Check audio and video codec from base64 video file in Django – Django

The Problem:

Create a Django service that can extract and display the audio and video codec information from a base64-encoded video file. The provided code successfully decodes the base64 string into binary data but encounters an error while trying to load the video clip using MoviePy. The error is related to the use of BytesIO object. Design a solution that resolves this issue or suggests an alternative approach to retrieve the codec information from the base64-encoded video file.

The Solutions:

Solution 1: Handling BytesIO Object

The provided solution revolves around resolving the issue encountered while attempting to check the audio and video codec of a base64-encoded video file using Django and MoviePy. The core concept remains the same, but the approach is enhanced for clarity and efficiency.

The primary issue was encountered when passing a `BytesIO` object to MoviePy’s `VideoFileClip` constructor. This solution addresses this issue by introducing the use of a temporary file.

Here’s how the solution works:

1. Base64 Decoding:

   • The base64-encoded video data is split into its format and file string components.
   • The file string is decoded into binary data using base64.b64decode().

2. Creating a Temporary File:

   • A temporary file is created using tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(). The file is assigned a suffix of .mp4 to match the expected video file format.
   • The binary data is written to the temporary file, and the file is closed.

3. Loading the Video Clip:

   • The path to the temporary file is passed to the VideoFileClip constructor to load the video clip.
   • This allows MoviePy to access the video file as if it were a regular file on the filesystem.

4. Extracting Codec Information:

   • Once the video clip is loaded, the video and audio codec information is extracted and stored in a dictionary.

5. Cleaning Up:

   • After extracting the codec information, the temporary file is deleted to free up resources.

6. Returning the Codec Information:

   • The dictionary containing the video and audio codec information is returned as the result.

This updated solution effectively resolves the issue by creating a temporary file from the binary data, allowing MoviePy to load and process the video clip successfully.

Solution 2:

To address the issue with using BytesIO with MoviePy, an alternative approach is employed that involves saving the base64-decoded binary data to a temporary file and utilizing ffprobe to retrieve the video codec information.

import base64
import tempfile
import subprocess
import os
import json

def get_video_codec_info(base64_data):
    codec_names = []
    
    # Decode base64 string into binary data
    _, _file_str = base64_data.split(";;base64,")
    binary_data = base64.b64decode(_file_str)

    # Save binary data to a temporary file
    with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(delete=False) as temp_file:
        temp_file.write(binary_data)
        temp_filename = temp_file.name

    try:
        # Run ffmpeg command to get video codec information
        command = ['ffprobe', '-v', 'error', '-show_entries', 'stream=codec_name:stream_tags=language', '-of', 'json', temp_filename]
        result = subprocess.run(command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, text=True)

        if result.returncode == 0:
            # Try to parse the JSON output
            data = json.loads(result.stdout)
                
            # Iterate through streams and print information
            for stream in data['streams']:
                codec_names.append(stream.get('codec_name'))

    finally:
        # Clean up: delete the temporary file
        os.remove(temp_filename)
    
    return codec_names

In this solution, we leverage ffprobe, a command-line tool from the FFmpeg suite, to extract the video codec information from the temporary file. FFmpeg must be installed on the system for this approach to work effectively.

Video Explanation:

The following video, titled "Check audio and video codec from base64 video file in Django ...", provides additional insights and in-depth exploration related to the topics discussed in this post.

Check audio and video codec from base64 video file in Django I hope you found a solution that worked for you 🙂 The Content (except music ...