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Best tool for movie file analysis (codec, field order, bit rate, size, etc
I am looking for a good tool that can tell me different parameters for a movie file.
Up until now I have been using VideoSpec, but version 0.9.8 gives an error message and is unusable at the moment.
Do you guys have any tips for good (free) apps that can give me the info I need?
I’m a bit confused – suddenly VideoSpec reports Interlaced – top field on some of my DV50 movies. That can’t be right, can it?
When you use Apple ProRes422 (which I do on my PAL 1080i footage), you really can’t be sure what field order is used, especially when you have to mix 1080i footage with SD footage.
The only way I see is to have an analysis tool, so that I know how to set my final MPEG-2 compression.
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4 Replies
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Videospec Is a tool that I often use to analyze compressed file formats. It gives great detail about the file.
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Try MediaInfo
https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo -
I thought I’d add info from the VideoSpec readme which gives some insight.
As you can see, development has stopped. Note that it uses MediaInfo so using that would be a natural progression. I love Bitrate Pro but Pimley stopped development as a separate app a long time ago. It lived on through VIdeoSpec but given that EOL it’ll be a hunt to replace that. I do have something Mac specific that covers some of that.Bitrate Pro is a little but very useful application designed by Daniel Pimley (https://www.pimley.net/projects/).
VideoSpec is a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for Open Source Unix tools developed by third parties. VideoSpec simply not exist without these tools:
MediaInfo is a software providing information on multimedia files. Mainly developed for MS Windows, there is however a Mac OS X Command Line Interface (CLI) used in VideoSpec. MediaInfo CLI for Mac OS X is available at this address: https://mediainfo.sourceforge.net. There is also an experimental Mac OS X graphical version. A native Mac version is now available on the App Store.
Mplayer is a multimedia player which can play almost all video formats (https://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html). The recent GUI Mac OS X version is available here: https://www.mplayerosx.ch/.
FFmpeg is a set of components dedicated to processing multimedia files. The main component is the eponymous tool ffmpeg used from the command line to convert many video formats. Site : https://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/.
Finally, qt_tools is a very handy command line tools suite allowing to handle QuickTime movies. Qt_tools suite is available here : https://www.omino.com/sw/qt_tools/.
AtomicParsley is a command line tool allowing manipulation of MPEG-4 files metadata. AtomicParsley is available here: https://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/.
Sparkle (https://sparkle.andymatuschak.org/) is used from version 0.9.0 to manage updates.Known bugs :
Use of decimal separator AND thousand separator will give wrong sizes results with SI (Decimal) setting.History:
. January 17th 2014 (version 0.9.8): Last update of VideoSpec. Its development is now definitively stopped! MediaInfo CLI (v0.7.66) and ffprobe (N-58857-ge8ac905) tools updated. Several bugs fixed. Bitrate Pro import removed (bug on Mavericks). -
I’m using VideoSpec 0.9.8 (no further development).
The problem is that I get different results in the self-contained ref movie, compared to what FCP7 reports…
For example – an Apple ProRes422 timeline (1080i PAL) has upper field dominance in FCP7 sequence settings. But VideoSpec reports lower field dominance…
A DV50 PAL timeline in FCP (with lower field dominance, as all DV* codecs) is reported to have upper field dominance in VideoSpec.
And I need to be sure of the field order, when compressing my footage to MPEG-2 (SD).
So – what do you suggest I should use?
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