ffprobe select audio and video streams

Question

I use this code for extracting video information by ffprobe :

ffprobe -show_streams -of json -v quiet -i input.mp4

The information of all streams appears in the output while I need only the information of v:0 and a:0 streams.

I know that there is -select_streams option for stream selection but it accepts only one argument like: -select_streams v:0.

Can I use -select_streams by two arguments v:0 and a:0 or using it twice?

Answer 1

You can simply omit the -select_streams argument and use the -show_entries argument to pass the fields you would like to see in the output, like so:

ffprobe -show_streams -show_entries format=bit_rate,filename,start_time:stream=duration,width,height,display_aspect_ratio,r_frame_rate,bit_rate -of json -v quiet -i input.mp4

That should give you an output similar to this:

{
    "programs": [

    ],
    "streams": [
        {
            "width": 360,
            "height": 202,
            "display_aspect_ratio": "16:9",
            "r_frame_rate": "2997/100",
            "duration": "68.601935",
            "bit_rate": "449366",
            "disposition": {
                "default": 1,
                "dub": 0,
                "original": 0,
                "comment": 0,
                "lyrics": 0,
                "karaoke": 0,
                "forced": 0,
                "hearing_impaired": 0,
                "visual_impaired": 0,
                "clean_effects": 0,
                "attached_pic": 0
            },
            "tags": {
                "language": "eng",
                "handler_name": "VideoHandler"
            }
        },
        {
            "r_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "duration": "68.475646",
            "bit_rate": "65845",
            "disposition": {
                "default": 1,
                "dub": 0,
                "original": 0,
                "comment": 0,
                "lyrics": 0,
                "karaoke": 0,
                "forced": 0,
                "hearing_impaired": 0,
                "visual_impaired": 0,
                "clean_effects": 0,
                "attached_pic": 0
            },
            "tags": {
                "language": "eng",
                "handler_name": "SoundHandler"
            }
        }
    ],
    "format": {
        "filename": "input.mp4",
        "start_time": "0.000000",
        "bit_rate": "522013"
    }
}

From which you can just index into the stream you want, as shown in Powershell, with the JSON object streams that is returned:

PS C:\Users\User> $json.streams[0]


width                : 360
height               : 202
display_aspect_ratio : 16:9
r_frame_rate         : 2997/100
duration             : 68.601935
bit_rate             : 449366
disposition          : @{default=1; dub=0; original=0; comment=0; lyrics=0; karaoke=0; forced=0; hearing_impaired=0; visual_impaired=0; clean_effects=0; attached_pic=0}
tags                 : @{language=eng; handler_name=VideoHandler}




PS C:\Users\User> $json.streams[1]


r_frame_rate : 0/0
duration     : 68.475646
bit_rate     : 65845
disposition  : @{default=1; dub=0; original=0; comment=0; lyrics=0; karaoke=0; forced=0; hearing_impaired=0; visual_impaired=0; clean_effects=0; attached_pic=0}
tags         : @{language=eng; handler_name=SoundHandler}

There are a list of the key field names that you can get from the different types of streams here: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/FFprobeTips