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What is the best tool to obtain the media/codec details of any video/audio file?

I use Windows, but feel free to suggest for your favorite OS too.

Chris W. Rea
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Ashwin Nanjappa
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    related: http://superuser.com/questions/18001/which-codec-inside-mkv-file – fretje Aug 15 '09 at 10:32
  • your site is rotting. Found an outdated answer[1] that was closed as a duplicate of this outdated answer which was closed as off topic because you mods have to no power in life to you enjoy ego trips here. Useless, thanks SuperUsers. You're super. 1: https://superuser.com/questions/404489/how-do-i-determine-the-file-type-of-a-video-file – Ed S. Jul 30 '23 at 07:29

2 Answers2

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I used to have this tool called GSpot270a,
there is a quick start here.

And a comparison of some tools here.

  1. QuickTime Pro (commercial); Lillipot

There is this blog post
View and Analyze Your Media Codec Information (Video/Audio) With MediaInfo
which does not open at this time... don't know why, but it has the lines,

MediaInfo can be considered as the alternative tool for GSpot Codec Information Appliance. MediaInfo is being actively developed.

I can see GSpot is not actively developed.

nik
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  • Another interesting one I tested this week "playtime" http://skwire.dcmembers.com/wb/pages/software/playtime.php Main purpose is to give you total times, but it integrated the media info library in a more portable package, and a very nice viewing interface. It does not have the capability to display all the really deep header info like Bpov, but all the stuff most users would want to see is there. 2things in small clean package. – Psycogeek Mar 25 '12 at 03:35
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MediaInfo

What information can I get from MediaInfo?

General: title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration...
Video: codec, aspect, fps, bitrate...
Audio: codec, sample rate, channels, language, bitrate...
Text: language of subtitle
Chapters: number of chapters, list of chapters

What format (container) does MediaInfo support?

Video: MKV, OGM, AVI, DivX, WMV, QuickTime, Real, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DVD (VOB)...
(Codecs: DivX, XviD, MSMPEG4, ASP, H.264, AVC...)
Audio: OGG, MP3, WAV, RA, AC3, DTS, AAC, M4A, AU, AIFF...
Subtitles: SRT, SSA, ASS, SAMI...
hyperslug
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