How to check if a file is a video

Question

I am trying to create a program in Python 2.7 which has the following requirements: - Enumerates all video files in Windows. - Opens each video file using: `os.open(filepath, os.O_RDWR)` - Processes the file. My current algorithm is: - Having a list of all video file extensions. I got them from here - Loop through all files - If the file has a video extension, then process it This method has following disadvantages: - Some file extensions like '.dat' or '.am' are used for non media files. - Some files with extensions like '.dat' are used by other programs (i.e Antivirus) What should I do to make a program which satisfies the requirements pointed above? Here is my current code: ``` def is_video_file(filename): video_file_extensions = ( '.264', '.3g2', '.3gp', '.3gp2', '.3gpp', '.3gpp2', '.3mm', '.3p2', '.60d', '.787', '.89', '.aaf', '.aec', '.aep', '.aepx', '.aet', '.aetx', '.ajp', '.ale', '.am', '.amc', '.amv', '.amx', '.anim', '.aqt', '.arcut', '.arf', '.asf', '.asx', '.avb', '.avc',…

Accepted Answer

At this point in time, there's an even easier way to check if any given file contains a valid video stream: load up the file using the MediaInfo wrapper for Python and check for the existence of a video stream.

```
fileInfo = MediaInfo.parse('some/file/name.ext')
for track in fileInfo.tracks:
    if track.track_type == "Video":
        # success!
```

I don't know about the efficiency of this, but it should be at least as fast as doing it with ffmpeg. At the very least, it has a nice API, and there's a lot of other great info that you can easily extract with it.

How to check if a file is a video

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