Tag: bash

Automatically convert videos in Powerpoint file (pptx) to a different format

I have been trying to convert a lot of embedded videos in pptx files to a different format lately due to compatibility issues on some systems, but have not found an easy and fast way – so I wrote this bash script.

The goal was to have a pptx with videos that can be played using Powerpoint 2010 or later on Windows as well as OS X without plugins. That seems to only be the case for MPG videos (mpeg1video codec).

To convert videos in a presentation

  1. make sure that ffmpeg and a zip/unzip application is installed (ffmpeg can easily be replaced by avconv, but avconv somehow could not convert some files that were no problem for ffmpeg during my tests)
  2. download the bash file and make it executable
  3. edit the options at the beginning of the file, if you want to (mainly video output format and bitrate)
  4. Change to the directory with the pptx file(s) and start the conversion with /path/to/pptx_video_convert.sh myPresentation.pptx
  5. Check if everything worked by looking at myPresentation_converted.pptx  or the logs

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Automatically reboot TP-Link router WDR4300 / N750 with bash script

I wanted to reboot some TP-Link WDR4300 routers automatically, because the TP-Link firmware is rather buggy and often causes WLAN problems after a few days of use.
Sadly, rebooting those routers with current firmwares is not quite as easy as it used to be (simple and short one-line curl call). You first have to generate a cookie with the name ‘Authorization’ and value

urlencode(Basic base64($admin:md5($password)))

(pseudocode). And then you have to extract some kind of one-time key from the post-login page to get the actual HTTP address of the reboot page (http://$IP/$KEY/userRpm/SysRebootRpm.htm?Reboot=Reboot ). Did I mention you also have to set your HTTP referer to the reboot page?

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