How to extract metadata of video files using Python 3.7?

Question

I am looking for a simple library, compatible with Python 3.7, which can extract metadata of video files, specifically the capture/recording datetime; the date and time when the video was shot. I am mainly looking to do this on .mov files. hachoir-metadata has no Python library as far as I'm aware; only a command-line interface, and enzyme works only on .mkv files, though this isn't clearly stated in the description. The reason I want to retrieve the recording/capture datatime as a string is that I want to put this in the filename.

Before this question is marked as duplicate: similar questions are either unanswered or outdated. I am honestly puzzled as to why there isn't a proper way to retrieve video metadata in a Python script yet.

Answer 1

I have not found a nice library for Python but using hachoir with subprocess is a dirty workaround. You can grab the library itself from pip, the instructions for Python 3 are here: https://hachoir.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html

def get_media_properties(filename):

    result = subprocess.Popen(['hachoir-metadata', filename, '--raw', '--level=3'],
        stdout = subprocess.PIPE, stderr = subprocess.STDOUT)

    results = result.stdout.read().decode('utf-8').split('\r\n')

    properties = {}

    for item in results:

        if item.startswith('- duration: '):
            duration = item.lstrip('- duration: ')
            if '.' in duration:
                t = datetime.datetime.strptime(item.lstrip('- duration: '), '%H:%M:%S.%f')
            else:
                t = datetime.datetime.strptime(item.lstrip('- duration: '), '%H:%M:%S')
            seconds = (t.microsecond / 1e6) + t.second + (t.minute * 60) + (t.hour * 3600)
            properties['duration'] = round(seconds)

        if item.startswith('- width: '):
            properties['width'] = int(item.lstrip('- width: '))

        if item.startswith('- height: '):
            properties['height'] = int(item.lstrip('- height: '))

    return properties

hachoir supports other properties as well but I am looking for just those three. For the mov files I tested it also appears to print out the creation date and modification dates. I am using a priority level of 3 so you can try playing with that to see more stuff.