What is this?

It's a parser for ffmpeg's ffmetadata format, which compresses multiline tags to HTML-formatted single lines for further manipulation.

How do I build it?

You need:

• TCLAP
• RE-Flex
  • See this repo for a PKGBUILD for Arch Linux and derivatives.
• Bison
• GCC
• Tup

Clone this repository.

Then simply run tup init, then tup, and the executable FFMeta should be produced.

How do I use it?

You need ffmpeg, obviously.

Extract the FFMetadata from some media file with:

ffmpeg -i FILENAME -f ffmetadata tags.txt

Alternatively, use this ffmetadata file and save it as tags.txt:

;FFMETADATA1
GENRE=Pop
DATE=1964
track=01
ALBUM=All Summer Long
TITLE=I Get Around
ARTIST=The Beach Boys
album_artist=The Beach Boys
LYRICS=Round round get around\
I get around\
Yeah\
Get around round round I get around\
I get around\
Get around round round I get around\
From town to town\
Get around round round I get around\
I'm a real cool head\
Get around round round I get around\
I'm makin' real good bread\
\
I'm gettin' bugged driving up and down this same old strip\
I gotta finda new place where the kids are hip\
\
My buddies and me are getting real well known\
Yeah, the bad guys know us and they leave us alone\
\
I get around\
Get around round round I get around\
From town to town\
Get around round round I get around\
I'm a real cool head\
Get around round round I get around\
I'm makin' real good bread\
Get around round round I get around\
I get around\
Round\
Get around round round ooh\
Wah wa ooh\
Wah wa ooh\
Wah wa ooh\
\
We always take my car 'cause it's never been beat\
And we've never missed yet with the girls we meet\
\
None of the guys go steady cause it wouldn't be right\
To leave their best girl home on a Saturday night\
\
I get around\
Get around round round I get around\
From town to town\
Get around round round I get around\
I'm a real cool head\
Get around round round I get around\
I'm makin' real good bread\
Get around round round I get around\
I get around\
Round\
Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah\
\
Round round get around\
I get around\
Yeah\
Get around round round I get around\
Get around round round I get around\
Wah wa ooh\
Get around round round I get around\
Ooh ooh ooh\
Get around round round I get around\
Ooh ooh ooh\
Get around round round I get around\
Ooh ooh ooh\
Get around round round I get around\
Ooh ooh ooh
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK=0.891251
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN=-4.71 dB

Then, use the built binary to extract tags:

cat tags.txt | ./FFMeta --tag TITLE

Note that extracting tags currently has case sensitivity, so --tag TITLE is not the same as --tag title. Multiple tags can be specified simultaneously.

If a tag contains newlines, these will be replaced with <br /> tags, which should look correct when viewed as HTML. To modify how newlines are represented, see line 61 of src/parser.yy.