ffprobe movflags +faststart check

[gailingmic]

Q	A
Bug?	no
New Feature?	no

Good Day everyone,

is there a way to check with \FFMpeg\FFProbe if -movflag +faststart is set on a Video, If the Metadata is at the front of the file?

Greetings,
Michell

[rsnitsch]

Yes, this would be a very useful feature. Any news on this?

By the way. A few alternatives are elaborated here:
https://superuser.com/questions/559372/using-ffmpeg-to-locate-moov-atom

[jens1o]

Could somebody explain what this means?

[rsnitsch]

@jens1o When processing videos with ffmpeg you have the option to use -movflags +faststart as a commandline switch. This moves an important part of the resulting video file (the MOOV atom) to the beginning of that file, such that the video can be streamed directly, typically from a webserver. Without this, the video must be downloaded completely before the playback can start.

I don't think that \FFMpeg\FFProbe can implement such a MOOV location check, because the ffprobe tool itself lacks such a feature. This feature should be requested upstream (i.e. at ffmpeg).

[jens1o]

This feature should be requested upstream (i.e. at ffmpeg).

Good point, could you request it there, please?

[gailingmic]

you can check it with fprobe already!

[jens1o]

@gailingmic Could you show a way how?

[guanyutao92]

ffprobe -v trace -i xx.mp4 2>&1 |grep -e type:\'mdat\' -e type:\'moov\'

[nsmithdev]

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/HowToCheckIfFaststartIsEnabledForPlayback