To get a lot of information about a media file one can do
ffmpeg -i <filename> where it will output a lot of lines, one in particular
Duration: 00:08:07.98, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2080 kb/s I would like to output only 00:08:07.98, so I try
ffmpeg -i file.mp4 | grep Duration| sed 's/Duration: \(.*\), start/\1/g' But it prints everything, and not just the length.
Even ffmpeg -i file.mp4 | grep Duration outputs everything.
How do I get just the duration length?
You can use ffprobe:
ffprobe -i <file> -show_entries format=duration -v quiet -of csv="p=0" It will output the duration in seconds, such as:
154.12 Adding the -sexagesimal option will output duration as hours:minutes:seconds.microseconds:
00:02:34.12 
ffmpeg -i does not always decode the input file, but will show Duration from metadata. However ffmpeg -i inputfile -f null - will decode and give you strict answer, but with performance cost. trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/FFprobeTips#Getdurationbydecoding
ffprobe will return 6 digits for microseconds if -sexagesimal option is present. To have 2 digits you can excute: ffprobe -i <file> -show_entries format=duration -v quiet -of csv="p=0" | rev | cut -c 5- | rev, due to the fact that real format of duration is h:mm:ss.ms. So, hour have only one digit for hours, not two. My example stands for any video duration and returns 2 digits for microseconds.
ffprobe -loglevel error -select_streams a:0 -show_entries stream=duration -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 file.mp4ffmpeg is writing that information to stderr, not stdout. Try this:
ffmpeg -i file.mp4 2>&1 | grep Duration | sed 's/Duration: \(.*\), start/\1/g' Notice the redirection of stderr to stdout: 2>&1
EDIT:
Your sed statement isn't working either. Try this:
ffmpeg -i file.mp4 2>&1 | grep Duration | awk '{print $2}' | tr -d , 
sed -n 's/Duration: \(.*\), start/\1/gp' is suffice.
sed is unnecessary: ffmpeg -i file.mp4 2>&1 | grep -o -P "(?<=Duration: ).*?(?=,)"
From my experience many tools offer the desired data in some kind of a table/ordered structure and also offer parameters to gather specific parts of that data. This applies to e.g. smartctl, nvidia-smi and ffmpeg/ffprobe, too. Simply speaking - often there's no need to pipe data around or to open subshells for such a task.
As a consequence I'd use the right tool for the job - in that case ffprobe would return the raw duration value in seconds, afterwards one could create the desired time format on his own:
$ ffmpeg --version ffmpeg version 2.2.3 ... The command may vary dependent on the version you are using.
#!/usr/bin/env bash input_file="/path/to/media/file" # Get raw duration value ffprobe -v quiet -print_format compact=print_section=0:nokey=1:escape=csv -show_entries format=duration "$input_file" An explanation:
"-v quiet": Don't output anything else but the desired raw data value
"-print_format": Use a certain format to print out the data
"compact=": Use a compact output format
"print_section=0": Do not print the section name
":nokey=1": do not print the key of the key:value pair
":escape=csv": escape the value
"-show_entries format=duration": Get entries of a field named duration inside a section named format
Reference: ffprobe man pages
-sexagesimal option outputs the duration as hh:mm:ss:microsecsI recommend using json format, it's easier for parsing
ffprobe -i your-input-file.mp4 -v quiet -print_format json -show_format -show_streams -hide_banner { "streams": [ { "index": 0, "codec_name": "aac", "codec_long_name": "AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)", "profile": "HE-AACv2", "codec_type": "audio", "codec_time_base": "1/44100", "codec_tag_string": "[0][0][0][0]", "codec_tag": "0x0000", "sample_fmt": "fltp", "sample_rate": "44100", "channels": 2, "channel_layout": "stereo", "bits_per_sample": 0, "r_frame_rate": "0/0", "avg_frame_rate": "0/0", "time_base": "1/28224000", "duration_ts": 305349201, "duration": "10.818778", "bit_rate": "27734", "disposition": { "default": 0, "dub": 0, "original": 0, "comment": 0, "lyrics": 0, "karaoke": 0, "forced": 0, "hearing_impaired": 0, "visual_impaired": 0, "clean_effects": 0, "attached_pic": 0 } } ], "format": { "filename": "your-input-file.mp4", "nb_streams": 1, "nb_programs": 0, "format_name": "aac", "format_long_name": "raw ADTS AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)", "duration": "10.818778", "size": "37506", "bit_rate": "27734", "probe_score": 51 } } you can find the duration information in format section, works both for video and audio
