check duration of audio files on the command-line

Question

I need to check the duration of a group of audio files. Is there a simple way to do this on the unix command-line?

> duration *

I have the amazing SoX app which has an option called stats that generates a set of audio info including duration. I am looking for a way to get only duration. I am flexible on output format, could be any of sample length, hh:mm:ss, or seconds. The latter would be my preference.

score 65 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 21 '12 at 16:41

65

soxi -D filename
soxi -D *

Soxi queries metadata of audio files; D is the duration option. It supports globbing. Soxi's big brother sox does command-line audio processing.

answered Jan 21 '12 at 16:41

ted.strauss

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soxi is what I use too, but unfortunately it lacks m4a support – dan3 Feb 11 '15 at 10:02
5

Is it just me, or doesn't it even support mp3? I'm getting `soxi FAIL formats: no handler for file extension 'mp3'`. **EDIT** : It turned out I had to `sudo apt-get install libsox-fmt-mp3`. – bluenote10 Oct 10 '19 at 14:40
3

There is also `soxi -d` for hours, minutes and seconds – cambunctious Jun 24 '20 at 17:08
2

In order to add mp3 support to sox, install libsox-fmt-mp3 – arshad Dec 10 '21 at 04:20

score 38 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 08 '19 at 11:10

38

mp3info -p "%m:%02s\n" filename

gives you the length of the specified file in mm:ss format (mm can be greater than 59). For just the total number of seconds in the file, you'd use:

mp3info -p "%S\n" filename

To get the total length of all the mp3 files in seconds, AWK can help:

mp3info -p "%S\n" *.mp3 | awk 'BEGIN { s = 0 }; { s = s + $1 }; END { print s }'

edited Apr 08 '19 at 11:10

aplaice

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answered Jan 19 '12 at 20:59

0xbadc0de

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so wrap that in a for loop and you're all set, `for file in *.mp3 ; do mp3info -p "%m:%s\n" $file ; done`. Good luck to all. – shellter Jan 19 '12 at 21:17
4

mp3info -p " %f %m:%s\n" *.mp3 works as well - will print the file name and the duration – David Rabinowitz Jun 08 '14 at 12:23
2

Only works for mp3 files, not e.g. wav or ogg containers. – Charles Boling Aug 15 '19 at 19:26

score 23 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 06 '18 at 02:48

23

ffmpeg -i <audiofile> 2>&1 | grep Duration

answered Feb 06 '18 at 02:48

JellicleCat

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You can also [use ffprobe](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8933053/check-duration-of-audio-files-on-the-command-line/56210291#56210291) that comes with `ffmpeg` and is designed for this. – Matthias Braun May 19 '19 at 17:26

DoggoDougal · Answer 4 · 2015-10-28T16:34:55.583

19

mediainfo will return to you the milliseconds of an audio file. Assuming the current directory only has audio files, the following

mediainfo --Inform="Audio;%Duration%" "Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball.mp3"

To calculate the duration of all audio in the local directory, this gist will help:

shopt -s nullglob
let playlist_duration_ms=0
for song_file in *.{mp3,ogg,m4a,flac,wav}; do
  playlist_duration_ms=$(expr $playlist_duration_ms + $(mediainfo --Inform="Audio;%Duration%" "$song_file"))
done
shopt -u nullglob

let playlist_duration_secs=$(expr $playlist_duration_ms / 1000)
let playlist_duration_mins=$(expr $playlist_duration_ms / 60000)
let playlist_duration_remaining_secs=$(expr $playlist_duration_secs - $(expr $playlist_duration_mins \* 60))

echo $playlist_duration_mins minutes, $playlist_duration_remaining_secs seconds

edited Oct 28 '15 at 16:34

answered Oct 19 '15 at 18:17

DoggoDougal

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This tool is great, works for ogg files as well and is available in the debian repositories – quantumbyte Apr 15 '16 at 13:25
I think this answer requires the least resources from the machine running it compared to other answers. – Doron Behar Dec 15 '17 at 19:49
1

