Using ffmpeg to copy metadata from one file to another

I want to use ffmpeg to copy all meta data not associated with core aspects of a video (frame rate, resolution) from one video to another. Is there a simple way to do this with a single command?

4 Answers

Use -map_metadata.

In this example the global and stream metadata will be copied from in0.mkv. The video and audio streams will be stream copied from in1.mkv:

ffmpeg -i in0.mkv -i in1.mkv -map 1 -c copy \
# copies all global metadata from in0.mkv to out.mkv
-map_metadata 0 \
# copies video stream metadata from in0.mkv to out.mkv
-map_metadata:s:v 0:s:v \
# copies audio stream metadata from in0.mkv to out.mkv
-map_metadata:s:a 0:s:a \
out.mkv

This will result in something like:

Output #0, matroska, to 'out.mkv': Metadata: title : Global Title AUTHOR : Global Author Stream #0:0: Video: h264 Metadata: title : Stream 0 Title Stream #0:1: Audio: vorbis Metadata: title : Stream 1 Title

By default global metadata is copied from the first input file, so -map_metadata 0 could probably be omitted.

From the comment in the answer How to make Handbrake preserve capture time / creation time?

A full command line adding the option to copy special tags will be:

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -i out.mp4 -map 1 -map_metadata 0 -c copy -movflags use_metadata_tags fixed.mp4

For decoding Flac to AIFF whilst preserving metadata, this answer worked better for me: Covert FLAC to AIFF while saving tags/metadata

If all you need is the basics (creation date, etc), then touch -r FILE1 FILE2 Will work as a charm coping metadata from FILE1 to FILE2