Driving in Mumbai

Driving in Mumbai can be crazy especially if you are a new driver or if you have only driven on rules following drivers. However there are stretches in Mumbai depending on the time of the day and the direction of the ride that allows you to drive quite comfortably. So if you are new driver or a driver new to Mumbai roads, do not panic. It is quite alright to drive in Mumbai. I thought some real and actual drives might be useful for someone who might be wondering what is it to

• drive in Mumbai
• drive on Eastern Express (Freeway) Highway
• drive in Monsoon

1. Eastern Express Highway Driving on the Mumbai Eastern Express (Video) Highway (EEH) is not so bad if you are driving against the traffic! What started off as an intent to capture the long jam along the EEH turned out to be a nice view of the EEH.
   • Happy Video Eastern Express Ride ;-)
   • Weekdays mornings from Chembur to Thane and Weekdays evenings from Thane to Chembur
   • While the recommended max speed is 60 kmph; unless you drive at 80 kmph you will get a lot of stare from all those who overtake you (including folks on motor bikes!)
2. Eastern Freeway This is an amazing road patch which connects Chembur to CST. While there are many better videos that capture the route. I captured when I drove back from CST to Chembur on a Sunday evening. While the speed limit is 60 kmph but most of them drive 80-100 kmph; but on a Sunday you can drive your pace without any honks!
   • Happier Video Eastern Freeway Ride
   • Anytime; best Sunday.
   • To watch: Beautiful Tunnel almost 500m
   • You will see people walking in the tunnel (yeah. it is a freeway!).

Some Useful Stuff that I use (Linux/Video)

These are some of the command like stuff that I use regularly. I thought I will put all of this in one place; though you will find a lot more detail if you GoBiYa!

• Playing a VCD
  • $ mplayer vcd://1
  • $ mplayer-cdrom-device /dev/cdrom vcd://1
• Playing a DVD
  • $ mplayer dvd://[title [start_title]-end_title] [options]
• Ripping a DVD
  • $ mplayer -dumpstream dvd://2 -dumpfile ripped_output.avi
• Creating an MPEG-4 file from JPG
  • all the JPEG files in the current directory
    • $ mencoder mf://*.jpg -mf w=800:h=600:fps=1:type=jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:trell -oac copy -o output.avi
  • list of JPEG files (list.txt in current directory contains the list of files to use as source, one per line)
    • $ mencoder mf://@list.txt -mf w=800:h=600:fps=25:type=jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:trell -oac copy -o output.avi
• Combining two videos
  • concatenate 2 avi files
    • $ cat 1.avi 2.avi > 12.avi 
  • combing audio and video files
    • $ mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -o output_movie.avi -audiofile input_audio.mp2 input_video.avi
• Extracting audio from an avi file
  • $ mplayer -ao pcm:file=output_audio.wav input.avi
• Rotating video by 90 degree
  • $ mencoder -vf rotate=1 -o out_rotated_90.mov -oac pcm -ovc lavc in_original.mov
• Something that I had used for ;-)
  $ mencoder input.mpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=1100:vhq:vqmin=2:vlelim=-4:vcelim=9:lumi_mask=0.05:dark_mask=0.01 -vf pp=md scale=640:480, -oac lavc -o output.avi