Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. Visit Stack Exchange

Video Production Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for engineers, producers, editors, and enthusiasts spanning the fields of video, and media creation. It only takes a minute to sign up.

Sign up to join this community

Teams

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

Learn more about Teams

When I am simply copying a.MOV (from my iPhone) to c.MOV , FFmpeg drops a lot of metadata, including the time and location of the video.

I tried -metadata , but FFmpeg still drops the information. It seems that the metadata is not dropped when FFmpeg prints Output #0 , but is dropped when I use ffprobe to see metadata of the output file.

What should I do to make FFmpeg preserve these metadata?

$ ffmpeg -i a.MOV -c copy c.MOV -y
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'a.MOV':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : qt  
    minor_version   : 0
    compatible_brands: qt  
    creation_time   : 2018-03-...
    com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709: .../
    com.apple.quicktime.make: Apple
    com.apple.quicktime.model: iPhone ...
    com.apple.quicktime.software: 11....
    com.apple.quicktime.creationdate: 2018-03-...
  Duration: 00:00:01.77, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 7868 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 1280x720, 7707 kb/s, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 600 tbn, 1200 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2018-03-...
      handler_name    : Core Media Data Handler
      encoder         : H.264
    Stream #0:1(und): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, mono, fltp, 87 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2018-03-...
      handler_name    : Core Media Data Handler
    Stream #0:2(und): Data: none (mebx / 0x7862656D), 0 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2018-03-...
      handler_name    : Core Media Data Handler
    Stream #0:3(und): Data: none (mebx / 0x7862656D), 0 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2018-03-...
      handler_name    : Core Media Data Handler
Output #0, mov, to 'c.MOV':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : qt  
    minor_version   : 0
    compatible_brands: qt  
    com.apple.quicktime.creationdate: 2018-03-...
    com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709: .../
    com.apple.quicktime.make: Apple
    com.apple.quicktime.model: iPhone ...
    com.apple.quicktime.software: 11....
    encoder         : Lavf57.71.100
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 1280x720, q=2-31, 7707 kb/s, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 19200 tbn, 600 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2018-03-...
      handler_name    : Core Media Data Handler
      encoder         : H.264
    Stream #0:1(und): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, mono, fltp, 87 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2018-03-...
      handler_name    : Core Media Data Handler
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (copy)
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
frame=   23 fps=0.0 q=-1.0 Lsize=     732kB time=00:00:01.76 bitrate=7827.5kbits/s speed= 971x    
video:921kB audio:9kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.291216%
$ ffprobe c.MOV
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'c.MOV':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : qt  
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: qt  
    encoder         : Lavf57.71.100
  Duration: 00:00:00.77, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 7819 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 1280x720, 7707 kb/s, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 19200 tbn, 38400 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : DataHandler
      encoder         : H.264
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, mono, fltp, 92 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : DataHandler
– Mark
                Nov 10, 2018 at 4:14
Other answers here only work with the "known" meta keys, but for custom/arbitrary meta keys, -map_metadata 0 is not sufficient to keep them all.
In my transcoder project, a lot of camera makers like to inject custom meta keys in the MP4/MOV container, and I want to keep them in the transcoded MP4/MOV files. After a lot of head scratching, FFmpeg does seem to have a switch for this purpose:
-movflags use_metadata_tags
Note that this has to go after the input file, as for example in:
ffmpeg -i $input_file -movflags use_metadata_tags -crf 22 $output_file
Credit goes to the author of this thread and Google:
https://superuser.com/questions/1208273/add-new-and-non-defined-metadata-to-a-mp4-file
                Nice tip - thanks. One thing I noticed when I converted a bunch of mov files I had recorded on iphones the Rotation tag in the exif data said 180. ffmpeg by default auto rotates the video - but if you also copy the mov tags to the mp4, then it still tells the player to rotate 180 even though ffmpeg auto rotated the mp4 during the conversion. So my videos ended up being upside down when I played them :) - The workaround in my case was to tell ffmpeg to not auto rotate using -noautorotate - a quick workaround is to use Exiftool and set the rotation to 0 - exiftool -Rotation=0 file.mp4
– joensson
                Apr 11, 2020 at 9:41
                Wow, credits indeed. ffmpeg -h full documents use_metadata_tags as "Use mdta atom for metadata", not the least obfuscated way of saying "just preserve my metadata"!
– RJVB
                Oct 7, 2021 at 10:55
                So do I use -movflags use_metadata_tags in conjunction with -map_metadata 0 or is the first one enough?
