metadata command line interface

The module storyboard.metadata comes with a console script, which is essentially an entry point to its main() function. It extracts video metadata (container-level and per-stream) using FFprobe, and prints them in a human readable manner (more so than FFprobe). An example output is:

Filename:               2015_mar_1080_cc.m4v
File size:              6083965352 (5.67GiB)
Container format:       MPEG-4 Part 14 (M4V)
Duration:               01:34:45.27
Pixel dimensions:       1920x1080
Display aspect ratio:   16:9
Scan type:              Progressive scan
Frame rate:             29.97 fps
Bit rate:               8561 kb/s
Streams:
    #0: Audio (eng), AAC (Low-Complexity), 99 kb/s
    #1: Video, H.264 (Main Profile level 4.1), 1920x1080 (DAR 16:9), 29.97 fps, 8453 kb/s
    #2: Subtitle (eng), closed caption (EIA-608 / CEA-708)

See this gist for a direct comparison of metadata and ffprobe‘s human readability.

Synopsis

The basic invocation is:

metadata [OPTIONS] VIDEO [VIDEO...]

As can be seen from the invocation, one can specify multiple video files, and the outputs for two adjacent files will be separated by a blank line.

See the section Options for the list of command line options and their detailed explanations. Some of them can also be stored in a configuration file, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/storyboard/storyboard.conf (or ~/.config/storyboard/storyboard.conf if the environment variable XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not defined), under the metadata-cli section. If that is the case, then the config file option is also documented. Note that an option specified on the command line always overrides its config file equivalent.

See configparser’s doc for the format of a valid configuration file, or learn from the sample configuration file.

Options

-h, --help	Print help text and exit.
--ffprobe-bin=NAME
	The name or path of the ffprobe binary, which should be on the system or environment’s search path. The binary is guessed from OS type if this option is not specified (e.g., ffprobe on OS X and Linux, and ffprobe.exe on Windows). This option can be stored in the config file as: ffprobe_bin = NAME
-s, --include-sha1sum
	Include hexadecimal SHA-1 digest in the output. By default the digest is not included. Keep in mind that computing the SHA-1 digest is an expensive operation. This option can be stored in the config file as: include_sha1sum = (on|off)
--exclude-sha1sum
	Exclude SHA-1 digest in the output. This option always overrides --include-sha1sum. It is only useful when include_sha1sum is turned on by default in the config file.
-v, --verbose=STATE
	Whether to print progress information to stderr (actual output metadata is printed to stdout and not affected). STATE is optional and can take one of the three values: on, off, or auto; default is auto. If STATE is auto, then progress information is printed if and only if the --include-sha1sum option is also supplied and stderr is connected to a tty. This option can be stored in the config file as: verbose = (auto|on|off)
--version	Print version number (e.g., 0.1) and exit.

Sample configuration file

The following config file should be put in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/storyboard/storyboard.conf (or ~/.config/storyboard/storyboard.conf if the environment variable XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not defined) to take effect

# This is a sample configuration file for the metadata CLI script.
# It has to be in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/storyboard/storyboard.conf (or
# ~/.config/storyboard/storyboard.conf if the environment variable
# XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not defined) to take effect.

[metadata-cli]

# Name or path of ffprobe binary, should be in the search path.
ffprobe_bin = ffprobe

# Uncomment to always include SHA-1 digest in output (slow).
# include_sha1sum = on

# The verbosity option can be on, off, or auto.
verbose = auto

# You may include other sections, e.g., storyboard-cli.