CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ffmpegescapingdrawtext
dotsam
dotsam

Reputation: 323

ffmpeg single quote in drawtext

I haven't been able to get ffmpeg's drawtext video filter to draw apostrophes/single quotes when they are in drawtext's "text=" parameter, even when I escape them. Double quotes work fine, and apostrophes in text loaded from a file (e.g. textfile="example.txt") work fine. Is this a bug?

e.g. 

ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf drawtext="apostrophes don't print" ...
ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf drawtext="even when they\'re escaped" ...

Upvotes: 20

Views: 14243

Answers (10)

K.H.
K.H.

Reputation: 1462

In case someone needs this for Python, this escape function is working for me (based on the FFmpeg Quoting and Escaping documentation + multi-escaping advice above):

return "'" + text.replace(":", "\\\\:").replace("'", "'\\\\\\\\\\\\''") + "'"

Upvotes: 5

Ishu singh
Ishu singh

Reputation: 1

ricardo-bohner's methods works really well, but just make sure that, you're getting exactly the as shown below:

I used this;

line = it's
str(line.replace("'", "'\\\\\\''"))

but due to the way I code some functions in the executed command, I got '\\\'' like below:

it'\\\''s

Upvotes: 0

Ricardo Bohner
Ricardo Bohner

Reputation: 365

For Windows Users:

The logic: for easier understanding I will call the single quote to be shown as a result: apostrophe and all other single quotes simply single quotes...

You have to put the first part of the text before the apostrophe between single quotes + 3 backslashes before the apostrophe, then the apostrophe itself + the text after the apostrophe between single quotes again"

So to produce: "apostrophes don't print" it would be:

drawtext=text='apostrophes don'\\\''t print'

Using an example:

ffplay -f lavfi  "color=blue:size=700x200,drawtext=text='apostrophes don'\\\''t print':fontsize=40:fontcolor=white:x=(W-tw)/2:y=(H-th)/2"

enter image description here

The other solution seems to be, to use a text file as already mentioned here by others:

drawtext=textfile=somefile.txt

Upvotes: 2

MBK
MBK

Reputation: 3364

in node.js, i am able to put a colon in the text with this line.

let surahTxt = "QURAN " + chapterNo + "\\:"+ from + "-" + to ;

later this variable is used with the drawtext

Upvotes: 0

étale-cohomology
étale-cohomology

Reputation: 1861

If you're passing the string via Python, the following works for me:

txt = 'it\'s good!'
txt = txt.replace('\'', '\'\\\\\\\\\\\'\'')

Upvotes: 0

Sina Gh
Sina Gh

Reputation: 69

Just put your text into a file e.g. myText.txt and use textfile option:

->myText.txt This is my text with special characters :,(,),'

Then instead of using :

ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf drawtext="This is my text with special characters :,(,),'"

use the following command:

ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf textfile=textFile.txt

Upvotes: 3

Esteban Solis
Esteban Solis

Reputation: 71

// This works for me

public function replaceSpecialFfmpegChars($text)
    {
        return str_replace(
            ":",
            "\\\\\\\\\\\:",
            str_replace(
                "%",
                "\\\\\\\\\\\%",
                str_replace(
                    "'",
                    "'\\\\\\\\\\\\''",
                    str_replace(
                        "\"",
                        "\\\\\\\\\\\"",
                        str_replace(
                            "\\",
                            "\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\",
                            $text
                        )
                    )
                )
            )
        );
    }

Upvotes: 7

Filix Mogilevsky
Filix Mogilevsky

Reputation: 777

I was able to insert Unicode \u2019 into argument string and it worked for single right quote.

Upvotes: 15

blahdiblah
blahdiblah

Reputation: 34011

Special character escapes are like violence: if they're not solving your problem, you're not using enough.

ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf drawtext=text="It\\\\\'s so easy"

Produces a textual overlay that includes an apostrophe. The text is being parsed a couple times, so you not only have to escape the quote, you also have to escape the slash escaping the quote. Twice.

Your alternative of using a textfile might be a better method in this situation.

Upvotes: 42

Ben
Ben

Reputation: 970

This is probably something to do with magic quotes. Through a bunch of testing I just did using Windows Command Line and MinGW on Windows, I ran into the same problem every time. Since ffmpeg drawtext uses Freetype (I would guess this is where magic quotes are enabled) I doubt there's much to be done to disable magic quotes. I'm not sure there's a way to remove the added slashes in the command line either, as everything I've seen involves PHP scripts. I could be wrong, since I'm no PHP guru, but I'm not aware of how to integrate them into an ffmpeg command.

Upvotes: 0

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