mpn

mpn is a Rust command-line tool that sniffs common media containers from magic bytes, deep-inspects MPEG-4 / ISO BMFF (MP4-family) files with mp4parse, and prints structured TOML-like text to stdout.

Usage

mpn path/to/media.file
mpn --help

Every run emits a [media] block with sniffed format, mime, and inspect. When inspect = true, track and codec sections from mp4parse are included. Other recognized containers exit successfully with inspect = false and no track dump.

Exit status is 0 on success (including sniff-only), 1 on I/O or parse errors (error = "…" on stderr).

Sniffing vs inspect

Stage	What happens
Sniff	Read leading bytes; set format, mime, and whether the file is MP4-family.
Inspect	Only when MP4-family (inspect = true): parse boxes, tracks, codecs.

Sniffed containers include MP4 / M4V / MOV / M4A / 3GP (inspectable), plus Matroska / WebM, WAV, AVI, Ogg, FLAC, AIFF, FLV, ASF, MPEG-TS, MP3, and unknown (application/octet-stream).

Output

MP4-family file (inspect runs; track sections truncated):

$ mpn tests/files/test-bokeh-au-2t-vd-30f-854x480.mp4

[media]
uri = "tests/files/test-bokeh-au-2t-vd-30f-854x480.mp4"
bytes = 441551
format = "m4v"
mime = "video/x-m4v"
inspect = true
modified = …
[media.track.audio]
track_id = 1
…
[media.track.video.codec]
codec_name = "AVC"

Non-media or unrecognized content (sniff only):

$ mpn src/main.rs

[media]
uri = "src/main.rs"
bytes = …
format = "unknown"
mime = "application/octet-stream"
inspect = false

Installation

crates.io

If Rust and Cargo are installed, this is the quickest way to get a release binary:

cargo install mpn

From source

git clone https://github.com/sitkevij/mpn && \
cd mpn && \
cargo test && \
cargo build --release && \
target/release/mpn tests/files/test-bokeh-au-2t-vd-30f-854x480.mp4

Packaging

Distro packages and other channels:

Development

make ci          # format check, clippy, tests (matches GitHub CI core)
make pre-commit  # format, clippy, tests (local commits)

The first cargo test builds dev-dependencies and installs rusty-hook from .rusty-hook.toml (pre-commit runs make pre-commit).

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.