Creating reusable metadata for video with ExifTool
Tutorial – ExifTool Video Metadata
Smart use of metadata will help you keep your video collection organized and easy to search.
Digital video plays a big part in the lives of many Linux users. A collection is only useful, however, when you can find what you need. You could catalog all your videos with a simple spreadsheet or a full-blown Linux-compatible media center platform, but these alternatives can be cumbersome and inflexible. A more future-proof solution that is valid for any kind of video format and is not tied to any particular application is to associate metadata with every video file.
Most Linux users are accustomed to working with metadata for photo images, but metadata can be a bit more complicated with video files. This article describes the most important metadata you might want to manage for your personal archives of video files. I'll also present some Linux-compatible tools for working with video metadata, and I'll show you my way for managing metadata based on simple shell scripts. If you're new to the topic of metadata, see the box entitled "What Is Metadata" for some basic information.
Video Metadata Categories
As far as video is concerned, I'm happy with dividing its metadata in three categories related to what one wants to do with videos: technical and management, indexing, and web discovery.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.