Open-source tools for identifying, validating, and extracting technical metadata from a wide range of digital file formats. FITS is maintained by the FITS community and used by digital preservation programs around the world.

fitstool.org  •  User Manual  •  Developer Manual  •  Downloads

The core File Information Tool Set. FITS wraps and normalizes the output of several open-source format-identification and characterization tools — including DROID, JHOVE, Apache Tika, ExifTool, MediaInfo, the NLNZ Metadata Extractor, and jpylyzer — then reconciles their results into a single, consistent XML report.

• Identifies file formats and reports format-specific technical metadata
• Runs from the command line or embeds in a Java application via its API
• Distributed as a self-contained release, or run from a Docker image
• Requires Java 11 or higher

Exposes FITS as a web service. Deploy the WAR to Tomcat or JBoss (or run the bundled Docker image) and characterize files over HTTP.

• /examine — analyze a file and return the full FITS XML report
• /version — report the FITS version in use
• Includes a browser upload form and a Java test client
• Requires FITS v0.9.0 or later on the server

The Harvard College Library Audio Preservation Services Java library — APIs for reading, writing, and modifying broadcast audio files and their embedded metadata.

• Broadcast Wave (BWF/RIFF) chunk reading and editing
• UMID and USID unique-identifier support
• RealAudio and SMIL-based audio-marker handling

The quickest way to try FITS is to grab a release from the downloads page, unzip it, and run it against a file:

./fits.sh -i path/to/file

Prefer containers?

docker run --rm -v `pwd`:/work fits -i file.txt

See each repository's README for full installation, configuration, and development instructions.

Contributions are welcome. Check the CONTRIBUTING.md in the fits and FITSservlet repositories, and open an issue or pull request on the relevant project.

FITS is released under the GNU LGPL. Bundled tools and libraries carry their own open-source licenses — see the license details in each repository.