What's the best way to get video metadata from a video file in ASP.Net MVC using C#?

Question

I\'ve been searching on Google and StackOverflow for a good couple of hours. There seems to be a lot of similar questions on StackOverflow but they are all about 3-5 years o

Answer 1

I suggest you use ffmpeg with Process.Start, the code looks like follows:

    private string GetVideoDuration(string ffmpegfile, string sourceFile) {
        using (System.Diagnostics.Process ffmpeg = new System.Diagnostics.Process()) {
            String duration;  // soon will hold our video's duration in the form "HH:MM:SS.UU"
            String result;  // temp variable holding a string representation of our video's duration
            StreamReader errorreader;  // StringWriter to hold output from ffmpeg

            // we want to execute the process without opening a shell
            ffmpeg.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
            //ffmpeg.StartInfo.ErrorDialog = false;
            ffmpeg.StartInfo.WindowStyle = System.Diagnostics.ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
            // redirect StandardError so we can parse it
            // for some reason the output comes through over StandardError
            ffmpeg.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;

            // set the file name of our process, including the full path
            // (as well as quotes, as if you were calling it from the command-line)
            ffmpeg.StartInfo.FileName = ffmpegfile;

            // set the command-line arguments of our process, including full paths of any files
            // (as well as quotes, as if you were passing these arguments on the command-line)
            ffmpeg.StartInfo.Arguments = "-i " + sourceFile;

            // start the process
            ffmpeg.Start();

            // now that the process is started, we can redirect output to the StreamReader we defined
            errorreader = ffmpeg.StandardError;

            // wait until ffmpeg comes back
            ffmpeg.WaitForExit();

            // read the output from ffmpeg, which for some reason is found in Process.StandardError
            result = errorreader.ReadToEnd();

            // a little convoluded, this string manipulation...
            // working from the inside out, it:
            // takes a substring of result, starting from the end of the "Duration: " label contained within,
            // (execute "ffmpeg.exe -i somevideofile" on the command-line to verify for yourself that it is there)
            // and going the full length of the timestamp

            duration = result.Substring(result.IndexOf("Duration: ") + ("Duration: ").Length, ("00:00:00").Length);
            return duration;
        }
    }

May it helps.