Only prints a blank line for me. – JellicleCat Feb 06 '18 at 02:44

score 15 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 02 '19 at 14:10

The raw duration in seconds can be obtained with a high degree of precision with the use of ffprobe of ffmpeg, as follows:

ffprobe -show_entries format=duration -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 "filename.mp3" 2>/dev/null

The output, easy to use in further scripting, is formatted like this:

193.656236

Extending upon that, the following will measure the total duration in seconds of all .mp3 files in the current directory:

LENGTH=0; for file in *.mp3; do if [ -f "$file" ]; then LENGTH="$LENGTH+$(ffprobe -show_entries format=duration -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 "$file" 2>/dev/null)"; fi; done; echo "$LENGTH" | bc

And to measure the total length of audio files of several extensions, another wildcard may be appended:

LENGTH=0; for file in *.mp3 *.ogg; do if [ -f "$file" ]; then LENGTH="$LENGTH+$(ffprobe -show_entries format=duration -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 "$file" 2>/dev/null)"; fi; done; echo "$LENGTH" | bc

score 13 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 27 '16 at 00:39

13

on OSX

Print the length of each audio file in the current dir:

afinfo * | awk '/estimated duration/ { print $3 }'

Include the filepath:

afinfo * | awk '/File:/ { song=$2 } /estimated duration/ { print song, $3 }'

answered Feb 27 '16 at 00:39

cdosborn

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score 12 · Answer 7 · answered May 19 '19 at 17:24

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with `ffprobe`

ffprobe your_file.mp3 2>&1 | grep "Duration"

The output looks like this:

Duration: 00:44:33.50, start: 0.011995, bitrate: 128 kb/

answered May 19 '19 at 17:24

Matthias Braun

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With xargs `find *.mp3 | xargs -I {} ffprobe -show_entries format=duration -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 "{}" 2>/dev/null | awk 'BEGIN { s = 0 }; { s = s + $1 }; END { print s }'` – Tahlor Jul 08 '21 at 01:38

Hamid Rouhani · Answer 8 · 2017-05-28T08:56:06.703

In addition to cdosborn's answer, to calculate the length of all .mp3 files recursively in subfolders of current directory and show the total sum result in days:hours:minutes:seconds format:

In zsh:

afinfo **/*.mp3 | awk '/estimated duration/ { print $3 }' | paste -sd+ - | bc | awk '{printf("%d:%02d:%02d:%02d\n",($1/60/60/24),($1/60/60%24),($1/60%60),($1%60))}'

In bash or sh:

find . -name "*.mp3" -exec afinfo {} \; | awk '/estimated duration/ { print $3 }' | paste -sd+ - | bc | awk '{printf("%d:%02d:%02d:%02d\n",($1/60/60/24),($1/60/60%24),($1/60%60),($1%60))}'

The result is like this (7 days, 5 hours, 6 minutes, 58 seconds):

$ afinfo **/*.mp3 | awk '/estimated duration/ { print $3 }' | paste -sd+ - | bc | awk '{printf("%d:%02d:%02d:%02d\n",($1/60/60/24),($1/60/60%24),($1/60%60),($1%60))}'
7:05:06:58
$

JJoao · Answer 9 · 2018-06-18T22:47:04.877

9

sox --info -D file             --> duration in seconds
sox --info -d file             --> duration in HH:mm:ss.ss
sox --info file                --> metadata

edited Jun 18 '18 at 22:47

answered Sep 29 '17 at 17:05

JJoao

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score 9 · Answer 10 · edited Apr 28 '21 at 10:07

9

If you are interested in finding total duration of wav files in a directory using soxi and python you can use this:

soxi -D input_dir/*.wav | python -c "import sys;print(sum(float(l) for l in sys.stdin))"

change input_dir according to your input directory. If you want to find max/min duration between all wav files feel free to change sum to max or min.

edited Apr 28 '21 at 10:07

PatriceG

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answered Dec 02 '19 at 14:57