– Shayan
                Aug 11, 2022 at 19:21
                @Shayan the first one is enough to "keep all", but with some side effects mentioned in other comments, you need to check if that matters for your cases.
– Jerry Tian
                Aug 12, 2022 at 2:36
                I think you should include a warning in the answer that other apps can't read these tags (Music, Plex, Meta) because they might use ffmpeg to verify tags were added and think all is well.
– malhal
                Jun 2 at 9:26
The -metadata option is for manipulating the metadata. If you just want to copy the metadata from an input file to an output file, you should use the -map_metadata option:
ffmpeg -i a.MOV -map_metadata 0 -c copy c.MOV
The file specifier is a zero-indexed number, so '0' takes the metadata from the first input file.
Note that -map_metadata and -movflags can be used in conjunction to preserve more metadata:
ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -crf 27 -movflags use_metadata_tags -map_metadata 0 out.mp4
                Any idea how to make this work with concat? eg. ffmpeg -nostdin -f concat -safe 1 -i "${concatlist}" -map_metadata 0 -c copy "$outfile" where $concatlist is /tmp/concat.list which has lines like file 'filenamehere.mp3'
– user25277
                May 22, 2019 at 10:34
                ok, got it: ffmpeg -nostdin -i "${infile}" -f ffmetadata "${metadatafile}" then ffmpeg -nostdin -f concat -safe 1 -i "${concatlist}" -i "${metadatafile}" -map_metadata 1 -c copy "$outfile"
– user25277
                May 22, 2019 at 10:48
                @evandrix As stated in the answer, 0 selects the first input file as the source. For details, see this section of the ffmpeg docs.
– junkyardsparkle
                Jun 17, 2019 at 19:28
FFmpeg, by default, makes all metadata from the first input file available, to the output file muxer, for writing. -map_metadata allows to override that, by either pointing to a different input, or by telling ffmpeg to discard input global metadata (value of -1).
However, which of the available metadata, is actually written to the output file, depends on the output muxer. The QT/ISOBMFF muxer (for MOV/MP4/3GP..) only considers a limited number of tags, primarily iTunes-related. As @JerryTian noted, with -movflags use_metadata_tags, all other tags are written to the file. However, these are written in an unconventional manner - Quicktime, in particular, does not recognize these additional metadata entries. Other, ffmpeg-based s/w, should read them. Or anyone who's using custom s/w, like @JerryTian, can adapt their s/w to read them.
Note that movflags only applies to output from the QT muxer. Matroska (MKV) will write anything. Other muxers vary.
                I\m trying to keep metadata when converting music. I have a custom CATALOGID, but when converting from wav to flac. The field is not preserved. ffmpeg -i bb.wav bb2.flac -movflags use_metadata_tags. Any idea ?
– Léo Coco
                Mar 30, 2019 at 12:09
                So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that using FFmpeg to encode into an .mkv should preserve all metadata from the source by default, without needing to speciify any additional options?
– Hashim Aziz
                Apr 28, 2019 at 17:47
I haven't found a way to have ffmpeg preserve the data. But I've found that for my needs I wanted the exif metadata and the exiftool was a convenient solution. 
You can copy metadata between video files: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/492338/83370
There's a trick to copy all metadata using the option -all:all>all:all: 
http://u88.n24.queensu.ca/exiftool/forum/index.php?topic=3440.0
exiftool -TagsFromFile a.MOV "-all:all>all:all" c.MOV
                I tried all above on files from Canon 200D and this one is actually most useful. It still makes further exiftool c.MOV much smaller than the output from the original, but it preserves actual creation date (-map_metadata did it too, but not -movflags) and camera name, but lens information is still gone.
– virgo47
                Oct 24, 2020 at 13:36
                OK, this was actually a great starting point - all I had to do is skip that mapping part. Just using exiftool -TagsFromFile in.mp4 out.mp4 did the job!
– virgo47
                Oct 24, 2020 at 14:16
From the comment in the answer https://superuser.com/questions/523286/how-to-make-handbrake-preserve-capture-time-creation-time/523696#comment2528176_523696
A full command line adding the option to copy special tags will be:
ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -i out.mp4 -map 1 -map_metadata 0 -c copy -movflags use_metadata_tags fixed.mp4
Looking at the ffmpeg source
Which metadata is written is hard-coded. There isn't a normal way to write all metadata --- for mov, mp4, etc. Whereas I can see that a mkv file gets all its metadata.
I can't say why they have it work that way. For other encoders, it could be different.
Now I found the use_metadata_tags option to be a bad idea since it is not standard - for example Plex does not read any of the metadata anymore. Funny that I was trying to get more metadata into Plex, but this option actually did the opposite. In the code above I can see that the MDTA way is to write all keys, then all values, whereas I guess most programs expect key/value pairs in a list, and therefore just don't know how to read MDTA metadata.
        
Thanks for contributing an answer to Video Production Stack Exchange!
Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!
But avoid …
Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.
Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.
To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.