ffmeta

ffmeta is a simple Bash script for editing the title and description metadata of media files using your preferred text editor.

You can download the script here.

It extracts the existing metadata into temporary files, opens them for editing, then writes the updated values back to the original file without re-encoding the media.

Features

• Edit metadata in your favourite text editor
• Preserves audio and video streams (-c copy)
• Uses temporary files that are automatically cleaned up
• Supports any media format that FFmpeg can read and write metadata for

Requirements

• Bash
• FFmpeg (ffmpeg and ffprobe)

Installation

Make the script executable:

chmod +x ffmeta

Optionally place it somewhere in your PATH, for example:

sudo install -m755 ffmeta /usr/local/bin/

Usage

ffmeta <media-file>

Example:

ffmeta episode.mp3

The script will:

1. Extract the current title.
2. Open it in your default editor.
3. Extract the current description.
4. Open it in your default editor.
5. Save the updated metadata back to the original file.

Editor

The script uses the editor specified by the EDITOR environment variable.

For example:

export EDITOR=vim

If EDITOR is not set, it defaults to:

nano

Notes

The media streams are copied without re-encoding, so editing metadata is typically very fast.

Temporary files are removed automatically when the script exits.