No Metadata in MP4?

[mlitty]

I'm using Adobe Media Encoder to compress my video files down to something I have room to store but at a quality worth editing. I've read that MP4 video can hold metadata but mine can't. I've tried Adobe Bridge, VLC, and a few other applications that can write metadata. None of them are able to write to these MP4 files.
The metadata software I've tried can write to MOV files but Adobe Media Encoder can't write a compressed MOV file, no h.264 MOVs.

I'd love to be able to write metadata into my clips for archival purposes but I don't have space enough for uncompressed video clips.
Any tips?

[poisondeathray]

What kind of metadata? Which fields? Be specific

e.g mp4box, metax, mp4tools can write some types of fields, itunes metadata

[jagabo]

MOV and MP4 are essentially the same container. Renaming the MOV file to MP4 might be enough to get your software working with them. Then rename back to MOV if necessary.

[_Al_]

Use mp3tag as a GUI , you can give it a thumbnail as well.

Or if you want to do it programmatically you can use Python and module mutagen:

import mutagen   #pip install mutagen
from mutagen.mp4 import MP4
import os
for path, subdirs, names in os.walk(r"V:\directory_with_mp4_videos"):
    for name in names:
        filepath = os.path.join(path, name)
        mutagen_file = MP4(filepath)
        mutagen_file['©nam'] = name[:-4]  #Title is filename without extension
        mutagen_file['©ART'] = 'Artist Name'
        mutagen_file.pprint()
        mutagen_file.save()

[Cornucopia]

I'm surprised the AME's XMP Metadata export doesn't work w MP4, especially since MOV has been supported by Adobe products the longest of all media container formats, and MP4 is just a minor variation.

Is the export giving you an error message? or is it graying out when MP4 or MOV is chosen?


Scott

[jagabo]

You can use ffmpeg too:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4  -c copy -map 0 -metadata Title="The Title Goes Here" -metadata Genre="Sci-Fi" -metadata Date="2018" output.mp4

[poisondeathray]

mp4tags from mp4v2

usage mp4tags OPTION... FILE...
Adds or modifies iTunes-compatible tags on MP4 files.

      -help            Display this help text and exit
      -version         Display version information and exit
  -A, -album       STR  Set the album title
  -a, -artist      STR  Set the artist information
  -b, -tempo       NUM  Set the tempo (beats per minute)
  -c, -comment     STR  Set a general comment
  -C, -copyright   STR  Set the copyright information
  -d, -disk        NUM  Set the disk number
  -D, -disks       NUM  Set the number of disks
  -e, -encodedby   STR  Set the name of the person or company who encoded the file
  -E, -tool        STR  Set the software used for encoding
  -g, -genre       STR  Set the genre name
  -G, -grouping    STR  Set the grouping name
  -H, -hdvideo     NUM  Set the HD flag (1\0)
  -i, -type        STR  Set the Media Type("Movie", "TV Show", "Music Video", ...)
  -I, -contentid   NUM  Set the content ID
  -j, -genreid     NUM  Set the genre ID
  -l, -longdesc    NUM  Set the long description
  -L, -lyrics      NUM  Set the lyrics
  -m, -description STR  Set the short description
  -M, -episode     NUM  Set the episode number
  -n, -season      NUM  Set the season number
  -N, -network     STR  Set the TV network
  -o, -episodeid   STR  Set the TV episode ID
  -p, -playlistid  NUM  Set the playlist ID
  -P, -picture     PTH  Set the picture as a .png
  -B, -podcast     NUM  Set the podcast flag.
  -R, -albumartist STR  Set the album artist
  -s, -song        STR  Set the title of the song, movie, tv show,...
  -S  -show        STR  Set the TV show
  -t, -track       NUM  Set the track number
  -T, -tracks      NUM  Set the number of tracks
  -x, -xid         STR  Set the globally-unique xid (vendor:scheme:id)
  -w, -writer      STR  Set the composer information
  -y, -year        NUM  Set the release date
  -z, -artistid    NUM  Set the artist ID
  -Z, -composerid  NUM  Set the composer ID
  -W, -cast        STR  Set the cast|actors tag (AppleTV)
  -F, -director    STR  Set the director tag (AppleTV)
  -J, -codirector  STR  Set the codirector tag (AppleTV)
  -K, -producers   STR  Set the producers tag (AppleTV)
  -O, -swriters    STR  Set the screen writers tag (AppleTV)
  -Q, -copywarning STR  Add copy warning (AppleTV)
  -U, -studio      STR  Add film studio (AppleTV)
  -Y, -rating      STR  Add film ratings (AppleTV)
  -V  -rannotation STR  Add rating annotation to the ratings, ie rated r for violence
  -X  -crating     STR  Add content rating tag. "Inoffensive", "Clean", "Explicit"
  -r, -remove      STR  Remove tags by code (e.g. "-r cs"
                        removes the comment and song tags)

[Helg1980]

Try Cine Encoder, with option "From source" in codec options (to perform overwriting without transcoding the video). In the new version of the program, you can change the metadata.