FFprobe

FFprobe, as its name implies, is a tool for getting information about media files.

This command:

ffprobe bbb_sunflower_1080p_60fps_normal.mp4

Will return us some general information about the video file:

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'bbb_sunflower_1080p_60fps_normal.mp4':
  Metadata:
[...]
    title           : Big Buck Bunny, Sunflower version
    artist          : Blender Foundation 2008, Janus Bager Kristensen 2013
[...]
  Stream #0:0[0x1](und): Video: h264 [...]
[...]
  Stream #0:1[0x2](und): Audio: mp3 [...]
[...]
  Stream #0:2[0x3](und): Audio: ac3 [...]

I have abbreviated it heavily, as we’ll check this out later.

But FFprobe is way more powerful than just this!

With the following command, we can get the same listing in JSON format, which is machine-readable!

ffprobe -v error -hide_banner -print_format json -show_streams bbb_sunflower_1080p_60fps_normal.mp4

The explanation of this command is the following:

• “-v error -hide_banner”: This part hides extra output, such as headers and the default build information.
• “-print_format json”: Obviously, this causes ffprobe to output a JSON.
• “-show_streams” is the main switch that requests the stream information.

{
  "streams": [
    {
      "index": 0,
      "codec_name": "h264",
      "codec_long_name": "H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10",
      "width": 1920,
      "height": 1080,
      "bit_rate": "4001453",
      "duration": "634.533333",
      "############################": "[~50 lines removed]"
    },
    {
      "index": 1,
      "codec_name": "mp3",
      "channels": 2,
      "bit_rate": "160000",
      "############################": "[~40 lines removed]"
    },
    {
      "index": 2,
      "codec_name": "ac3",
      "channels": 6,
      "############################": "[~20 lines removed]"
    }
  ]
}

In this output, you can see three streams of data in this video file. The first (index: 0) is a video stream, that is an HD video with an H.264 codec. Then we have two audio streams, the first (index: 1) is a simple mp3 stream with stereo audio, and the second (index: 2) is an ac3 stream with 6 channels, most likely in an 5.1 configuration.

I have removed quite a lot of output for brevity, but you can get way more information out of these streams, e.g. fps for the video stream and so on.

Other than -show_streams, there are 3 more: -show_format, -show_packets and -show_frames. Unless you are really deep in the rabbit hole, you’ll not need the last two, but -show_format could be useful:

ffprobe -v error -hide_banner -print_format json -show_format bbb_sunflower_1080p_60fps_normal.mp4

{
  "format": {
    "filename": "bbb_sunflower_1080p_60fps_normal.mp4",
    "nb_streams": 3,
    "nb_programs": 0,
    "format_name": "mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2",
    "format_long_name": "QuickTime / MOV",
    "start_time": "0.000000",
    "duration": "634.533333",
    "size": "355856562",
    "bit_rate": "4486529",
    "probe_score": 100,
    "tags": {
      "major_brand": "isom",
      "minor_version": "1",
      "compatible_brands": "isomavc1",
      "creation_time": "2013-12-16T17:59:32.000000Z",
      "title": "Big Buck Bunny, Sunflower version",
      "artist": "Blender Foundation 2008, Janus Bager Kristensen 2013",
      "comment": "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 - http://bbb3d.renderfarming.net",
      "genre": "Animation",
      "composer": "Sacha Goedegebure"
    }
  }
}

This is an overview of “what is this file”. As we see, it is a MOV file (format_name), with three streams (nb_streams), and it is 634 seconds long. Also, there are some tags where we can see the title, the artist, and other information.