short summary about video files (resolution, size, duration, codec)

Question

I use mediainfo at the moment.

It's too detailed

$ mediainfo vine.mp4 | wc -l
  66

I wish a command with only short summary. 6 lines of output.

Solution 1

First define a shell function:

shortinfo() { 
   mediainfo --Inform="General;Duration=%Duration/String3%\nFile size=%FileSize/String1%" "$@"
   mediainfo --Inform="Video;Resolution=%Width%x%Height%\nCodec=%CodecID%" "$@"; 
}

Now, use this shell function on your video file. For example:

$ shortinfo sample.mp4
Duration=00:00:10.027
File size=13 MiB
Resolution=1920x1080
Codec=avc1

To make the shell function permanent, place it in your ~/.bashrc file.

How it works

mediainfo allows for custom output but, as far as I can tell, the custom output can only come from one section (general, video, audio) at a time. This leads us to need two mediainfo commands. The first selects information from the general category:

mediainfo --Inform="General;Duration=%Duration/String3%\nFile size=%FileSize/String1%" "$@"

The second selects information from the Video category:

mediainfo --Inform="Video;Resolution=%Width%x%Height%\nCodec=%CodecID%" "$@";

As you can see, the output allows us to insert any text we like and then substitute in file parameters using a string surrounded by percent signs, such as %CodecID%. Information can be put on one line or spread out over several. To insert a line break, use the string \n.

For a list of all the possible file parameters that you can put in your custom output, run:

mediainfo --info-parameters | less

Solution 2

Also now possible on the command line:

mediainfo --Output=$'General;File=%FileName%\\nDuration=%Duration/String3%\\nFile size=%FileSize/String1% \nVideo;Resolution=%Width%x%Height%\\nCodec=%CodecID%\\n\\n' *.mkv

Note the "\n" between the sections

Tested on Ubuntu 18.04

MediaInfo Command line, MediaInfoLib - v17.12

Comments

[terdon]

What information should these 6 lines contain?