging).

In normal operation, convert_mp4movie_to_mkv losslessly converts an MP4 movie file, and where possible includes an SRT file, into an MKV movie file. It requires the --mp4 argument (name of the movie file); the -n or --name (name of the released movie) argument; and the -y or --year (year in which the movie was released) argument. Here are what the following optional arguments do,

• --srt includes an SRT English subtitle file into the final MKV movie file.
• --keep will NOT delete the input MP4 or SRT files.
• --noinfo operates with less debugging info.
• --outdir can be used to set the output directory into which the MKV movie file goes. You can give it a ~ prefixed path.

Finally, the transform option will transcode the movie, using HandBrakeCLI, to a specific psychovisual quality. This is the help output in this mode, when running convert_mp4movie_to_mkv transform -h,

usage: convert_mp4movie_to_mkv transform [-h] [-q QUALITY]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -q QUALITY, --quality QUALITY
            The quality of the conversion that HandBrakeCLI uses. Default is 26.

The default quality is 26. Higher numbers means smaller files but lower video quality, and lower numbers mean larger files (in some cases, can be larger in size than the input file) but generally higher video quality.

I constantly run these commands to chmod 755` the subdirectories andchmod 644the files within a root directory. * Here is the command tochmod 755` all the subdirectories at <root_directory> and underneath it.

find <root_directory> -type d -exec chmod 755 '{}' +

• Here is the command to chmod 644 all the files at <root_directory> and underneath it.

  find <root_directory> -type f -exec chmod 644 '{}' +

To make my life easier, I wrote up this executable. The help output, when running fix_permissions -h, produces the following.

usage: fix_permissions [-h] [-d DIR]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  -d DIR, --dir DIR  Name for the directory under which to fix permissions. Default is <default_directory>.

And that's it.