Are fdx, aac, m3u, m4u supported? And how does exiftool behave if exif missing?

[Enrico]

Hello dear people!
Very new to this tool and I have a couple of questions if possible.
First of all, I am interested in knowing whether the following formats are supported, since I didn't find them in the list of the supported ones: fdx, aac, m3u, m4u

Second question: is exiftool still able to identify at least the main metadata (dimensions and format) of an image even when the exif section is missing from the item itself?

[StarGeek]

Second question: is exiftool still able to identify at least the main metadata (dimensions and format) of an image even when the exif section is missing from the item itself?

Yes.  You can easily check this out by removing all data from a file (-All=) and then running exiftool again.

Code Select Expand

C:\>exiftool -G1 -a -s -*width* -*height* -*size* y:\!temp\Test4.jpg
[File]          ImageWidth                      : 1749
[File]          ImageHeight                     : 1205
[System]        FileSize                        : 445 kB
[Composite]     ImageSize                       : 1749x1205

[Phil Harvey]

First question:  Try running ExifTool on these files to see.  ExifTool may read metadata from them if they are based on a supported format.

- Phil

[StarGeek]

I believe m3u and m4u are simply text files and will probably show up as such.

I only have 1 aac file and it shows up as unknown.

[Hubert]

Code Select Expand

hubert@hubert ~ % exiftool /Users/hubert/Documents/Exporting\ Files.fdx -g1 -s
---- ExifTool ----
ExifToolVersion                 : 12.43
---- System ----
FileName                        : Exporting Files.fdx
Directory                       : /Users/hubert/Documents
FileSize                        : 11 kB
FileModifyDate                  : 2022:10:14 22:14:54+01:00
FileAccessDate                  : 2022:10:14 22:21:38+01:00
FileInodeChangeDate             : 2022:10:14 22:21:37+01:00
FilePermissions                 : -rw-r--r--
---- File ----
FileType                        : XML
FileTypeExtension               : xml
MIMEType                        : application/xml
---- XMP ----
FinalDraftDocumentType          : Script
FinalDraftVersion               : 2
FinalDraftElementSettingsType   : Scene Heading
FinalDraftElementSettingsFontSpecBackground: #FFFFFFFFFFFF
FinalDraftElementSettingsFontSpecColor: #000000000000
FinalDraftElementSettingsFontSpecFont: Courier Final Draft
FinalDraftElementSettingsFontSpecSize: 12
FinalDraftElementSettingsFontSpecStyle: AllCaps
FinalDraftElementSettingsFontSpecAdornmentStyle: 0
FinalDraftElementSettingsFontSpecRevisionID: 0
FinalDraftElementSettingsParagraphSpecAlignment: Left
FinalDraftElementSettingsParagraphSpecSpacing: 1
FinalDraftElementSettingsParagraphSpecSpaceBefore: 24
... snip

(this is an .fdx file generated by Scrivener 2.)

[Enrico]

Very sorry for the late reply and thanks everyone!

Running exiftool on a file as Phil suggested indeed is a way to see whether a format is supported or not. However some base files, in my experience, may fall into another format parser.For example (don't get what I say for granted cause I don't remember if these 2 were exactly the formats) I experienced a parser where .mov files were not supported and they were falling into the .mp3 scenario. So, something was coming back but not the whole thing nor correct. That's why I was curious to know if those formats were really supported    And I thank you all for the precious answers!

[StarGeek]

I experienced a parser where .mov files were not supported and they were falling into the .mp3 scenario.

That seems unlikely, as the formats are pretty different.  Maybe it was returned as m4a or m4v?

If a MOV files was identified as an MP3, Phil would probably want to see an example in order to fix the problem.

[Phil Harvey]

The identification of MP3 is weak, so it is certainly possible that unknown files may be identified as MP3.  But MP3 is the worst one I think.  Most other file formats have stronger magic numbers.

This is the order in which ExifTool tests the file format.  MP3 is near the end of the list so that other file formats with stronger magic numbers will be tested first.

                JPEG EXV CRW DR4 TIFF GIF MRW RAF X3F JP2 PNG MIE MIFF PS PDF
                PSD XMP BMP BPG PPM RIFF AIFF ASF MOV MPEG Real SWF PSP FLV OGG
                FLAC APE MPC MKV MXF DV PMP IND PGF ICC ITC FLIR FLIF FPF LFP
                HTML VRD RTF FITS XCF DSS QTIF FPX PICT ZIP GZIP PLIST RAR BZ2
                CZI TAR  EXE EXR HDR CHM LNK WMF AVC DEX DPX RAW Font RSRC M2TS
                MacOS PHP PCX DCX DWF DWG DXF WTV Torrent VCard LRI R3D AA PDB
                PFM2 MRC LIF JXL MOI ISO ALIAS JSON MP3 DICOM PCD ICO TXT

- Phil