Awesome hacks and secret weapons for analog and digital video.
FFmpeg
FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video.
FFmprovisr
FFmpeg is a powerful tool for manipulating audiovisual files, and the free ffmprovisr tool helps users easily navigate the the command-line.
MediaConch
MediaConch is an extensible, open source software project consisting of an implementation checker, policy checker, reporter, and fixer that targets preservation-level audiovisual files (specifically Matroska, Linear Pulse Code Modulation (LPCM) and FF Video Codec 1 (FFV1)) for use in memory institutions, providing detailed and batch-level conformance checking via an adaptable and flexible application program interface accessible by the command line, a graphical user interface, or a web interface.
MediaInfo
The open source Media Area tool MediaInfo is the easiest way to generate technical metadata about your digital video, audio, and image files. A GUI version is also available.
QCTools
QCTools is a software tool that helps users analyze and understand their digitized video files through use of audiovisual analytics and filtering. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Knight Foundation; designed and led by Dave Rice and the Bay Area Video Coalition; developed by MediaArea, Fabio Utzig, Alexander Ivash. MediaArea was involved in the initial development and provides binaries for all platforms.
sccyou
Easily preserve the closed captions already embedded in your analog video signal with sccyou, a script that interprets the results of FFmpeg's readeia608 filter to create scc (and optionally srt) outputs from standard definition video files which contain EIA-608 data.