pia(1)

📦
version 3.107 · 2 versions
, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 pia(1) — the manual, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, so this is pia, from the General Commands Manual, and she is literally just here to play your media files. that's the whole job. iconic behaviour, honestly. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

pia — play media files 🎬

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pia [ options ] movie

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so pia is a lil X11 tool — yeah, that X11 — and what she does is play movie files. that's it. that's the vibe. small, focused, main character energy, no notes. 💅

👑 OPTIONS 👑

first things first: pia understands all the usual toolkit options (-geometry + friends), so go off with those. 🫶

and then the additional ones, which are:

  • -h — shows you the help text. the girl is helpful!! ✨
  • -v — be verbose. she will yap. you asked for it. 🗣️
  • -debug — turn on debug messages. for when you need to see everything. 🔍
  • -dsp <dev> — use the OSS device <dev> for sound. pick your audio source, bestie. 🔊
  • -noxv — disables the Xvideo extension. 🚫
  • -nogl — disables OpenGL. 🚫
  • -noaudio — don't play sound. silent era, we love her. 🤫
  • -novideo — don't play video. audio-only queen. 🎧
  • -slow n — slows down video playback by factor n. so like, n=2 doubles the playback time, and so on and so forth... 👀 heads up though: this also turns off audio playback. no cap, it just does. 🐢

🌈 SUPPORTED MOVIE FORMATS 🌈

so the main purpose of this utility is to play back movie files that were recorded by xawtv, motv and streamer. and honestly? it should be able to play back every AVI or QuickTime movie written by one of those mentioned utilities. if it doesn't work for some file, feel free to submit a bug report — she wants to know. 💌

🍓 QuickTime

pia uses libquicktime to decode quicktime movies, so she should be able to decode and play back all movies with codecs supported by libquicktime. if libquicktime can do it, so can she. periodt. ⭐

🧚 AVI

okay so AVI support is very limited, ngl. let's break it down:

  • Video: uncompressed RGB data (15 and 24 bpp) and mjpeg is supported.
  • Audio: only uncompressed PCM data works.

💜 WAV

WAV files are playable too! 🎉 but with the same limitation like AVI audio: only uncompressed PCM data. same rule, different container. 🙈

💖 AUTHOR 💖

Gerd Knorr <kraxel@bytesex.org> — the icon, the legend. 👑

2002 Gerd Knorr

Copyright (C) 2002 Gerd Knorr <kraxel@bytesex.org>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. (like fr fr, no warranty, don't come for her 😭)

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

ok that's the whole page bestie, you're fully caught up. go play a movie. 🍿

and that's a wrap!! 💅 this lil number is copyright (c) 2002 Gerd Knorr, and it lives in the General Commands Manual as pia(1). mwah, take care of her 🫶✨🌸

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