Video Check

Command line tool for scanning video files for errors using ffmpeg and .NET 6.

Requirements

• ffmpeg (must be available from the command line)
• .NET 6

Installation

Clone the repo to you computer. Pull to get updates. Open a command prompt to the source directory.

If you are updating, remove the old version first:

> dotnet tool uninstall -g VideoCheck

To install:

> dotnet build
> dotnet pack
> dotnet tool install -g --add-source ./dist VideoCheck

The tool will be available using the command vcheck.

Usage

• vcheck scan
  • Scans the current directory (or input path) for video files and checks each file for errors.
    • Files that are scanned are kept in a log with their pass/fail status. The scan command will skip previously checked files.
  • Arguments:
    • InputPath - Path to scan. Defaults to current directory if no argument is provided.
      • Example: vcheck scan /path/to/video/files or vcheck scan ../movies.
  • Options:
    • -r or --recursive - If passed, subdirectories will be recursively scanned for files, not just the top level.
    • -m or --minutes - Number of minutes to check within each video file. Defaults to 2.
      • Note: more minutes will find more issues but will take longer to scan.
• vcheck log
  • Writes the log to the console. Only shows files that have failed a check before.
  • Options:
    • -a or --all - Show all files that have been scanned, not just errors.
• vcheck log clear
  • Deletes all records from the scan log.
• vcheck log export
  • Writes the log to an Excel file in the current directory (or output path)
  • Arguments:
    • OutputPath - Path where export file should be written. Defaults to current directory if no argument is provided.
      • Example: vcheck log export /path/to/export or vcheck log export ...
  • Options:
    • -a or --all - Show all files that have been scanned, not just errors.
• All commands and subcommands support help options using -h or --help
• Version information can be found using vcheck --version

Notes

Scanning is done by finding all video files (using the extensions: mp4, mkv, m4v, and avi) and running an ffmpeg command on them:

ffmpeg -v error -t <minutes * 60> -i <file path> -f null -

That command will read the first few minutes of a video, convert it to nothing, and discard the result. The catch is the verbosity is set to error so nothing will be output unless the ffmpeg cannot read the file (for whatever reason). If there is any output, that indicates a (possibly) corrupt file.

This tool will only identify (possibly) corrupt videos but does not fix them.

The scan log is kept in a LiteDB file on disk at your user's local app data directory. This is ~\AppData\Local on Windows and at ~/.local/share on macOS/Linux.