Navid Naderi

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score 5 · Answer 11 · answered Feb 08 '18 at 05:23

A solution based on mplayer from commandlinefu by syssyphus that works with both audio and video files:

sudo apt-get install mplayer
find -type f -name "*.mp3" -print0 | xargs -0 mplayer -vo dummy -ao dummy -identify 2>/dev/null | perl -nle '/ID_LENGTH=([0-9\.]+)/ && ($t +=$1) && printf "%02d:%02d:%02d\n",$t/3600,$t/60%60,$t%60' | tail -n 1

Get the total length of all video / audio in the current dir (and below) in H:m:s

Change the *.mp3 to whatever you want to match (e.g., *.avi, *.wav), you can remove it altogether if you want to check all files.

Example of output: 00:00:37

score 4 · Answer 12 · answered Mar 03 '21 at 16:49

I expanded on Navid Naderi's answer here, and created a bash function that will give you a summary of every file's running time, plus some time totals in various formats (seconds, minutes, or total running time).

function sox_duration_total
{
  if [[ "$#" -lt 1 ]]; then
    echo "find files!"
    echo "  sox_duration_total *.wav"
    echo ""
    return
  fi
  for i in "$@"; do
    val=`soxi -d "$i"`
    echo "$val | $i"
  done
  soxi -D "$@" | python -c "import sys;print(\"\ntotal sec:    \" +str( sum(float(l) for l in sys.stdin)))"
  soxi -D "$@" | python -c "import sys;print(\"total min:    \" +str( sum(float(l) for l in sys.stdin)/60 ))"
  soxi -D "$@" | python -c "import sys;import datetime;print(\"running time: \" +str( datetime.timedelta(seconds=sum(float(l) for l in sys.stdin)) ))"
}

Output will look like:

00:01:40.97 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 01 - hard.wav
00:00:32.00 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 02 - acidbass.wav
00:04:50.80 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 03 - cause.of.a.new.dark.age.wav
00:02:08.00 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 04 - daybreak.falls.wav
00:05:20.75 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 05 - forestfloor.wav
00:03:56.32 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 06 - rabbithole.wav
00:03:50.40 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 07 - feedme.wav
00:06:03.97 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 08 - grand.wav
00:02:09.45 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 09 - strawberryflavoreddeath.wav
00:04:43.29 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 10 - subfloor.wav
00:03:36.96 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 11 - silicone.wav
00:04:28.47 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 12 - inertial decay.wav
00:01:23.81 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 13 - the.void.wav
00:01:18.86 | subatomicglue - inertialdecay - 14 - weet.wav

total sec:    2764.0637880000004
total min:    46.06772980000001
running time: 0:46:04.063788

score 2 · Answer 13 · answered May 02 '17 at 19:17

2

Another soxi based answer including the file names and duration in hours, minutes and seconds format.

$for f in *amr; do printf "$f "; soxi -d $f; done

DGT20161216.amr 00:22:04.62
DGT20170108.amr 00:28:22.80
DGT20170117.amr 00:20:05.18

answered May 02 '17 at 19:17

alemol

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score 1 · Answer 14 · answered Jan 08 '17 at 01:28

mediainfo can do this, but mediainfo is one of those useful tools that's so badly documented that you almost need to know how to use it in order to learn how to use it (happens a lot in the linux world).

After hours of trials and reading high and low, I finally got it to generate a recursive comma-separated list of file names and their duration in milliseconds.

cd to the starting directory and issue the following command:

find "$(pwd)" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} mediainfo --Inform="General;%CompleteName%,%Duration%" {} > list.txt

The results will be output to list.txt.

Sempfer · Answer 15 · 2019-05-11T22:23:17.463

(When you don't have afinfo at your disposal) I got it recursively for all my files

# install mp3info if not yet installed with
sudo apt-get install mp3info

with the find command, put the total seconds to a csv file (go to the directory with your e.g. mp3 files first)

find . -name "*.mp3" -exec mp3info {} -p "%S\r\n" >> totalSeconds.csv \;

Then open it in e.g. in LibreOffice and sum it up at the bottom (to get the hours) with

=SUM(A{start}:A{end})/60/60

score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Dec 21 '21 at 11:06

Maybe a little bit late, but this is my version.

