MediaInfo

MediaInfo is a class wrapping the mediainfo CLI.

Installation

$ gem install mediainfo

Usage

Parsing raw XML

media_info = MediaInfo.from(File.open('iphone6+_video.mov.xml').read)

Handling a local file

media_info = MediaInfo.from('~/Desktop/test.mov')

Handling a URL

media_info = MediaInfo.from('http://techslides.com/demos/sample-videos/small.mp4')

You can specify an alternate path for the MediaInfo Binary:

ENV['MEDIAINFO_PATH'] = "/opt/local/bin/mediainfo"

Once you have an MediaInfo object, you can start inspecting tracks:

media_info.track_types       => ['general','video','audio']
media_info.track_types.count => 3
media_info.video?            => true
media_info.image?            => nil
media_info.image.filesize    => MethodNotFound exception

When inspecting specific types of tracks, you have a couple general API options. The first approach assumes one track of a given type, a common scenario in many video files, for example:

media_info.video.count    => 1
media_info.video.duration => 120 (seconds)

Sometimes you'll have more than one track of a given type:

  • The first track type name, or any track type with 1 will not contain '1'

    media_info.track_types                => ['general','video','video2','audio','other','other2']
media_info.track_types.count          => 5
media_info.video?                     => true
media_info.image?                     => nil
media_info.video.count                => 1
media_info.video.duration             => 29855000
media_info.video.display_aspect_ratio => 1.222
media_info.other.count                => 2
media_info.video2.duration            => 29855000

    • Note that the above automatically converts MediaInfo Strings into Time, Integer, and Float objects:

      media_info.video.encoded_date.class => Time media_info.video2.duration.class => Integer media_info.video.display_aspect_ratio.class => Float

    • Any track attribute name with "date" and matching /\d-/ will be converted using Time.parse:

      media_info.video.encoded_date => 2018-03-30 12:12:08 -0400 media_info.video.customdate => 2016-02-10 01:00:00 -0600

    • .duration and .overall_duration will be returned as milliseconds AS LONG AS the Duration and Overall_Duration match one of the expected units (each separated by a space or not):

    • h (<Duration>15h</Duration>) (hour)

    • hour (<Duration>15hour</Duration>)

    • mn (<Duration>15hour 6mn</Duration>) (minute)

    • m (<Duration>15hour 6m</Duration>) (minute)

    • min (<Duration>15hour 6min</Duration>) (minute)

    • s (<Duration>15hour 6min 59s</Duration>) (second)

    • sec (<Duration>15hour 6min 59sec</Duration>) (second)

    • ms (<Duration>15hour 6min 59sec 301ms</Duration>) (milliseconds)

    • in the form of a Float (as for iphone mov files)

    • Submit an issue to add more!

      media_info.video.duration => 15164 (\<Duration>15s 164ms\</Duration>)
media_info.video.duration => 36286 (\<Duration>36s 286ms\</Duration>)
media_info.video.duration => 123456 (\<Duration>123.456\</Duration>)

    • We standardize the naming of several Attributes:

    • You can review lib/attribute_standardization_rules.yml to see them all

      media_info.video.bit_rate => nil (\<Bit_rate>41.2 Mbps\</Bit_rate>)    
media_info.video.bitrate => "41.2 Mbps" (\<Bit_rate>41.2 Mbps\</Bit_rate>)
media_info.general.filesize => "11.5 MiB" (\<File_size>11.5 MiB\</File_size>

In order to support all possible MediaInfo variations, you may see the following situation:

media_info.track_types => ['general','video','video5','audio','other','other2']

The track type media_info.video5 is available, but no video2, 3, and 4. This is because the MediaInfo from the video has:

<track type="Video">
    <ID>1</ID>
    ...
<track type="Video">
    <ID>5</ID>
    ...

The ID will take priority for labeling. Else if no ID exists, you'll see consecutive numbering for duplicate tracks in the Media.

Any second level attributes are also available:

MediaInfo.from('~/Desktop/test.mov').general.extra
=> #<MediaInfo::Tracks::Attributes::Extra:0x00007fa89f13aa98
 @com_apple_quicktime_creationdate=2018-03-30 08:12:08 -0400,
 @com_apple_quicktime_location_iso6709="+39.0286-077.3958+095.957/",
 @com_apple_quicktime_make="Apple",
 @com_apple_quicktime_model=0,
 @com_apple_quicktime_software=11.2>

REXML is used as the XML parser by default. If you'd like, you can configure Mediainfo to use Nokogiri instead:

  • define the MEDIAINFO_XML_PARSER environment variable to be the name of the parser as you'd pass to a :gem or :require call.

    e.g. export MEDIAINFO_XML_PARSER=nokogiri

Once you've got an instance setup, you can call numerous methods to get a variety of information about a file. Some attributes may be present for some files where others are not, but any supported attribute should at least return nil.

Requirements

  • Gem version 1.0.0 has been tested on v18.03.1
  • Gem versions < 1.0.0 require at least: MediaInfoLib v0.7.25
  • Gem versions <= 0.5.1 worked against MediaInfoLib v0.7.11, which did not generate XML output, and is no longer supported.

Contributors