HOWTO: Gspot Equivalent on Linux

**userundefine** · May 24th, 2007

Finally I get to contribute a HOWTO.

I've seen this requested often, mainly because I was looking for an equivalent myself. If you're familiar with Gspot, it's a Windows-only program that spits out information on an AVI you feed it: codec, bitrate, audio quality, resolution, etc. Now, with some clever grep work of mplayer's output, you can do a decent job of getting these details, but how about a tool written specifically for the job that does it BETTER than Gspot? That's what I finally found with MediaInfo.

It's a GPL windows/linux program. Windows version has a GUI, and on Linux we bypass that distraction and just get our goodies with a CLI version. It supports a ton of formats. It's so good, when you put an AVI through it that's been downloaded from Google Video, it says "Google Video / Hack of AVI". Your information will look like this once you use the prog:

Code:

General #0
Complete name        : /home/userundefine/video001.avi
Format               : AVI
Format/Info          : Audio Video Interleave
Format/Family        : RIFF
File size            : 137 MiB
PlayTime             : 29mn 14s
Bit rate             : 645 Kbps

Video #0
Codec                : DivX 5
Codec/Family         : MPEG-4
Codec settings/Packe : Yes
Codec settings/BVOP  : Yes
Codec settings/QPel  : No
Codec settings/GMC   : 0
Codec settings/Matri : Default
PlayTime             : 29mn 14s
Bit rate             : 408 Kbps
Width                : 512 pixels
Height               : 384 pixels
Aspect ratio         : 4/3
Frame rate           : 25.000 fps
Resolution           : 8 bits
Chroma               : 4:2:0
Interlacement        : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)   : 0.083
Writing library      : DivX503b2207p

Audio #0
Codec                : MPEG-1 Audio layer 2
Bit rate             : 224 Kbps
Bit rate mode        : CBR
Channel(s)           : 2 channels
Sampling rate        : 44 KHz
Resolution           : 16 bits
Title                : Audio Stream
Writing library      : Xing (new)
Coherency/PlayTime   : 2398

This program will compile on x64 and is officially supported (see post 6), but we won't be getting into that here.

Now, let's do it. The simplest way to do it is to use the pre-compiled binary for i386 because MediaInfo has a lot of dependencies. However, if you really do want to compile from source, there is a nice script to grab all the necessary dependencies for you and compile them. We won't cover that here, though.

Step 1: download

Code:

wget http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mediainfo/MediaInfo_0.7.4.7_CLI_Linux_i386.tar.bz2

Step 2: extract

Code:

tar xjvf MediaInfo_0.7.4.7_CLI_Linux_i386.tar.bz2

Step 3: put MediaInfo in your PATH

Code:

sudo mv MediaInfo_CLI_GNU/MediaInfo /usr/local/bin/

Step 4: usage

Code:

MediaInfo file

This is the first version released for Linux. There aren't many options for the CLI because, according to the author, there's less interest. So generate some interest!

It's a great little program. Some issues noted for this first Linux release in the readme that aren't working properly:

Filename with non-american letters (other than A-Z, a-z)
Matroska, FLAC, APE, MonkeyAudio and old Sound format parsers are disabled*

* seems to be a nonissue now according to the programmer, see post 6.

Hope you enjoyed this short howto.

**hornett** · May 24th, 2007

Excellent! I've been looking for something like this.

Working nicely here.

**derekguy** · May 25th, 2007

Brilliant I was also looking for such a program. Works well for me on 2.6.20-15 on i686. Gives a lot more info than 'file'

Hope to help in generating interest

**capitalistpiglet** · May 27th, 2007

Thanks this is just what i was looking for

**killkoy** · May 27th, 2007

Works for me on x64using the i386 binary

**Zenitram-MediaInfo** · May 29th, 2007

I am the developper of MediaInfo, some comments :
- Linux CLI may have more options if Linux users are a lot (=referers on MediaInfo website are from linux websites), currently my main users are on Windows. But I try to debug it before implementing more options.
- I am working on a cross-platform GUI, released on Linux soon. But all of this requests time, and I am alone

- x64 version was not released for version 0.7.4.7, but you can compiled from sources without problems. I officially support it. next versions will have a x64 binary.
- Matroska, FLAC, APE, MonkeyAudio parsers are now enabled
- MediaInfo has now less dependancies : "only" libwx, libmatroska and libebml. The installation script try to download and compile them.

**mozetti** · May 29th, 2007

To the OP and possibly the developer if Linux gets an installation script:

If you don't want to move the program into your path, you can just create a symlink in your path to the file. Assuming you extract it in your home directory to /home/<user>/MediaInfo_CLI_GNU/, just type:

Code:

sudo ln -s /home/<user>/MediaInfo_CLI_GNU/MediaInfo /usr/bin/MediaInfo

**Notes**
-The ln command will create the symlink file (in the example /usr/bin/MediaInfo), so don't create it yourself before running the ln command because it will fail if the file already exists (or add the -f switch to force an overwrite).

-The name you give the symlink file in your path (in the example /usr/bin/MediaInfo) can be anything you desire. For example, You can use "gspot" or "mediainfo" (note the lowercase letters here) to launch the file instead of "MediaInfo" (note the bolded uppercase letters). The command would be (using the "gspot" example)

Code:

sudo ln -s /home/<user>/MediaInfo_CLI_GNU/MediaInfo /usr/bin/gspot

**EDIT** And thanks for this! I've been looking for a replacement for Gspot since I moved to Linux.

**userundefine** · May 30th, 2007

Good points, mozetti. Even if a user wants to symlink, it should still be put in /usr/local/bin, though, just to distinguish from something the package manager installs.

Zenitram, thanks for clarifying some issues and thanks for a great program! Personally I'm not sure what other options are needed because what it currently displays on a file is exactly what I've been looking for, which isn't to say that you couldn't blow my mind with something I hadn't thought of.

I'm sure you'll make other users happy with a GUI, though.