# by dnetto

[[ "$#" -lt 1 ]] && echo -e "imput error\n\$>$0 *.mp3" && exit
echo "geting time of all songs\n"

declare td=0
declare th=0
declare tm=0
declare ts=0
function updateTotal
{
        [[ "$ts" -gt 60 ]] && tm=`echo $tm + $ts / 60 | bc` ; ts=`echo $ts % 60 | bc`
        [[ "$tm" -gt 60 ]] && th=`echo $th + $tm / 60 | bc` ; tm=`echo $tm % 60 | bc`
        [[ "$th" -gt 24 ]] && td=`echo $td + $th / 24 | bc`
}

for i in "$@"; do
        m=`mp3info -p %m $i`
        s=`mp3info -p %s $i`
        t=`mp3info -p %S $i`
        [[ "$color" = "" ]] && color="\033[38;5;199m" || color=""
        printf "$color%.2d:%.2d  -=- %s\033[0m\n" $m $s $i
        ts=`echo $ts + $t | bc`
        updateTotal
done
echo -e "\n=======================================================\n\ttotal time:"
printf "%d days %.2d hours %.2d minutes %.2d seconds" $td $th $tm $ts
echo -e "\n======================================================="

if you don't wanna verbose, just comment printf inside to get only total

for complete script look on my [github](https://github.com/dnettoRaw/mp3duration) — dnetto, Dec 21 '21 at 14:59

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Dec 27 '21 at 10:20

For MP3 there are many options.

When it comes to OGG, TinyTag is the best I found so far.

Shell

$ python -m tinytag --format csv /some/music.mp3
> {"filename": "/some/music.mp3", "filesize": 30212227, "album": "Album", "albumartist": "Artist", "artist": "Artist", "audio_offset": null, "bitrate": 256, "channels": 2, "comment": null, "composer": null, "disc": "1", "disc_total": null, "duration": 10, "genre": null, "samplerate": 44100, "title": "Title", "track": "5", "track_total": null, "year": "2012"}

Or Python

from tinytag import TinyTag
tag = TinyTag.get('/some/music.mp3')
print('This track is by %s.' % tag.artist)
print('It is %f seconds long.' % tag.duration)

Read tags, length and cover images of audio files supported formats

MP3 (ID3 v1, v1.1, v2.2, v2.3+)
Wave/RIFF
OGG
OPUS
FLAC
WMA
MP4/M4A/M4B
AIFF/AIFF-C

score 0 · Answer 18 · answered Feb 07 '22 at 17:05

Very simple single-liner for FLAC on Debian/Ubuntu, useful for almost any audio container files and SoX:

for i in *.flac ; do echo -ne "${i} - " ; soxi -d "${i}" ;  done

Also

soxi -V

could be used instead, but then you will need sed or awk and grep to turn the output in the compact form.

score 0 · Answer 19 · answered Nov 14 '22 at 17:04

The way to obtain durations for most audio and video files using ffprobe, it is also configurable to make a list (the example here is for BBcode listing):

c=0 ; NAMEPREFIX="[*]" ; DELIMITER="." ; for f in *.flac ; do infstr=`ffprobe -show_entries format=duration -show_entries "format_tags=title" -sexagesimal -of compact=p=0:nk=1 "${f}" 2>/dev/null`; c=$((${c}+1)) ; echo -e "${NAMEPREFIX}${c}${DELIMITER}" $(sed -e 's/.*|//' <<<${infstr}) [$(sed -e 's/\..*//' <<<${infstr})] ; done

check duration of audio files on the command-line

19 Answers19

with `ffprobe`

Linked

check duration of audio files on the command-line

19 Answers19

with ffprobe

Linked

with `ffprobe`