Find all videos under current directory using MIME a.k.a not using extension

allVideos() { find ./ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 file -iNf - | grep ": video/" | cut -d: -f1; }

Videos are found using their MIME type. Thus no need to for an extension for the video file. This is a efficent version of "jnash" cmd (4086). Thanks for jnash. This cmd will only show video files while his cmd show files having "video" anywhere in path.

Sample Output

$ find ./ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 file -iNf - | grep ": video/" | cut -d: -f1

./.v.a-desk/atomic_city.wmv
./.mozilla/firefox/yhszbu0k.default/Cache/1/1A/9DD36d01
./.mozilla/firefox/yhszbu0k.default/Cache/7/A6/8BFE0d01
./.mozilla/firefox/yhszbu0k.default/Cache/6/63/FAE2Cd01
./.mozilla/firefox/yhszbu0k.default/Cache/9/D5/E16E0d01
$

By: totti

2011-08-19 11:58:59

cut file find grep xargs video find grep mime

1 Alternatives + Submit Alt

Find all videos under current directory

Uses mime-type of files rather than relying on file extensions to find files of a certain type. This can obviously be extended to finding files of any other type as well.. like plain text files, audio, etc.. In reference to displaying the total hours of video (which was earlier posted in command line fu, but relied on the user having to supply all possible video file formats) we can now do better: find ./ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 file -iNf - | grep video | cut -d: -f1 | xargs -d'\n' /usr/share/doc/mplayer/examples/midentify | grep ID_LENGTH | awk -F "=" '{sum += $2} END {print sum/60/60; print "hours"}'
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find ./ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 file -iNf - | grep video | cut -d: -f1

jnash · 2009-11-19 06:05:36 7

What Others Think

rahimhh21 · 110 weeks ago

Perfecthomepugs · 100 weeks and 5 days ago

pugpuppies95 · 63 weeks ago

yeneba6574 · 16 weeks and 3 days ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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