Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Get Even More Info about a QuickTime Movie

If you want to see lots and lots of information about a video QuickTime is playing try this:

1. Open the movie with QuickTime Player 7.
(I haven't tested this in "Quicktime Player" Quicktime X, because QTX isn't very feature rich to put it nicely.)
2. Click on the Finder in the dock or on your desktop so the Finder is the frontmost app.
3. Hit Command + Shift + U to open your Utilities folder. 
4. Launch AppleScript Editor. (really, it'll be okay)
5. Paste this into AppleScript Editor:

tell application "QuickTime Player 7" to get the properties of document frontmost

(you can probably change "QuickTime Player 7" to just "QuickTime Player" if you use QTX but I didn't test this)

6. Hit the "Run" button.

After a beat you should see something like this in the bottom pane:

{video brightness adjustment:0.0, name:"movie.mov", play all frames:false, current node:missing value, id:5, max time loaded:4588979, resizable:normal, time:1288526, show detailed movie info window:false, natural dimensions:{1280, 544}, color table:missing value, default node:missing value, show sound controls:false, show video controls:false, show movie info window:false, class:document, show hot spots:false, preferred audio balance track:missing value, fast start:false, poster frame time:0, output muted:false, href:"", pan range:{0.0, 0.0}, selection duration:0, video contrast adjustment:0.0, current chapter:missing value, sound balance:0, audio volume:256, auto quit when done:false, savable:true, pan angle:0.0, time scale:600, presentation mode:normal, bass gain:0, tilt range:{0.0, 0.0}, scale:normal, treble gain:0, streaming status message:"", preferred audio gain track:missing value, playing:false, auto close when done:false, aperture:clean, auto play:false, video tint adjustment:0.0, controller type:standard, dimensions:{1280, 544}, duration:4588979, pan tilt speed:0.0, data size:0, field of view:0.0, play selection only:false, live stream:false, looping:false, current chapter track:{}, auto present:false, preferred rate:1.0, video color adjustment:1.0, path:"/Volumes/Hard Drive/Folder/movie.mov", stored stream:false, index:1, modified:true, saveable:true, selection start:0, local playback:true, done:false, palindrome:false, current matrix:{{1.0, 0.0, 0.0}, {0.0, 1.0, 0.0}, {0.0, 0.0, 1.0}}, rate:0.0, tilt angle:0.0, language:"SystemDefault", preview:{0, 0}, streaming status code:0, presentation background color:{0, 0, 0}, selection:0, quit when done:false, close when done:false, data rate:0, original file:file "Hard Drive:Folder:movie.mov", plugin settings:{}, display state:normal, field of view range:{0.0, 0.0}, zoom rate:0.0, load state:complete}

It's a mess but it's rife with information. I've been trying to figure out why a clip I have refuses to show the Data Rate in QT Player 7 (and other players) so I thought I'd try this and see if it was helpful.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm sure you're aware of it but "mediainfo mac" is also a great app for looking at the details of any media file.

http://mediainfo.massanti.com/

Walker Ferox said...

Good to know. There's also VideoSpec at:

http://laurent.ettouati.free.fr/english/

which is also free.