Retrieve ID3 info from m4a file in PHP

Question

I've written some PHP code to pull out ID3 tags from mp3 files. The next step is to do the same with .m4a files. From the research I've done it looks like most m4a files do not use ID3 but instead a format using 'atoms'.

Are there any PHP libraries out there that can parse out these 'atoms'? I've seen some C#/C++ ones but haven't been able to find any PHP ones. Any other guides or documentation would be great as well.

Answer 1

This project handles many audio files formats including AAC (M4A is AAC) : http://getid3.sourceforge.net/

hope this can help

Answer 2

I came across a similar issue not too long ago and had a look around. The simplest and most effective method (in my opinion) is to use the exec command in order to extra media information.

I based my code on a forum post over at longtailvideo http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/forums/jw-player/setup-issues-and-embedding/9448/how-to-get-video-duration-with-ffmpeg-and-php

<?php
$videofile="/var/video/user_videos/partofvideo.avi";
ob_start();
passthru("/usr/bin/ffmpeg -i \"{$videofile}\" 2>&1");
$duration = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

$search='/Duration: (.*?),/';
$duration=preg_match($search, $duration, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, 3);

echo $matches[1][0]; <-- Duration
?>

This script can handle anything ffmpeg is prepared to handle (which is a lot!) I know the above example illustrates a video file but, it will work fine with audio also