How to determine video codec of a file with FFmpeg

Question

I often have problems reading AVI files with my TV\'s DVD player if they are not DivX or Xvid (e.g., DX50 is not readable).

I\'d like to make a fast script to determine

Answer 1

mediainfo

mediainfo --Inform="Video;%Codec%" video.mkv

will in my case return:

V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC

Answer made possible thanks to How to find duration of a video file using mediainfo in seconds or other formats?

ffprobe (ffmpeg) easy way

Assuming your video has one video stream only:

ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream=codec_name \
  -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 video.mkv

Will in my case return:

h264

Answer made possible thanks to How to get video duration in seconds?

ffprobe (ffmpeg) dirty way

This method is easier to understand but messy.

To get the codec information without playing back the file, use ffprobe.

$ ffprobe video.mkv
[...]
Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'video.mkv':
  Metadata:
    ENCODER         : Lavf56.25.101
  Duration: 00:28:05.15, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 4353 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High 4:4:4 Predictive), yuv444p, 1280x960, SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 1k tbn, 59.94 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      ENCODER         : Lavc56.26.100 libx264
    Stream #0:1: Audio: vorbis, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default)
    Metadata:
      ENCODER         : Lavc56.26.100 libvorbis

To extract the video codec information - since ffmpeg sends information to stderr - pipe and grep it:

$ ffprobe video.mkv 2>&1 >/dev/null | grep Stream.*Video
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High 4:4:4 Predictive), yuv444p, 1280x960, SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 1k tbn, 59.94 tbc (default)

To reduce the output even further, introduce sed:

$ ffprobe video.mkv 2>&1 >/dev/null |grep Stream.*Video | sed -e 's/.*Video: //' -e 's/[, ].*//'
h264