bino - Man Page

Bino is a video player with a focus on 3D and Virtual Reality:

• Support for stereoscopic 3D images and videos in various formats
• Support for 180° and 360° surround images and videos, with and without stereoscopic 3D
• Support for Virtual Reality environments, including SteamVR, CAVEs, powerwalls, and other multi-display / multi-GPU / multi-host systems

bino [options] URL...

• -h, --help

  Displays help on command line options.

• --help-all

  Displays help including Qt specific options.

• -v, --version

  Displays version information.

• --log-level level

  Set log level (fatal, warning, info, debug, firehose).

• --log-file file

  Set log file.

• --control-file file

  Get control commands from a file. See Scripting and Remote Control.

• --control-fifo name

  Get control commands from a named pipe (fifo). See Scripting and Remote Control.

• --control-uds name

  Get control commands from a Unix Domain Socket. See Scripting and Remote Control.

• --control-tcp [ip|name]:port

  Get control commands by listening on a TCP port. See Scripting and Remote Control.

• --stereo

  Enable OpenGL quad-buffered stereo support. This typically only works with legacy proprietary GPU drivers, and autodetection breaks with these drivers, so this feature has to be enabled manually.

• --opengles

  Use OpenGL ES instead of Desktop OpenGL.

• --vr

  Start in Virtual Reality mode instead of GUI mode. See Virtual Reality.

• --vr-screen screen

  Set VR screen geometry, either as the special values `united' or `intersected', or as a comma-separated list of nine values representing three 3D coordinates that define a planar screen (bottom left, bottom right, top left), or as a an aspect ratio followed by the name of an OBJ file that contains the screen geometry with texture coordinates (example: `16:9,myscreen.obj').

• --capture

  Capture audio/video input from microphone and camera/screen/window.

• --list-audio-outputs

  List audio outputs.

• --list-audio-inputs

  List audio inputs.

• --list-video-inputs

  List video inputs.

• --list-screen-inputs

  List screen inputs.

• --list-window-inputs

  List window inputs.

• --audio-output index

  Choose audio output via its index.

• --audio-input index

  Choose audio input via its index. Can be empty.

• --video-input index

  Choose video input via its index.

• --screen-input index

  Choose screen input via its index.

• --window-input index

  Choose window input via its index.

• --list-tracks

  List all video, audio and subtitle tracks in the media.

• --preferred-audio lang

  Set preferred audio track language (en, de, fr, ...).

• --preferred-subtitle lang

  Set preferred subtitle track language (en, de, fr, ...). Can be empty.

• --video-track track

  Choose video track via its index.

• --audio-track track

  Choose audio track via its index.

• --subtitle-track track

  Choose subtitle track via its index. Can be empty.

• -p, --playlist file

  Load playlist.

• -l, --loop mode

  Set loop mode (off, one, all).

• -w, --wait mode

  Set wait mode (off, on).

• -i, --input mode

  Set input mode (mono, top-bottom, top-bottom-half, bottom-top, bottom-top-half, left-right, left-right-half, right-left, right-left-half, alternating-left-right, alternating-right-left).

• -o, --output mode

  Set output mode (left, right, stereo, alternating, hdmi-frame-pack, left-right, left-right-half, right-left, right-left-half, top-bottom, top-bottom-half, bottom-top, bottom-top-half, even-odd-rows, even-odd-columns, checkerboard, red-cyan-dubois, red-cyan-full-color, red-cyan-half-color, red-cyan-monochrome, green-magenta-dubois, green-magenta-full-color, green-magenta-half-color, green-magenta-monochrome, amber-blue-dubois, amber-blue-full-color, amber-blue-half-color, amber-blue-monochrome, red-green-monochrome, red-blue-monochrome).

• -s, --surround mode

  Set surround mode (360, 180, off).

• --surround-vfov degrees

  Set surround vertical field of view (default 50, range 5-115).

