METADATA(1)

📦 version 0.1.13, in nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable

okay bestie, welcome to METADATA(1) — the manual page for metadata, aka media file metadata for human consumption. It’s giving “tell me what’s inside this media file, but make it readable,” and honestly? iconic. 💖

🌸 NAME 🌸

metadata — media file metadata for human consumption. That’s the whole vibe: it’s the command that serves up metadata in a way actual humans can read. 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

The synopsis is literally:

asciidoc [OPTIONS] FILE...

yes, exactly as printed, bestie. We are not editing it. The facts stay facts. 💅

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

The metadata(1) command formats and displays metadata of one or more input media files. Periodt. ✨

metadata(1) is powered by FFmpeg (libav*). No cap.

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -A, --all-tags — Print all metadata tags of the container and all streams, including commonplace tags — major_brand, minor_version, compatible_brands, handler_name, etc. — that are mostly predictable.
  • -c, --checksum — Include the SHA-256 checksum(s) of the file(s) in the output. (Slow for large files.)
  • -h, --help — Print help information.
  • -s, --scan — Decode beginning frames to determine scan type.

By default, metadata(1) determines video scan type by looking at stream-level field order metadata, but sometimes this info is not available. In such cases, for performance, progressive scan is assumed (in the output, there is a "*" symbol next to "Progressive scan" to indicate this uncertainty). The --scan option forces the decoding of a moderate number of frames (could be slow, especially when frames are large, e.g. in the case of 4K HDR HEVC-encoded content) to see if frames are actually progressive or interlaced. Note that --scan has no effect when the scan type is clear from stream-level field order (i.e., when output without --scan is "Interlaced scan", or "Progressive scan" without a "*").

Justification for the default behavior:

  1. Scan type is just one property that a user might not even care about (it is easy to determine qualitatively and empirically too), so it doesn’t make sense to spend a disproportionate amount of time on it by default.
  2. It is my belief that interlaced content is on the decline anyway. Increasingly more content is produced and delivered digitally; and interlaced TV displays are apparently on their way out.
  • -t, --tags — Print metadata tags of the container and all streams, but omit some "boring" ones.
  • -V, --version — Print version information.

💀 BUGS 💀

Bug reports go to https://github.com/zmwangx/metadata. The exact line is Plese send bug reports to https://github.com/zmwangx/metadata. — yes, Plese is right there, and we are keeping it because facts are facts, bestie. 🫶

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Zhiming Wang <metadata@zhimingwang.org> — icon behavior. 💅

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

ffprobe(1) — that’s the one. Go check it out, iykyk.

🎀 COPYING 🎀

Copyright (C) 2018 Zhiming Wang. This software is released for free under the MIT License as published by the Open Source Initiative.

footer check: the manual name is METADATA(1) and the date is 01/01/1980 — sign-off slayed, mwah 💋

📦 where this page comes from