Feature Request: Video Support in V1.0

[norbertwg]

Seems, that video support, which was available in 0.27.4 has been removed in 1.0.0. CMakeLists.txt no longer contains EXIV2_ENABLE_VIDEO and exiv2.exe I built on Windows does not show XMP-tags in a video (which was working in 0.27.4). I hope this is just an interim status, because I would really miss it.

[hassec]

AFAIK, yes, exiv2 video support has been dropped in v1.0.0 and was marked deprecated before that.
This all goes back to way before I joined, see e.g. #1562, #692 #617 and other connected issues & PRs

Not sure if supporting video in exiv2 is in scope.

[norbertwg]

Thanks for the fast response. I had now a closer look and recognized, that in the past I missed the hints, that video will be depricated. I am not happy with this decision to remove functionality, but there will have been reasons for this.
Is there hope, that it will be included again some time in the future? If I remember well, once there was even changing meta data in videos on the road map.

[hassec]

Is there hope, that it will be included again some time in the future?

I guess the most honest answer I can give to this is: "who knows !? " 😅

Of course, it's possible, but the main hurdle is the maintenance burden. And with the limited amount of people power we have, the focus is on getting the image metadata part ready for v1.0.

I took the freedom of slightly renaming the title.
I'd suggest we leave this issue open as "feature request" such that it's easy to find and people can give a 👍 on your request to vote for it.
And maybe there will even be somebody who's going to be willing to donate this time to work on it 🙏

[norbertwg]

thanks for changing it to feature request

[1div0]

@norbertwg could you, please, describe your video related use case in detail? Maybe we will find the common ground after all.

[norbertwg]

I have written a WinForms-program whose main puprose is to see and change meta data of digitial images. As versions from exiv2 until 0.27.4 also support reading meta data from videos, my programs uses this to display meta data of videos. So simply, the use case is to support videos as it was before.
The videos I have, have only XMP data, not sure if other videos have Exif and IPTC. So the basic requirement for me is to read XMP data. The second use case is to allow changing XMP data, e.g. information like copyright, subject, title.

[benmccann]

Dropping stuff like ssh support and .eps support makes sense. I'm saddened that video support was removed though. Handling only some of the files produced by cameras seems like a big loss and quite the handicap.

[benmccann]

@hassec I wonder why restore only quicktimevideo in #2337? riffvideo and matroskavideo seem quite popular too in my experience. Is it mostly just a straight restore that they could be added as well or is there a lot of adaptation needed? Doing them them one at-a-time for ease of implementation and code review totally makes sense, but I was curious about the longer-term plans. Thanks again for all your work!

[hassec]

@benmccann Main reason was time. I was on vacation and had a bit of time so figured I'd give quicktimevideo a shot since that's the one that was needed for the posted video file.

Ideally we would revive the other two as well, but I need to look into how much effort that needs.