Bash script to recursively display duration of MP3 & MP4 files

[oygle]

There are some teaching sessions where the video duration/length is quite different to the audio lengths, and therefore I need to check the duration of all the videos and audios. I found this bash script to display the duration of MP3 files and simply modified it to display MP4 files as well ..

#!/bin/bash
for file in *.mp3 *.mp4
do
 duration=$(ffprobe "$file" 2>&1 | awk '/Duration/ { print $2 }')
 echo -e $duration"\t"$file
done | sort -n

and the output is ..

00:29:06.67, Session 3 - Session3Audio.mp3
00:29:30.60, Session 3 - Session3Video.mp4
00:46:12.31, Session 2 - Session2Audio.mp3
00:46:12.31, Session 4 - Session4Audio.mp3
00:46:36.25, Session 2 - Session2Video.mp4
00:54:45.74, Session 1 - Session1Audio.mp3
00:55:09.70, Session 1 - Session1Video.mp4
01:14:53.99, Session 4 - Session4Video.mp4

but when I try the script in a higher level path/directory, where there are only folders (no files), the output is obviously an error because the script does not cater for going down all the paths recursively ..

*.mp3
*.mp4

Can someone please tell me how to modify the bash script to make it do a recursive search. Also, I wanted to copy the output into a spreadsheet, so that the filename is first, then the duration. Is that simply a matter of adding a TAB character so that an import to the spreadsheet will be placed into columns.

[norobro]

Hi,


Use the find command and pipe it to the bash builtin read.

#!/bin/bash
find /root/dir -name "*.mp3" -o -name "*.mp4" | while read file;
do
 duration=$(ffprobe "$file" 2>&1 | awk '/Duration/ { print $2 }')
 echo -e $duration"\t"$file
done

Also, I wanted to copy the output into a spreadsheet, so that the filename is first, then the duration.

Perhaps I misunderstand, but won't exchanging the the fields in the echo command do what you want?

echo -e $file"\t"$duration

[oygle]

Use the find command and pipe it to the bash builtin read.

#!/bin/bash
find /root/dir -name "*.mp3" -o -name "*.mp4" | while read file;
do
 duration=$(ffprobe "$file" 2>&1 | awk '/Duration/ { print $2 }')
 echo -e $duration"\t"$file
done

Great thanks, that works just fine, and goes down all the paths in a recursive manner.

Perhaps I misunderstand, but won't exchanging the the fields in the echo command do what you want?

echo -e $file"\t"$duration

Yes that did it, thanks. here is the final version ..

#!/bin/bash
find /root/dir -name "*.mp3" -o -name "*.mp4" | while read file;
do
 duration=$(ffprobe "$file" 2>&1 | awk '/Duration/ { print $2 }')
 echo -e $file"\t"$duration
done | sort -n

[oygle]

That final solution isn't putting out a TAB in between the filename and the duration

#!/bin/bash
find ~/root/dir -name "*.mp3" -o -name "*.mp4" | while read file;
do
 duration=$(ffprobe "$file" 2>&1 | awk '/Duration/ { print $2 }')
 echo -e $file"\t"$duration
done | sort -n

I have tried modifying it to use

printf

but not sure how to use variables with "printf"

[vasa1]

.... Also, I wanted to copy the output into a spreadsheet, so that the filename is first, then the duration. Is that simply a matter of adding a TAB character so that an import to the spreadsheet will be placed into columns.

A tab isn't compulsory if you're using LibreOffice Calc.

You can use any other character that won't occur in your output. You could try #.

[oygle]

A tab isn't compulsory if you're using LibreOffice Calc.

You can use any other character that won't occur in your output. You could try #.

I use LibreOffice Calc and the "#" worked just fine, thanks very much.