• -S, --swap-eyes

  Swap left/right eye.

• -f, --fullscreen

  Start in fullscreen mode.

Bino tries to autodetect the stereoscopic layout and the surround video mode from image and video metadata, but that data is often incomplete or unknown. In such cases, Bino has to guess.

To help with this, the hints listed below can be used as the last part of the file name, just before the file name extension (.ext).

If you use both stereoscopic and surround mode hints, but the surround hint first, followed by the stereoscopic hint, e.g. example-180-tb.mp4.

Bino can read commands and execute them. This works both in GUI mode and in Virtual Reality mode.

The source of the commands can be a text file, a named pipe (fifo), a Unix Domain Socket (UDS), or a TCP port that Bino listens on. See the various --control options. Examples:

### File:
$ bino --control-file script.bino
### FIFO:
$ mkfifo fifo.bino
$ bino --control-fifo fifo.bino &
$ echo "open myvideo.mp4" > fifo.bino
### Unix Domain Socket:
$ bino --control-uds /tmp/socket.bino &
$ echo "open myvideo.mp4" | nc -q0 -U /tmp/socket.bino
### TCP Socket:
$ bino --control-tcp localhost:63000 &
$ echo "open myvideo.mp4" | nc -q0 localhost 63000

This allows pre-scripted media presentations as well as the implementation of custom remote controls for Bino.

The command interface is line-based. Empty lines and comment lines (which begin with #) are ignored. The following commands are supported:

• open [--input mode] [--surround mode] [--video-track vt] [--audio-track at] [--subtitle-track st] URL

  Open the URL and start playing. The options have the same meaning as the corresponding command line options.

• capture [--audio-input ai] [--video-input vi] [--screen-input si] [--window-input wi]

  Start capturing camera and microphone. The options have the same meaning as the corresponding command line options.

• play

  Start playing.

• pause

  Pause.

• toggle-pause

  Switch between pause and play.

• stop

  Stop playing.

• playlist-load playlist.m3u

  Load the playlist.

• playlist-next

  Switch to next playlist entry.

• playlist-prev

  Switch to previous playlist entry.

• playlist-wait mode

  Set wait mode (off, on).

• playlist-loop mode

  Set loop mode (off, one, all).

• quit

  Quit Bino.

• set-position p

  Set the video position to p, where p=0 is the beginning and p=1 is the end.

• seek seconds

  Seek the given amounts of seconds forward or, if the number of seconds is negative, backwards.

• wait stop|seconds

  Wait until the video stops, or wait for the given number of seconds, before executing the next command.

• set-mute on|off

  Set the volume mute status.

• toggle-mute

  Switch between mute and unmute.

• set-volume vol

  Set the volume level to vol (between 0 and 1).

• adjust-volume offset

  Adjust the volume by the given amount (the final volume is clamped between 0 and 1).

• set-output-mode mode

  Set the given output mode. See the command line option --output for a list of modes.

• set-surround-vfov degrees

  Set surround vertical field of view (default 50, range 5-115).

• set-swap-eyes on|off

  Set left/right eye swap.

• toggle-swap-eyes

  Toggle left/right eye swap.

• set-fullscreen on|off

  Set fullscreen mode.

• toggle-fullscreen

  Toggle fullscreen mode.

You can play slideshows of images (or videos) simply by making a playlist. In the GUI, use the Playlist menu, and on the command line, just list multiple files to play.

By default, the next image/video in the playlist will only be displayed after you press the N key, or choose Playlist/Next from the menu or the on-screen user interface.

When the wait status of the playlist is switched off instead, the next media will play as soon as the previous is finished.

For a scripted slideshow with predefined presentation times for each image or video, use the scripting mode as in the following example:

set-fullscreen on
playlist-load my-slideshow.m3u
playlist-loop on
playlist-wait on
playlist-next
wait 4
playlist-next
wait 7
playlist-next
wait 5
quit