Organizing Videos and Music

Tobias — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:24:00 GMT

One of my New Years resolutions was to clean up and consolidate my music and video collections. To do that, I wanted to know stuff like video resolution so I could place HQ videos some place special, and likewise wanted to sort out music with poor sound quality. But how?

Of course you can fire up explorer, switch to details view, right-click the column header bar and add all the file properties you need. But what about PowerShell, and what about automating that sort of thing?

Hooking Into Windows Shell

To get to all the beefy file details like video resolution or artist information, PowerShell just needs to ask the right person. In this case, it is the Shell GUI which is responsible for the explorer details view. PowerShell can hook into the GUI by instantiating a Shell.Application object, and from there can access any file the way the explorer GUI is doing it when you click. Here is how you do it for one single file:

$path = 'C:\Users\Public\Music\Sample Music\Maid with the Flaxen Hair.mp3'
$shell = New-Object -COMObject Shell.Application
$folder = Split-Path $path
$file = Split-Path $path -Leaf
$shellfolder = $shell.Namespace($folder)
$shellfile = $shellfolder.ParseName($file)

What you now got is an object representing the file from the explorer GUI point of view ($shellfile) and the folder hosting it ($shellfolder). That's all you need to get going.

Getting File Details

To get the extended file attributes, there is a method called GetDetailsOf() which gets you the name of extended file attributes as well as their values. The attributes you get depend on the file type, so for a video file they may be different than let's say for a word document. This gets you the list of (localized) attribute names for the file you used:

0..287 | Foreach-Object { $shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($null, $_) }

To get a list of index numbers and their meaning, use this:

0..287 | Foreach-Object { '{0} = {1}' -f $_, $shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($null, $_) }

To get to the actual value of a property, use the index number and replace $null with $shellfile. So to get the Interpret (Artist), it turns out index number 216 is right:

$shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($shellfile, 216)

To find out the right index numbers, it's easier to filter out all empty stuff. This line reads only file attributes that are not empty:

0..287 | Where-Object { $shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($shellfile, $_) } |
Foreach-Object {
'{0} = {1} = {2}' -f $_,
$shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($null, $_),
$shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($shellfile, $_)
}

Organizing Multimedia Files

Now that you know how to get to extended attributes for one file, you can also get them for an entire directory full of files (or even entire structures of subfolders).

To do this, I created a pipeline filter called Add-FileDetails. You can use Dir (or Get-Childitem) to select the files and then pipe them into Add-FileDetails. This will add the extended file properties you need so you can then sort, group or filter based on those properties.

(don't bother typing or copy/pasting, simply download the below function here: http://powershell.com/cs/media/p/8948.aspx)

function Add-FileDetails {
param(
[Parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true)]
$fileobject,
$hash = @{Artists = 13; Album = 14; Year = 15; Genre = 16; Title = 21; Length = 27; Bitrate = 28}
)
begin {
$shell = New-Object -COMObject Shell.Application
}
process {
if ($_.PSIsContainer -eq $false) {
$folder = Split-Path $fileobject.FullName
$file = Split-Path $fileobject.FullName -Leaf
$shellfolder = $shell.Namespace($folder)
$shellfile = $shellfolder.ParseName($file)
Write-Progress 'Adding Properties' $fileobject.FullName
$hash.Keys |
ForEach-Object {
$property = $_
$value = $shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($shellfile, $hash.$property)
if ($value -as [Double]) { $value = [Double]$value }
$fileobject | Add-Member NoteProperty "Extended_$property" $value -force
}
}
$fileobject
}
}

By default, Add-FileDetails is fine-tuned to work with music files.

It adds various extended properties dealing with music, and this is how you would sort your entire music collection based on publication date:

$music = [system.Environment]::GetFolderPath('MyMusic')
$list = dir $music -Recurse | Add-FileDetails
$list | Where-Object { $_.Extended_Year } |
Sort-Object Extended_Year |
Select-Object Name, Extended_Year, Extended_Album, Extended_Artists

To actually check the extended properties Add-FileDetails appended, try this:

$list | Where-Object { $_.Extended_Year } |
Sort-Object Extended_Year | Select-Object Name, Extended_*

As you can see, Add-FileDetails appended each new property by "Extended_" which ensures that no property overwrites existing properties and also makes the new properties easier manageable.

Choosing Your Own Properties

Of course you can put Add-FileDetails to work on any extended property you like. Simply submit a hash table with the index numbers of the properties you are interested in. For example, to organize video files, you may find this set of properties valuable:

$hash = @{Title = 21;
Length = 27;
Bitrate = 28;
Compression = 277;
Datarate = 279;
Height=280;
Width=282;
Rate=281 }

So to analyze, sort and filter your video collection, try something like this:

$hash = @{ Length = 27; Height=280; Width=282}
$list = Dir c:\myvideos\ -recurse|
Add-FileDetails -hash $hash

$list | Where-Object { $_.Extended_Height } |
Sort-Object Extended_Width |
Select-Object Name, Extended_Width, Extended_Height, Extended_Length

Note though that reading large video file properties may take some time which is also the reason why Add-FileDetails is not automatically retrieving all and every extended property but rather allows you to pick the ones you are really going to use by using a hash table as shown above.

I sure hope I could inspire you a bit to play with PowerShell and get back going after all these celebrations lately.
Since extended properties exist for a multitude of file types, you can use them for many things including organizing office documents and more.

A happy & successful new PowerShell year to all of you,

Tobias

Microsoft MVP PowerShell Germany

P.S.
If you live in Germany or other parts of Europe and your company would like to set up a truly great PowerShell training, just contact me! I regularly train mid- to large-size companies. Trainings are always a blast with tons of real-world-examples and solutions. Here's how to get in touch with me: tobias.weltner@scriptinternals.de

Dreaming in PowerShell : Audio, Shell.Application

Organizing Videos and Music

Hooking Into Windows Shell

Getting File Details

Organizing Multimedia Files

Choosing Your Own Properties