revelo

Read technical metadata from any media file — pure Rust, no system dependencies.

A from-scratch Rust port of MediaInfoLib with optional ExifTool-grade EXIF/maker-note depth. Detects 180+ formats, decodes EXIF/IPTC/XMP tags, and handles maker-notes from 14 camera vendors.

No ./Configure, no system libraries, no Perl runtime. Zero unsafe code.

Part of the revelo project — see the project README for the full picture.

Install

[dependencies]
revelo = "0.4"

Or via Cargo:

cargo add revelo

For ExifTool-grade maker-note depth across 14 camera vendors, opt into the exiftool-tables feature:

[dependencies]
revelo = { version = "0.4", features = ["exiftool-tables"] }

License note: the default build is BSD-2-Clause. The exiftool-tables feature pulls in tables derived from ExifTool, so a binary or library built with it is subject to GPL/Artistic terms. See Licensing below.

Quick start

fn main() {
    // Parse from a file path
    let meta = revelo::Metadata::from_file("video.mp4").unwrap();

    // Container/codec fields (format, duration, bitrate, …)
    for (key, value) in meta.general() {
        println!("{key} = {value}");
    }

    // First video stream
    for (key, value) in meta.video() {
        println!("{key} = {value}");
    }

    // First audio stream
    for (key, value) in meta.audio() {
        println!("{key} = {value}");
    }
}

fn main() {
    // Parse from an in-memory buffer (e.g. downloaded bytes)
    let bytes = std::fs::read("photo.jpg").unwrap();
    let meta = revelo::Metadata::from_bytes(&bytes).unwrap();

    for (key, value) in meta.exif() {
        println!("{key} = {value}");
    }
    for (key, value) in meta.iptc() {
        println!("{key} = {value}");
    }
    for (key, value) in meta.xmp() {
        println!("{key} = {value}");
    }
}

API surface

Metadata — the main type

Stream accessors

Each method returns an Iterator<Item = (&str, &str)> of (field_name, value) pairs.

All accessors refer to the first stream of that kind (index 0). For files with multiple video or audio tracks, use meta.streams() directly and call streams.stream(StreamKind::Video, index) for each index.

MediaFile<'a> — low-level engine

MediaFile (a type alias for revelo_core::FileAnalyze) is the byte-level parsing engine. It is re-exported for callers that need to feed raw FileAnalyze state into downstream crates (revelo-dispatcher, revelo-parsers-tag, etc.). Most users should prefer Metadata.

What it extracts

• Containers & codecs — MP4/MOV, Matroska/WebM, MPEG-TS, AVI, WAV, and 180+ formats total, with codec details from AVC/HEVC/AV1/VP9 and AAC/AC-3/DTS/FLAC/Opus.
• Photo metadata — EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, ICC, C2PA, and (with exiftool-tables) deep maker-notes for Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus, Sony, Panasonic, and more.
• HDR signalling — HDR10+, Dolby Vision, HLG/PQ, plus Dolby Atmos / AC-4 and IAMF audio.

Re-exported crates

revelo re-exports its three underlying crates for callers that need direct access:

License

• Core (default build): BSD-2-Clause — see LICENSE.
• exiftool-tables feature: pulls in revelo-exiftool-tables, which is GPL-1.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl (tables derived from ExifTool, © Phil Harvey). A binary or library built with this feature inherits those terms.