In case of one request parameter it is simplier to use mediainfo and its output formatting like this (for duration; answer in milliseconds)
mediainfo --Output="General;%Duration%" ~/work/files/testfiles/+h263_aac.avi outputs
24840 
ffmpeg or ffprobe.--Inform is the way told in the manual page.If you want to retrieve the length (and possibly all other metadata) from your media file with ffmpeg by using a python script you could try this:
import subprocess import json input_file = "< path to your input file here >" metadata = subprocess.check_output(f"ffprobe -i {input_file} -v quiet -print_format json -show_format -hide_banner".split(" ")) metadata = json.loads(metadata) print(f"Length of file is: {float(metadata['format']['duration'])}") print(metadata) Output:
Length of file is: 7579.977143 { "streams": [ { "index": 0, "codec_name": "mp3", "codec_long_name": "MP3 (MPEG audio layer 3)", "codec_type": "audio", "codec_time_base": "1/44100", "codec_tag_string": "[0][0][0][0]", "codec_tag": "0x0000", "sample_fmt": "fltp", "sample_rate": "44100", "channels": 2, "channel_layout": "stereo", "bits_per_sample": 0, "r_frame_rate": "0/0", "avg_frame_rate": "0/0", "time_base": "1/14112000", "start_pts": 353600, "start_time": "0.025057", "duration_ts": 106968637440, "duration": "7579.977143", "bit_rate": "320000", ... ... 
Traceback (most recent call last): File "ffprobe.py", line 9, in <module> print("Length of file is: {}".format(float(length["format"]["duration"]))) NameError: name 'length' is not defined This should do the job: import subprocess import json input_file = "out.mp4" metadata = subprocess.check_output(f"ffprobe -i {input_file} -v quiet -print_format json -show_format -hide_banner".split(" ")) metadata = json.loads(metadata) print("Length of file is: {}".format(float(metadata["format"]["duration"]))) print(metadata)
No grepping or anything like that required. Just put this one command and you will get precise time with microsecond accuracy!
ffprobe -v error -show_entries format=duration -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 file.mp4 From ffmpeg docs https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/FFprobeTips
file: prefix for the input file, in case the file name contains a colon. This ffprobe is fast but not quite as fast as the mediainfo way shown in another answer.This is slow as it decodes the input, but will show correct duration even if there is wrong/missing information in metadata:
ffmpeg -i <filename> -f null - 2>&1 | awk -F= 'BEGIN{RS=" "}/^time=/{t=$2}END{print t}' 
For those who want to perform the same calculations with no additional software in Windows, here is the script for command line script:
set input=video.ts ffmpeg -i "%input%" 2> output.tmp rem search " Duration: HH:MM:SS.mm, start: NNNN.NNNN, bitrate: xxxx kb/s" for /F "tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6 delims=:., " %%i in (output.tmp) do ( if "%%i"=="Duration" call :calcLength %%j %%k %%l %%m ) goto :EOF :calcLength set /A s=%3 set /A s=s+%2*60 set /A s=s+%1*60*60 set /A VIDEO_LENGTH_S = s set /A VIDEO_LENGTH_MS = s*1000 + %4 echo Video duration %1:%2:%3.%4 = %VIDEO_LENGTH_MS%ms = %VIDEO_LENGTH_S%s Same answer posted here: How to crop last N seconds from a TS video
ffmpeg -i abc.mp4 2>&1 | grep Duration | cut -d ' ' -f 4 | sed s/,// gives output
HH:MM:SS.milisecs
ffprobe alone. Also, the output of ffmpeg is for informational purposes only and not for parsing: it is not guaranteed to always about the same structure, format, and information with various ffmpeg versions and various input formats.This is my really simple solution using ffmpeg and awk. The output of ffmpeg -i file.mp3 contain a string Duration: 00:00:04.80, bitrate: 352 kb/s. Just simply using awk:
ffmpeg -i file.mp3 |& awk '/Duration:/ {print $2}' I can print the expected result: 00:00:04.80
# Returns duration (in seconds) of a video $1 (uses ffmpeg). get_video_duration() { OUTPUT=$(ffmpeg -i "$1" -vframes 1 -f rawvideo -y /dev/null 2>&1) || { debug -e "get_video_duration: error running ffmpeg:\n$OUTPUT"; return 1; } DURATION=$(echo "$OUTPUT" | grep -m1 "^[[:space:]]*Duration:" | cut -d":" -f2- | cut -d"," -f1 | sed "s/[:\.]/ /g") || { debug -e "get_video_duration: error parsing duration:\n$OUTPUT"; return 1; } read HOURS MINUTES SECONDS DECISECONDS <<< "$DURATION" echo $((10#$HOURS * 3600 + 10#$MINUTES * 60 + 10#$SECONDS)) } Usage:
DURATION=$(get_video_duration "$VIDEO") I tried the top answers, but none worked because my audio didn't have any metadata. I finally found an answer that worked on this website.
