MediaInfo

MediaInfo is a GUI and CLI program that can display many properties about a media file. We typically install MediaInfo via homebrew, using brew install mediainfo. Once installed, you can run it by inputting mediainfo /path/to/file.ext. MediaInfo will print out many properties by default, including (for video): format, codec, file size, duration, bit rate, frame rate, track ID, width, height, DAR, color space, chroma subsampling, and color primaries.

This utility has a number of uses, including:

• Troubleshooting track encoding and missing audio
• Finding odd framerates
• Confirming vendors used appropriate specifications
• Finding best-quality items in born digital collections
• Finding when an item was encoded