Easily download Vines and create compilations with subtitles generated from metadata.
Uses vine.co's API to get a user's posted videos, and ffmpeg to render the subtitles and combine them all.
2017-02-02: Vine's API has changed and users' likes and reposts are no longer available. Only original posts can be downloaded.
# Download Vines related to a URL for a single Vine or a user's posts
# write an M3U playlist for them.
crkr get <url> <m3u_out>
# Generate SubRip subtitles.
crkr subtitles [-subformat TEMPLATE] [-t DURATION] <m3u_in>
# Render/burn subtitles.
crkr hardsub [-font <name>] [-fontsize <size>] <m3u_in> <m3u_out>
# Losslessly concatenate a playlist of MP4 videos:
crkr concat <m3u_in> <video_out>
For video instructions for installation and use, watch Creeper Keeper: Windows primer on youtube.
Download a Creeper Keeper binary from the releases page and add the directory it's in to the PATH environment variable.
Mac OSX users can change PATH by opening Terminal.app and running the following, assuming the crkr binary was extracted to $HOME/bin (ie. /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/bin):
echo 'PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
If you want to burn hard subtitles or combine videos you'll need to install ffmpeg with libass support. ffmpeg and ffprobe must be in a directory in PATH for Creeper Keeper to be able to call them.
Windows: Install ffmpeg from zeranoe.
OSX: Install ffmpeg using homebrew.
Linux: If the version of ffmpeg supplied by your package manager doesn't have libass support, compile from source and give configure the --with-libass flag.
An example workflow:
Use the get command to download Vines. URLs for single Vines or a user's posts are supported. Vines, metadata, and subtitle files are named for the Vine's short ID.
# Produces <UUID>.mp4... <UUID>.json... miel.m3u
crkr get https://vine.co/u/973499529959968768 miel.m3u
Generate subtitles. The subformat option for the subtitles command specifies a Go text template to use for generating subtitles. Available fields are Title, Uploader, Venue, and Created (which is a time.Time). See the docs for the text/template and time packages for details.
A verbose example:
{{.Uploader}} on {{.Date.Format "2006-01-02"}} at {{.Venue}}: {{.Title}}
When compiling a creator's Vines it might be nice to only show the uploader if the Vine was a repost:
{{if ne .Uploader "mielmonster"}}[{{.Uploader}}] {{end}}{{.Title}}
To use the default:
# Produces <UUID>.srt...
crkr subtitles miel.m3u
If desired, modify the M3U playlist using a video player or text editing tools. Many video players will automatically display SubRip subtitles contained in a file having the same name as the playing video file, apart from the file extension. The subtitles can also be easily modified.
Render subtitles:
# This can take a while.
# Produces <UUID>.sub.mp4... miel.sub.m3u
crkr hardsub miel.m3u miel.sub.m3u
To concatenate the Vines without re-encoding the video and decreasing quality, all the videos must be the same size. Most Vines are 720x720, but some are only available at 480x480. The hardsub and concat commands automatically scale videos as necessary before performing their primary functions so an odd-size video can't sneak in and cause glitches.
Finally, join them all together:
# Produces miel.mp4
crkr concat miel.sub.m3u miel.mp4
Emoji are heavily used in many Vine descriptions but they are far from being universally supported. If burnt subtitle emoji are all displayed as replacement characters (commonly represented by an empty rectangle glyph), fontconfig probably can't find an installed font containing them. Free emoji fonts with permissive licenses are available, such as Google's Noto family. If the given font doesn't contain emoji glyphs fontconfig will take glyphs from a font that does---letters might be from Arial but the emoji could be from Segoe UI, for example. If unexpected glyphs are being displayed after emoji, try using the subtitles command's -plainemoji option to remove variation selectors, which are mainly used to change the color of the preceding emoji and are relatively new (2014) and unsupported. If unwanted glyphs are still appearing, try replacing the emoji with simpler versions manually.
- On Windows, due to a limitation of how filepaths are given to ffmpeg's subtitles filter, all filepaths in a playlist for the
hardsubcommand must be on the same drive as the working directory.