How to repeat a single frame and combine with an audio stream for upload to YouTube with ffmpeg

Yea it's 3am... but..

I just made a video for a local snow storm, it took me maybe 10-15 attempts to get a successful ffmpeg command string that would take a single jpeg frame and a separate audio stream and combine the two in a format that YouTube would accept as a video. This would be particularly useful for anyone trying to archive or share music on YouTube while just using an album cover or a single picture when you don't have a video to go with it:

In this case I had tried to record a video with my cellphone that crashed and corrupted the video requiring me to use the backup sound recorder inside windows 7. This left me with a wma2 audio file and no video stream, and of course YouTube doesn't want people to just upload audio so I had to figure a way to get around this.

C:\>ffmpeg.exe -loop 1 -r 2 -f image2 -i c:\001.jpg  -i rw1.wma -c:v libx264 -preset medium -tune stillimage -shortest -crf 18 -ab 192k  -pix_fmt yuv420p  -s 1920x1080 output.mkv

-preset medium, -crf 18 and -pix_fmt yuv420p are technically optional however if you don't know what these mean you should leave them or read up on exactly what they do.

Here is a sample video I created using this method:

Hearings held in Texas over edits to High-school Biology textbooks as proposed by creationists (playlist)

The YouTube channel for the National Center for Science Education uploaded 16 videos of the statements of the individuals speaking at the hearings in Texas over modifications to the biology textbooks.

A serious issue here as if the state decides to water down or otherwise remove prices of proven science in order to please individuals that have no knowledge in the field and are stuck on superstitions stone age beliefs... Well then Texas would be taking a giant step backwards.

For some reason the NCSE did not create a playlist for their videos so I have compiled one here. The first is the best, a high school freshman that has more intelligence and logic than most of the rest of the speakers put together.

If you've finished the playlist and still want more, I would recommend a video series by Aron Nelson, the third speaker (known on YouTube as AronRa)

How to get the URL (link) for a Google Hangout in the new app

The new background app for Google Chrome hangouts doesn't show the URL to the specific hangout making it hard to share the link to people who can't be bothered to check their invites or are having trouble receiving calls. This is especially annoying if you want to post a public hangout to a coatroom or an instant message.

As you can see here:

How to get the url:

Right click on the page, select "view source"

This will open another window with the source code of the hangout window, at the top of the page you will find the url you're looking for. Enjoy :)