797 stars · TWO FILES WITH DIFFERENT TERMS. master/LICENSE is plain unmodified BSD-2-Clause, holder named: 'Copyright (c) 2002-2025, MediaArea.net SARL'. master/License.html, titled 'MediaInfo(Lib) License', same holder, is the same base PLUS two clauses the first file lacks: a relicensing GRANT to Apache-2.0 or later, LGPL-2.1 or later, GPL-2.0 or later and MPL-2.0 or later; and a mandatory binary-attribution sentence, 'This product uses MediaInfo library, Copyright (c) 2002-2025 MediaArea.net SARL', to be reproduced in the documentation of any product shipping it. GitHub's sidebar reads 'BSD-2-Clause, Unknown licenses found' and the unknown file is the one that matters. · v26.05, '12 May 09:33' with no year, settled as 2026-05-12 by the ungh releases record (exact time match). About five months old against code of 3 Oct 2026. · Track this in Scout
Reports exactly what is inside an audio or video file — codecs, bitrates, real duration and every embedded tag — and never writes to it.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
A library — a piece of code other programs use rather than something you open — written in C++, that inspects media files and reports their technical details and tags in one consistent format. Most people want the ready-made program built on it, called MediaInfo, which has versions for every common system.
What it is good for. Anyone who handles video or audio and has to answer "what is this file". It settles arguments about codecs and bitrates in one command, and because it only reads, it is safe to point at a file that matters. Video editors, podcast producers and anyone converting a large archive use it constantly.
- Read-only by design, so there is no way for it to damage what it looks at.
- Code was pushed on 3 October 2026, and the project has been going since at least 2002 by its own copyright line.
- Ready-made installers for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, FreeBSD, Solaris, AppImage, Flatpak, Snap and most Linux distribution families.
- It ships two licence files with different terms, and this is the day's finding.
LICENSEis the plain unmodified BSD-2-Clause, with the holder named asCopyright (c) 2002-2025, MediaArea.net SARL. Beside it sitsLicense.html, titled "MediaInfo(Lib) License", which is the same base licence plus two clauses the first file does not have. The first grants something: "You can relicense (including source headers change) MediaInfoLib under Apache License 2.0 or later, and/or GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1 or later, and/or GNU General Public License 2.0 or later, and/or Mozilla Public License 2.0 or later." The second takes something: anyone shipping it inside a product must reproduce the sentence "This product uses MediaInfo library, Copyright (c) 2002-2025 MediaArea.net SARL" in their documentation. GitHub's own sidebar reads "BSD-2-Clause, Unknown licenses found" — the unknown file is the one that matters. - The newest tagged release is about five months old — version 26.05, dated 12 May 2026 — while code lands weekly. The in-repository change log stops at the 25.x series and never mentions 26.x at all, so the repository cannot tell you what is in a given build.
- There are no build instructions in the README. A separate text file names two dependencies and lists supported compilers including Borland C++ Builder 6 and Visual Studio 2005, which is guidance nobody has revisited. 315 open issues and 35 open pull requests. Nobody who is not a programmer should attempt to build this; use an installer.
- FFmpeg/FFmpeg
The program that converts almost any media file into almost any other, and its ffprobe tool reports much the same information; vastly larger in scope and harder to read the output of.
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Reads and also writes metadata, and covers photographs and documents as well as video, so it is the one to reach for when you need to change a tag rather than read it.
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taglib/taglibThe narrower library under most music players, covering audio tags rather than full technical detail; covered as entry #9 of Edition 40.
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# Most people want the ready-made program, not the library. # Installers for every common system are listed here: # https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download # Once it is installed, one command reads a file: mediainfo "holiday.mp4" # Everything it knows, as machine-readable output: mediainfo --Output=JSON "holiday.mp4"