ffmpeg -i "${file}" -f null /dev/null 2>&1 | grep -oE "[0-9]{1}:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}" | tail -n 1 Best Solution: cut the export do get something like 00:05:03.22
ffmpeg -i input 2>&1 | grep Duration | cut -c 13-23 Argh. Forget that. It looks like I have to get the cobwebs out of my C and C++ programming and use that instead. I do not know all the shell tricks to get it to work.
This is how far I got.
ffmpeg -i myfile 2>&1 | grep "" > textdump.txt and then I would probably extract the duration with a C++ app instead by extracting tokens.
I am not posting the solution because I am not a nice person right now
ffprobe -i myfile 2>&1 | grep "" > textdump.txt OR
ffprobe -i myfile 2>&1 | awk '{ print }' > textdump.txt cat textdump.txt | grep "Duration" | awk '{ print $2 }' | ./a.out Notice the a.out. That is my C code to chop off the resulting comma because the output is something like 00:00:01.331,
Here is the C code that takes stdin and outputs the correct information needed. I had to take the greater and less than signs out for viewing.
#include stdio.h #include string.h void main() { //by Admiral Smith Nov 3. 2016 char time[80]; int len; char *correct; scanf("%s", &time); correct = (char *)malloc(strlen(time)); if (!correct) { printf("\nmemory error"); return; } memcpy(correct,&time,strlen(time)-1); correct[strlen(time)]='/0'; printf("%s", correct); free(correct); } Now the output formats correctly like 00:00:01.33
strlen everytime is a bad idea, and correct[strlen(time)]='/0'; is definitely wrong. It should be '\0' instead of '/0'I would just do this in C++ with a text file and extract the tokens. Why? I am not a linux terminal expert like the others.
To set it up I would do this in Linux
ffmpeg -i <file> 2>&1 | grep "" > mytext.txt and then run some C++ app to get the data needed. Maybe extract all the important values and reformat it for further processing by using tokens. I will just have to work on my own solution and people will just make fun of me because I am a Linux newbie and I do not like scripting too much.
use ffprobe which is used to extract metadata from media files
install ffprobe with pip
pip install ffprobe-python
`from subprocess import check_output
file_name = "video1.mp4"
command = str(check_output('ffprobe -i "'+file_name+'" 2>&1 |grep "Duration"',shell=True))
#output: b' Duration: 00:17:56.62, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 397 kb/s\n'
#split the duration in hh:mm:ss format co = a.split(",")[0].split("Duration:")[1].strip()
h, m, s = a.split(':') duration = int(h) * 3600 + int(m) * 60 + float(s)
print(duration)`
You could try this:
/* * Determine video duration with ffmpeg * ffmpeg should be installed on your server. */ function mbmGetFLVDuration($file){ //$time = 00:00:00.000 format $time = exec("ffmpeg -i ".$file." 2>&1 | grep 'Duration' | cut -d ' ' -f 4 | sed s/,//"); $duration = explode(":",$time); $duration_in_seconds = $duration[0]*3600 + $duration[1]*60+ round($duration[2]); return $duration_in_seconds; } $duration = mbmGetFLVDuration('/home/username/webdir/video/file.mov'); echo $duration; ffmpeg has been substituted by avconv: just substitute avconb to Louis Marascio's answer.
avconv -i file.mp4 2>&1 | grep Duration | sed 's/Duration: \(.*\), start.*/\1/g' Note: the aditional .* after start to get the time alone !!
ffmpeg" from Libav (a fork of the FFmpeg project) has been replaced by avconv from Libav. ffmpeg from FFmpeg is under very active development.