Getting metadata for MOV video

Question

I' ve a .MOV video sent by a phone messanger app. Can I retrieve the real creation data of the file and the author? I tried with ffprobe, mediainfo and similar tool but give me only the date when I download it.

Answer 1

Did you try hachoir? Install it with pip install hachoir, and then, at the command line:

$ hachoir-metadata IMG_9395.MOV

which returns e.g.

Metadata:
- Duration: 2 sec 220 ms
- Image width: 1440 pixels
- Image height: 1080 pixels
- Creation date: 2020-04-15 20:22:57
- Last modification: 2020-04-15 20:22:58
- Comment: Play speed: 100.0%
- Comment: User volume: 100.0%
- MIME type: video/quicktime
- Endianness: Big endian

You can also use it in Python if you prefer:

from hachoir.parser import createParser
from hachoir.metadata import extractMetadata


def creation_date(filename):
    parser = createParser(filename)
    metadata = extractMetadata(parser)
    return metadata.get('creation_date')

Answer 2

So, I updated MMM's code to Python3 and improved a few things.

def get_mov_timestamps(filename):
    ''' Get the creation and modification date-time from .mov metadata.

        Returns None if a value is not available.
    '''
    from datetime import datetime as DateTime
    import struct

    ATOM_HEADER_SIZE = 8
    # difference between Unix epoch and QuickTime epoch, in seconds
    EPOCH_ADJUSTER = 2082844800

    creation_time = modification_time = None

    # search for moov item
    with open(filename, "rb") as f:
        while True:
            atom_header = f.read(ATOM_HEADER_SIZE)
            #~ print('atom header:', atom_header)  # debug purposes
            if atom_header[4:8] == b'moov':
                break  # found
            else:
                atom_size = struct.unpack('>I', atom_header[0:4])[0]
                f.seek(atom_size - 8, 1)

        # found 'moov', look for 'mvhd' and timestamps
        atom_header = f.read(ATOM_HEADER_SIZE)
        if atom_header[4:8] == b'cmov':
            raise RuntimeError('moov atom is compressed')
        elif atom_header[4:8] != b'mvhd':
            raise RuntimeError('expected to find "mvhd" header.')
        else:
            f.seek(4, 1)
            creation_time = struct.unpack('>I', f.read(4))[0] - EPOCH_ADJUSTER
            creation_time = DateTime.fromtimestamp(creation_time)
            if creation_time.year < 1990:  # invalid or censored data
                creation_time = None

            modification_time = struct.unpack('>I', f.read(4))[0] - EPOCH_ADJUSTER
            modification_time = DateTime.fromtimestamp(modification_time)
            if modification_time.year < 1990:  # invalid or censored data
                modification_time = None

    return creation_time, modification_time

and...

Wouldn't you know it, just as I finished I found how to do it with exiftool, which I use for similar tasks with .jpg files. :-/

⏵ exiftool -time:all img_3904.mov