[FFmpeg-user] FFprobe vs FFmpeg

[William C Bonner]

On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Stefano Sabatini <stefasab at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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.
>

Thanks for the quick feedback. I'm pleased with my new solution. I was just
wondering if I could make it one step easier.

While it may not be as efficient as using the libraries when parsing  a
large number of files due to constantly loading and unloading the ffprobe
executable, any video format that is recognized by FFMPEG can be supported
without having to recompile my service, just replacing the ffmpeg/ffprobe
executable files.