Using mplayer to determine length of audio/video file

Question

The following works very nicely to determine the length of various audio/video files:

mplayer -identify file.ogg 2>/dev/null | grep ID_LENGTH

However, I want to kill mplayer's output so I can determine the length of many files more efficiently. How do I do that?

can you state your answer in the form of a question, please? — AShelly, Jan 30 '09 at 23:31

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 31 '09 at 03:09

The MPlayer source ships with a sample script called midentify, which looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
#
# This is a wrapper around the -identify functionality.
# It is supposed to escape the output properly, so it can be easily
# used in shellscripts by 'eval'ing the output of this script.
#
# Written by Tobias Diedrich <ranma+mplayer@tdiedrich.de>
# Licensed under GNU GPL.

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
        echo "Usage: midentify.sh <file> [<file> ...]"
        exit 1
fi

mplayer -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -identify "$@" 2>/dev/null |
        sed -ne '/^ID_/ {
                          s/[]()|&;<>`'"'"'\\!$" []/\\&/g;p
                        }'

The -frames 0 makes mplayer exit immediately, and the -vo null -ao null prevent it from trying to open any video or audio devices. These options are all documented in man mplayer.

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 31 '09 at 00:39

6

FFMPEG can give you the same information in a different format (and doesn't attempt playing the file):

ffmpeg -i <myfile>

answered Jan 31 '09 at 00:39

codelogic

71,764
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Is there a way of invoking this so that it doesn't complain about no output files? It works nicely, but that non-`0` exit code is annoying if you're trying to call it from another program. Also, Wheezy suggests using `avconv` instead of `ffmpeg`. – Inaimathi Oct 09 '12 at 03:45
2

@Inaimathi: Yes, ``ffprobe `` does that. – nijoakim Jul 03 '17 at 00:41

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 03 '17 at 00:43

3

There's another FF-way in addition to @codelogic's method, which doesn't exit with an error:

ffprobe <file>

and look for the duration entry.

Or grep for it directly in the error stream:

ffprobe <file> 2> >(grep Duration)

answered Jul 03 '17 at 00:43

nijoakim

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Why `error stream` in `ffprobe` ? `ffmpeg` produces the error. – Timo Jul 07 '18 at 06:48
@Time: `ffprobe` prints to the error stream although it does not exit with an error code. Not sure why that is. – nijoakim Aug 07 '20 at 18:33

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

0

looks like there are a few other libs available, see time length of an mp3 file

edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

Community

1
1

answered Jul 05 '11 at 00:23

rogerdpack

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score -1 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 08 '20 at 13:05

-1

Download your .mp3 file, play it with your Player (ex. Windows Media Player) and the player will show the total time at the end of play.

answered Apr 08 '20 at 13:05

Tanya Demeter

1

1

this action will prevent the user from running such tasks in automation, which is likely what he is trying to do. – Theodor Solbjørg Apr 08 '20 at 13:56

Using mplayer to determine length of audio/video file

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