FFMpeg is an open source tool used for manipulating videos, that is used across the industry. There are thousands of parameters and combinations that can be used in a nearly infinite number of combinations. In this post, we'll look at ffprobe, which is a video diagnostic tool. When you run ffprobe against a video, you'll learn all the parameters of the video.
In order to simplify the use of ffprobe, we've launched ffprobe.a.video. This does not use any api.video function, but by entering a video url, you can get all the information about the video in question.
The show formats response is an overview of your video. For example, when we run the mp4 version of a video through the tool, we get the following output:
filename : https://cdn.api.video/vod/vi4blUQJFrYWbaG44NChkH27/mp4/1080/source.mp4 nb_streams : 2 nb_programs : 0 format_name : mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 format_long_name : QuickTime / MOV start_time : 0.000000 duration : 20.155000 size : 11300487 bit_rate : 4485432 probe_score : 100 tags : [object Object]
There are 2 streams (an audio and video), and the video is an mp4, 20 seconds long and is 11.3 MB. The bitrate of the video is 4.5 MB per second (MBPS).
When I look at this, I mostly am concerned about the duration, the size and the bitrate. A high video bitrate (and a slow internet connection) can lead to video playback issues.
the show streams parameter will have an entry for each stream (if there is more than one). In most videos there will be two streams,and audio and a video stream. The order of the 2 streams is not important - so while the example here is 0: video; 1: audio, your video may be in the opposite order.
index : 0 codec_name : h264 codec_long_name : H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 profile : High codec_type : video codec_time_base : 1/60 codec_tag_string : avc1 codec_tag : 0x31637661 width : 608 height : 1080 coded_width : 608 coded_height : 1088 closed_captions : 0 has_b_frames : 2 sample_aspect_ratio : 1215:1216 display_aspect_ratio : 9:16 pix_fmt : yuv420p level : 30 chroma_location : left refs : 1 is_avc : true nal_length_size : 4 r_frame_rate : 30/1 avg_frame_rate : 30/1 time_base : 1/15360 start_pts : 0 start_time : 0.000000 duration_ts : 308224 duration : 20.066667 bit_rate : 4368063 bits_per_raw_sample : 8 nb_frames : 602 disposition : [object Object] tags : [object Object]
There's a lot of data here to understand, but my highlights are:
- codec - the video encoding
- profile - has to do with the quality of the encoding
- height - the video dimensions
- frame_rate - in the case above - 30 frames per second
I sometimes look at the number of b_frames (more b frames means more compression), the video bitrate - but for the most part, these are the features that interest me,
codec_name : aac codec_long_name : AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) profile : LC codec_type : audio codec_time_base : 1/44100 codec_tag_string : mp4a codec_tag : 0x6134706d 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 : 1/44100 start_pts : 0 start_time : 0.000000 duration_ts : 887777 duration : 20.130998 bit_rate : 127551 max_bit_rate : 128000 nb_frames : 868 disposition : [object Object] tags : [object Object]
My interests in the audio section: Is there an audios stream? Even the presence of an empty stream adds weight to the video. If the video is going to be a silent video (website background, animated GIF replacement), you might want to consider removing the audio stream.
I generally look at the sample_rate and bit_rate - what is the audio quality? Do we need it to be higher or lower?
Ffprobe is a quick tool that can be used to look at the metadata of a video. ffprobe.a.video is a simple tool to quickly obtain this data from videos already posted on the internet.