Crate revelo 

revelo — read technical metadata from any media file

A pure-Rust, zero-unsafe library for extracting technical and tag metadata from media files. No system libraries, no Perl runtime, no ./Configure.

• Detects 180+ container and codec formats (MP4, Matroska, MPEG-TS, AVI, WAV, …)
• Extracts container/codec fields — duration, bitrate, resolution, frame rate, HDR
• Decodes EXIF, IPTC, XMP, ICC, C2PA embedded in photos and video
• Optionally decodes deep maker-notes from 14 camera vendors (Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus, Sony, Panasonic, …) via the exiftool-tables feature

Quick start

Parse a video file (memory-mapped — only the metadata regions are faulted in, not the entire file). Works the same for small JPEGs and multi-GB videos:

let meta = revelo::Metadata::from_file("video.mp4").unwrap();

for (key, value) in meta.general() {
    println!("{key} = {value}");
}
for (key, value) in meta.video() {
    println!("{key} = {value}");
}
for (key, value) in meta.audio() {
    println!("{key} = {value}");
}

Parse a photo from an in-memory buffer and read its EXIF tags:

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}");
}

Memory semantics

Method	I/O model	Memory use	Use when
Metadata::from_file	Memory-mapped (mmap)	OS pages in only accessed regions	Local files — tiny, large, or huge
Metadata::from_bytes	Already in memory (borrowed)	Zero copy from the caller’s buffer	Bytes from a network fetch, embedded asset, or include_bytes!
Metadata::from_file_owned	Reads entire file into Vec<u8>	Proportional to file size	Fallback when mmap is unavailable or caller wants ownership

For 99% of use cases: use from_file for files, from_bytes for buffers. Both extract the same metadata; the difference is how the bytes reach the parser.

Key types

Type / function	What it does
Metadata	Main entry point — parse a file or buffer, iterate streams
Metadata::from_file	Parse from a file path (memory-mapped)
Metadata::from_bytes	Parse from an in-memory &[u8]
Metadata::from_file_owned	Parse from a file path (full file read, fallback)
MediaFile	Low-level byte-parsing engine (FileAnalyze alias)
revelo_core::stream::StreamCollection	Raw per-kind stream store
revelo_core::stream::StreamKind	Discriminant for General/Video/Audio/Exif/…

exiftool-tables feature

By default revelo uses hand-written clean-room maker-note tables (BSD-2-Clause). Enable the exiftool-tables feature for ExifTool-grade depth:

[dependencies]
revelo = { version = "0.5", features = ["exiftool-tables"] }

License caveat: exiftool-tables pulls in revelo-exiftool-tables (GPL-1.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl, © Phil Harvey). A binary or library built with this feature is subject to those terms.

Re-exports

pub use revelo_core;

pub use revelo_dispatcher;

pub use revelo_parsers_tag;

Structs

Metadata

Parsed metadata from a media file.

Type Aliases

MediaFile

The engine that reads bytes and produces metadata.