What is MediaInfo?

"MediaInfo is a convenient unified display of the most relevant technical and tag data for video and audio files." (From the MediaInfo website)

MediaInfo is a metadata extraction tool. It neatly displays technical and tag information for many types of files, with a focus on audio/video.

Why MediaInfo?

• Robust format support
• Robust data
• Versatile
• Works everywhere
• Open source
• Microservice
• Easy to use

Robust format support

source -- MediaInfo official website

All parts of a file

• General: Title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration
• Video: codec, aspect ratio, framerate, bitrate
• Audio: codec, sample rate, channels, language, bitrate
• Text: subtitle language
• Chapters: numbers of chapters, list of chapters

Data display

• Container: format, profile, commercial name of the format, duration, overall bit rate, writing application and library, title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration, et cetera
• Video: format, codec id, aspect, frame rate, bit rate, color space, chroma subsampling, bit depth, scan type, scan order, et cetera
• Audio: format, codec id, sample rate, channels, bit depth, language, bit rate, et cetera
• Text: format, codec id, language of subtitle, et cetera
• Chapters: count of chapters, list of chapters, et cetera

source -- MediaInfo official website

Format analysis

• Container: MPEG-4, QuickTime, Matroska, AVI, MPEG-PS (including unprotected DVD), MPEG-TS (including unprotected Blu-ray), MXF, GXF, LXF, WMV, FLV, Real, et cetera
• Tags: Id3v1, Id3v2, Vorbis comments, APE tags, et cetera
• Video: MPEG-1/2 Video, H.263, MPEG-4 Visual (including DivX, XviD), H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, FFV1, et cetera
• Audio: MPEG Audio (including MP3), AC3, DTS, AAC, Dolby E, AES3, FLAC, et cetera
• Subtitles: CEA-608, CEA-708, DTVCC, SCTE-20, SCTE-128, ATSC/53, CDP, DVB Subtitle, Teletext, SRT, SSA, ASS, SAMI, et cetera
• Metadata: Container-specific, Ancillary data, Time codes (MXF, GXF, QuickTime), Bar data, AFD, AS-11/DPP, RDD18/EBU Tech 3349 Acquisition Metadata, et cetera

source -- MediaInfo official website

Versatile

Input formats:

• Files (local/network)
• FTP/FTPS/SFTP
• HTTP/HTTPS (including Amazon S3)
• Direct memory access

Export formats:

• Flat text
• XML
• EBUCore (1.5/1.6)
• PBCore (1.2/2.0/2.1)
• MPEG-7
• FIMS (1.1/1.2)

source -- MediaInfo official website

Works everywhere

Works on all popular operating systems: Windows, macOS, and major Linux flavors (Ubuntu, Mint, RHEL/CentOS, Fedora, SuSE, Solaris, maybe more). And if not, binaries are available and the sourcecode is online.

Downloads page: https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download

Can also be downloaded via Homebrew or Linxubrew.

Available as a command line interface, graphical user interface, or API/library.

Bindings are available C, C++, C#/Mono, VB.net, Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, and probably more.

Here's the GUI!

Open source

MediaInfo is open source under a BSD-2-Clause License. It can be used or modified, and re-used in open source or closed source software.

Microservice

MediaInfo is easily integrated as a microservice into workflows, and can easily be wrapped in a simple script as an automated service.

Easy to use

It's as easy as mediainfo file.mkv!

And much more. See mediainfo -h for the manpage.

Example - General stream

General  
Unique ID                                : 216146348446563005301353248875103189802 (0xA29C45C1884826066521D86C6288FB2A)  
Complete name                            : new_file.mkv  
Format                                   : Matroska  
Format version                           : Version 4 / Version 2  
File size                                : 1.16 MiB  
Duration                                 : 10 s 0 ms  
Overall bit rate                         : 977 kb/s  
Writing application                      : Lavf57.83.100  
Writing library                          : Lavf57.83.100  
ErrorDetectionType                       : Per level 1

Example -- Video stream

Video  
ID                                       : 1  
Format                                   : FFV1  
Format version                           : Version 0  
Codec ID                                 : V_MS/VFW/FOURCC / FFV1  
Duration                                 : 10 s 0 ms  
Width                                    : 720 pixels  
Height                                   : 576 pixels  
Display aspect ratio                     : 5:4  
Frame rate mode                          : Constant  
Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS  
Standard                                 : PAL  
Color space                              : YUV  
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0  
Bit depth                                : 8 bits  
Compression mode                         : Lossless  
Writing library                          : Lavc57.107.100 ffv1  
Default                                  : Yes  
Forced                                   : No  
DURATION                                 : 00:00:10.000000000  
coder_type                               : Golomb Rice

Example -- Audio stream

Audio  
ID                                       : 2  
Format                                   : PCM  
Codec ID                                 : A_PCM/INT/LIT  
Duration                                 : 10 s 0 ms  
Bit rate mode                            : Constant  
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel  
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz  
Bit depth                                : 16 bits  
Writing library                          : Lavc57.107.100 pcm_s16le  
Default                                  : Yes  
Forced                                   : No  
DURATION                                 : 00:00:10.000000000

More?

If the above results still aren't enough for you, you can use the -f flag. f is short for FULL!

mediainfo -f new_file.mkv

Export options

By default, MediaInfo displays results in text format on screen. But other formats can be specified, like HTML, XML, PBCore, EBUCore, or PBCore 2.1.

Like this:

mediainfo --Output=XML new_file.mkv

MediaTrace

MediaTrace is a way to get binary analysis of files. It can be accessed via MediaInfo like this:

mediainfo --Details=1 new_file.mkv

Just like MediaInfo, by default, it exports as text. You can specify XML with the --Output=XML flag.

MediaInfoOnline

If your computer has permission restrictions or you cannot install software on it for other reasons, you can still test and use MediaInfo using a browser-based version: https://mediaarea.net/MediaInfoOnline

Testing

Do you need a test file? You can make one with FFmpeg:

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i smptebars=size=720x576:rate=25 -f lavfi -i "sine=frequency=1000:sample_rate=48000" -c:a pcm_s16le -t 10 -c:v v210 new_file.mov

Additional Resources

• MediaInfo official website

Similar tools

• FFprobe
• Exiftool

Learning more

• FFprobe
• MediaConch

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