FFprobe is a command-line utility that is used to gather information from multimedia streams. It extracts and prints the in-depth information about the stream’s format and individual coded frames. It can handle a variety of formats, including but not limited to MP4, MOV, AAC, MP3, and more.

Example Commands

Here are some example commands that demonstrate the power of FFprobe:

  1. Basic Stream Information: The following command prints basic information about a multimedia stream:

    ffprobe -i input.mp4

    In this command, -i input.mp4 specifies the input file.

  2. JSON Output: The following command prints the stream information in JSON format:

    ffprobe -v quiet -print_format json -show_format -show_streams input.mp4

    In this command, -v quiet suppresses the logging output, -print_format json specifies the output format, and -show_format -show_streams tells FFprobe to print information about the file format and individual streams.

ffmpeg-api.com, in "FFprobe Tutorial: Analyze Media Files & Streams - FFmpeg API"