Figuring out which Rogue ffmpeg process to kill

[MSattler 390]

As many of you have seen me complain about rogue ffmpeg processes, I have found a easy way in which to find out which ffmpeg process is being used to transcode a particular movie.  This is windows only since the commands are wmi/powershell based.

 

One way is by using a wmi call such as this:

 

Get-WmiObject win32_process -Filter "name like '%ffmpeg.exe'" | select commandline, id

 

 

While that certainly works, I want to incorporate this into powershell and powershell does not support "commandline" object out of the box.  But we can fix this.

 

Create a file named System.Diagnostics.Process.ps1xml and inside of it put this:

 

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<Types>
<Type>
<Name>System.Diagnostics.Process</Name>
<Members>
<ScriptProperty>
<Name>CommandLine</Name>
<GetScriptBlock>
$id = $this.Id
$result = Get-WmiObject win32_process -Filter "ProcessId = $id"
$result.CommandLine
</GetScriptBlock>
</ScriptProperty>
</Members>
</Type>
</Types>

 

Save the file.  We can now import this powershell extension via the command:

 

Update-TypeData c:\users\administrator\Documents\System.Diagnostics.Process.ps1xml  (you will have to tell it the directory where you saved the file)

 

If you have not allowed scripts to run you will have to enable that in powershell via:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

 

Now you can run the following command:

 

ps *ffmpeg | select id,commandline | ft -wrap

 

Which will give you output with the process id, and the ffmpeg command which was requested.

 

This will allow you to see which ffmpeg process is rogue and kill it off via its process id.  If you want to kill the process type:

 

stop-process -id 4298 (or whatever the process id is)

 

 

Thanks goes out to this blog, which helped:

http://mohundro.com/blog/2010/02/05/quickly-get-the-command-line-arguments-from-processes-with-powershell/

 

 

-Marcus