MediaInfo

MediaInfo is a class wrapping the mediainfo CLI.

Installation

$ gem install mediainfo

Usage

• Versions > 1.3.0 support S3 URLs. See rspec test for example.

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')

Ensure mediainfo is installed and within your PATH. You can specify an alternate path for the mediainfo binary if needed:

ENV['MEDIAINFO_PATH'] = "/usr/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 UTC
    media_info.video.customdate   => 2016-02-10 01:00:00 UTC
  

  🕑 A note on time zones: Whenever possible, mediainfo provides timestamps in UTC. To convert UTC timestamps to your system time zone, use #getlocal:

  media_info.video.encoded_date.getlocal => 2018-03-30 05:12:08 -0700
  

  If a *date attribute is already in your local time zone, that means no time zone data was found, and the given time zone may not be correct.

• .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.

Development

bundle install
irb -I ./lib -r mediainfo 
irb(main):002:0> ::MediaInfo.location
=> "/usr/local/bin/mediainfo"

Testing

bundle exec rspec 

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.

TODO

• Use github actions to test
• Replace URI.escape cause it's EOL
• Mocks/Stubs for AWS code? Maybe just disable the tests instead and only test when changing the code?