metadata is a media metadata parser and formatter designed for human consumption. Powered by FFmpeg.
Example:
``` $ metadata '20160907 Apple Special Event.m4v' Title: Apple Special Event, September 2016 (1080p) Filename: 20160907 Apple Special Event.m4v File size: 6825755188 (6.83GB, 6.36GiB) Container format: MPEG-4 Part 14 (M4V) Duration: 01:59:15.88 Pixel dimensions: 1920x800 Sample aspect ratio: 1:1 Display aspect ratio: 12:5 Scan type: Progressive scan* Frame rate: 29.97 fps Bit rate: 7631 kb/s #0: Video, H.264 (High Profile level 4), yuv420p, 1920x800 (SAR 1:1, DAR 12:5), 29.97 fps, 7500 kb/s #1: Audio (und), AAC (LC), 48000 Hz, stereo, 125 kb/s #2: Subtitle (eng), EIA-608 closed captions
```
Compare this to ffprobe or mediainfo (both great tools, just not so human-readable):
(mediainfo prints so much, the output doesn't even fit on my screen with 85 lines. Now try using it in a 80x24 terminal.)
metadata can print tags too if you want to, hopefully better organized:
``` $ metadata -t '20160907 Apple Special Event.m4v' Title: Apple Special Event, September 2016 (1080p) Filename: 20160907 Apple Special Event.m4v File size: 6825755188 (6.83GB, 6.36GiB) Container format: MPEG-4 Part 14 (M4V) Duration: 01:59:15.88 Pixel dimensions: 1920x800 Sample aspect ratio: 1:1 Display aspect ratio: 12:5 Scan type: Progressive scan* Frame rate: 29.97 fps Bit rate: 7631 kb/s Streams: #0: Video, H.264 (High Profile level 4), yuv420p, 1920x800 (SAR 1:1, DAR 12:5), 29.97 fps, 7500 kb/s #1: Audio (und), AAC (LC), 48000 Hz, stereo, 125 kb/s #2: Subtitle (eng), EIA-608 closed captions Tags: title: Apple Special Event, September 2016 (1080p) artist: Apple album: Apple Keynotes (1080p) compilation: 0 description: iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, AirPods, Apple Watch Series 2, Apple Watch Hermès and Apple Watch Nike+ podcast: 1 episodeuid: 104 synopsis: See Apple CEO Tim Cook and team introduce the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, AirPods, Apple Watch Series 2, Apple Watch Hermès and Apple Watch Nike+. genre: Podcast gaplessplayback: 0 date: 2016-09-09T12:00:00Z rating: 0 seasonnumber: 0 episodesort: 0 media_type: 0 #2 rotate: 0 language: eng
```
You can also request all tags with -A, --all-tags. Output not shown here for the sake of brevity (that ship has sailed, but still).
metadata is a Rust port of the Python tool of the same name bundled in my storyboard project. I started the storyboard project to replicate the storyboard/thumbnail images generated by some proprietary media players, in order to facilitate media file sharing on online forums. While I long stopped sharing media files online (and hence stopped using storyboard), I still love the command line metadata formatter that came out of the storyboard effort, and use it all the time in place of ffprobe or mediainfo. Years later, metadata could use some decoupling and refresh, and I could learn myself some Rust, so I started this port.
Since this is my intro to Rust project, the code is guaranteed to be shitty.
FFmpeg and the Rust toolchain are required. FFmpeg 3.4 and later are supported.
Since metadata links to libav*, which themselves are a beast to compile and come with complicated licensing and distribution restrictions (see --enable-gpl, --enable-nonfree, etc.), it is inconvenient for me to compile and distribute static binaries. Please compile from source.
The basic build command to run once you have the dependencies is
console
$ make release
You should find metadata and metadata.1 in dist/<version>/.
OS/distro-specific instructions can be found below.
On macOS, metadata can be installed with Homebrew:
console
$ brew tap zmwangx/metadata https://github.com/zmwangx/metadata
$ brew install zmwangx/metadata/metadata
On Debian/Ubuntu, the following dependencies need to be satisfied (in addition to the Rust toolchain):
console
$ apt install -y build-essential clang libavcodec-dev libavdevice-dev libavfilter-dev libavformat-dev libavresample-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libswresample-dev pkg-config
Note that FFmpeg 3.4.x on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (bionic) and forward are supported; older FFmpeg from 16.04 LTS (xenial) and prior releases are not. FFmpeg 3.2.x on Debian Stretch is not supported. You may use the jonathonf/ffmpeg-4 PPA, which supports trusty, xenial, and bionic.
```console $ metadata -h metadata 0.1.0 Zhiming Wang metadata@zhimingwang.org Media file metadata for human consumption.
USAGE:
metadata [FLAGS]
FLAGS: -A, --all-tags Print all metadata tags -c, --checksum Include file checksum(s) -h, --help Prints help information -s, --scan Decode frames to determine scan type (slower, but determines interlaced more accurately; see man page for details) -t, --tags Print metadata tags, except mundane ones -V, --version Prints version information
ARGS:
The man page has more details.
metadata is fast (a vast improvement over the old Python tool). I tested a collection of ~1300 video files on one of my USB 3.0 media drives, and metadata (with xargs) managed to chew through all of them within 50 seconds, less than 40ms per file on average. It might be faster for files hosted on a native SSD. ffprobe was actually slower in the test since it only accepts one file at a time.
https://github.com/zmwangx/metadata/issues.
Copyright (c) 2018 Zhiming Wang metadata@zhimingwang.org. The MIT License.