[FFmpeg-user] FFprobe vs FFmpeg

[Stefano Sabatini]

On date Wednesday 2013-09-18 13:52:48 -0700, William C Bonner wrote:
> I've got a server application that I wrote that spawns FFMPEG to stream
> video files to my TiVo. I originally wrote it linked with the libraries to
> also be able to read stream details and metadata from the video files
> before transferring them, but I've changed so that I'm now spawning FFPROBE
> and generating XML output that I parse to get the details I wanted. (I did
> this to simplify my program maintenance, not having to deal with DLLS)
> 

> Is the functionality of FFPROBE included in FFMPEG, just with a simpler
> interface?

No. I thought about merging ffprobe functionality into ffmpeg, but I
couldn't find an easy way so far (especially considering that ffprobe
requires to decode the input file, partially or completely).

Note that you can store the input metadata to an output using the
special ffmetadata output muxer.
 
> I'm using a command line of "ffprobe.exe  -show_streams -show_format
> -print_format xml  INPUT" and capturing and parsing standard output.