what you in NEED?: November 2020

11/25/2020

Virtual Media File or Video Metadata

FAQs

How can I embed chapters metadata into media file? Because sometimes I have a big media file and I want that whenever I want, I can go to specific segment of that media file.
1. Yes! Using ffmpeg
Is There any way to create a config file to play different segment of videos from multiple files? This can be useful when you have list of media files and you want to create playlist for a single topic without merging these media files together.
1. Yes! Using EDL file.

What is EDL?

EDL files basically concatenate ranges of video/audio from multiple source files into a single continuous virtual file.

Each such range is called a segment, and consists of source file, source offset, and segment length.

Example File

# mpv EDL v0
001.mp4, 200, 20,title=First Chapter
002.mp4, 100, 30,title=Second Chapter
003.mp4, 220, 100,title=Third Chapter

Note that You should save this file with file line endings from the Windows default CRLF to *nix-like LF only,

Usage

You can play this edl file directly by mpv player
- mpv demo.edl
You can also save your virtual media file to disk (by encoding)
- mpv demo.edl -o demo.mp4

Useful Shortcuts

[ and ]
- Decrease/increase current playback speed by 10%.
BACKSPACE
- Reset playback speed to normal.
T (Shift + t)
- Toggle stay-on-top (see also --ontop).

PGUP and PGDWN key
- Seek to the beginning of the previous/next chapter.
Alt + and Alt -
- Combining Alt with the + or - keys changes video zoom.
- Alt+LEFT, Alt+RIGHT, Alt+UP, Alt+DOWN
  - Move the video rectangle (panning).
- Alt+BACKSPACE
  - Reset the pan/zoom settings.
Ctrl + h
- Toggle hardware video decoding on/off.

using `ffmpeg` to add Chapters

You can use ffmpeg command line tool to add chapters into media file.

Extract metadata from media file

ffmpeg -i 001.mp4 -f ffmetadata meta.txt

Format of FFMETADATA file

;FFMETADATA1
major_brand=isom
minor_version=512
compatible_brands=isomiso2avc1mp41
encoder=Lavf58.45.100

[CHAPTER]
TIMEBASE=1/1000
START=0
END=60000
title=chapter \#1

[CHAPTER]
TIMEBASE=1/1000
START=60000
END=120000
title=chapter \#2

[CHAPTER]
TIMEBASE=1/1000
START=120000
END=500000
title=chapter \#3

Inserting metadata into media file

ffmpeg -i 001.mp4 -f ffmetadata meta.txt -map_metadata 1 -codec copy 001_conv.mp4

Sources

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/edl-mpv.rst

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/6479

https://mpv.io/manual/master/#interactive-control

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mpv-player-windows/files/

http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-formats.html#Metadata-1

Pages