ffprobe slow for many files

[forthrin]

Using ffprobe -show_streams -print_format json for a lot of files (1000+) is quite slow compared to exiftool which seems almost instantaneous.

Is this because A) the probing code has optimisation potential, or B) mostly because of the overhead because ffprobe doesn't support multiple files per run, ie. you can't do find . -type f -exec ffprobe {} +.

Please clarify A or B, but also regardless, is there any reason why ffprobe shouldn't support multiple files?

ffprobe 4.0.2 on macOS

[Elon Musk]

It is because it decodes each single file.

[forthrin]

I don't understand your reply. Could you be more specific and explain why ffprobe for many files is slow? Is it simply the overhead of having to launch ffprobe once per file? (B)

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

This is a bug tracker, if you have questions concerning parts of FFmpeg, please use the user mailing list.

[forthrin]

Where are feature requests posted? Can they be posted here?

[mkver]

Yes, this is the right place for feature requests.

[forthrin]

Well, maybe I was unclear, then.

The feature request is support for multiple files per run, ie. find . -type f -exec ffprobe -print_format son -show_streams {} +, as to increase speed when probing thousands of files.

This would mean the output would have to generate an array of probe objects in order to connect the files and the probe data, eg.

[

{"filename": "movie1.mkv", "streams": [ ...]},
{"filename": "movie2.mkv", "streams": [ ...]},
(etc.)

]

Would this be doable? Perhaps you have a better suggestion?