Feature request: Improved Metadata Support

[Malko29]

Hi, can we get a enhancement in handbrake for preserving the metadata after converting videos.
Most of the time I have to use ffmpeg with map_metadata to preserve metadata. And it is not user-friendly.

Is there any possibility in handbrake?

[sr55]

While there isn't any interest in adding a really good meta data UI, passthru may be an option. We can disucss and decide later. Right now we are concentrating on getting 1.0 out the door.

[jstebbins]

What additional metadata are you interested in?

HB already preserves title, artist director, composer, release date, summary, genre, description, and synopsis from any file demuxed by libav (so everything other than BD and DVD sources).

I've done some brief testing with mkv sources to verify no bugs have crept in. But if you see a problem with other source types, please let us know.

[sr55]

Not actually tested it. Does it require the metadata json block to be popualted? I don't do that at the moment.

[jstebbins]

Sorry, I forgot to get back to you about this question. hb_job_init, hb_job_init_json and hb_preset_job_init copy the title's metadata into the job they create. So if you are initializing your job with any of these, the metadata should already be there.

[bradleysepos]

HB already preserves title, artist director, composer, release date, summary, genre, description, and synopsis from any file demuxed by libav (so everything other than BD and DVD sources).

I know the Linux GTK GUI has more metadata stuffs. Wondering if it's useful to add an option to preserve or remove additional metadata fields other than the above. For example:

|x| Title
|x| Artist
|x| Description
|x|

Other metadata:
  (o) Passthru
  ( ) Remove

Could also be a checkbox but the explicit nature of the radio control seems more suited for clarity.

[sr55]

Your close enough to just adding a MetaData tab to the GUI at that point.

I'm still on the shelf about that. I have been wanting to write a Subler clone for windows for some time though. Just not found the time.

I had thought about tight integration with the likes of Subler. I.e HandBrake could launch super pre-encode, store the info and let Subler tag it afterwords. So you get the Power of Subler, without writing much code.

Otherwise you'll end up with requests for connecting to various meta data websites, adding fields and all the other nice stuff Subler has anyway.

[bradleysepos]

Your close enough to just adding a MetaData tab to the GUI at that point.

GTK has a tab for this. Fields are minimal, useful for clarifying what's happening and changing some very basic properties.

I absolutely agree we shouldn't get into tagging beyond this. My suggestion is to improve upon the GTK implementation with a catch-all for the rest of the metadata we don't plan to mess around with.

[bradleysepos]

I had thought about tight integration with the likes of Subler. I.e HandBrake could launch super pre-encode, store the info and let Subler tag it afterwords. So you get the Power of Subler, without writing much code.

Agreed, it would be cool if Subler had an API we could access programmatically.

[bradleysepos]

Screenshot of the GTK Tags tab:

[cortig]

I noticed that some of the field are properly preserved, but the cover art for instance is lost. Content and Advisory Ratings are lost too from what I remember.

[mmattel]

When you create videos with a camera, a timestamp and GPS info is (most times) added.
It would be great if this can be preserved.

[gregalex72]

Is this likely to happen?

I'd love to convert my 1080i50 h264 content to 1080p50 while keeping timecodes (iMovie and Photos just blends it to 1080p25).

Actually... 1080i50 h264 converted to 1080p50 HEVC with timecodes will be a great conversion for the new Mac "High Sierra" in a couple of months.

[martijnspaan]

Would be an awesome feature to preserve the meta data. When I convert my files on Windows 10, the new file has 'date created' and 'date modified' set to the day of the conversion. Would be great if it could have the creation date of the original file.

E.g. this stackoverflow post has a solution by using ffmpeg, so should be fairly easy to implement in Handbrake, which is already using it.