How To Read Metadata From Your Files

How To Read Metadata From Your Images, Documents, Videos and Audio Files And Create A Printable List.

Whenever you have to list folder contents or the files in a directory, metadata might be of importance. This applies in particular when displaying an overview of documents, listing your personal MP3 collection or printing the complete directory structure of your image, audio or video files.

What exactly is metadata?

For example, you would like to list your complete music collection of MP3 files in a folder including song title, artist, album, year recorded, length of song and so on. When creating a directory listing of your documents the file list might include author, date created, date modified, number of pages, number of words and characters etc. and in the folder listing of your image files you might want to include the date and time taken, location of your photo, image format, image size and so on.  

All this information is called “metadata” and is used to describe, organize and archive digital media. The metadata or meta tags are very helpful for searching and archiving data.

Some standard formats of metadata are  Exif, IPTC, ID3 tag which are particularly used for image, audio and video files.

How to print folder and directory contents in Windows including metadata

The software Directory List & Print Pro enables simply and fast listing, printing and exporting folder and directory contents including metadata and other file information. In order to list and print the files of a folder according to your needs Directory List & Print Pro reads the meta information from your files. The metadata is selectable and grouped in Exif, IPTC, AUDIO, VIDEO and DOCUMENT tags.

Watch the video below “How To Create A Printable List Of All MP3 Files In A Directory” to learn how easy it is to list folder and directory contents including metadata.

There is innumerable metadata and file information either being defined at the time when a file is created or being added manually to the file at a later time. In addition to the standard meta tags in Exif and IPTC there is a large number of individually defined tags by software manufacturers (digital camera software by Adobe etc.).

Directory List & Print Pro supports “core” and “extended” metadata in Exif and IPTC, AUDIO, VIDEO tags as well as numerous file information of Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel) and Open Document Formats (OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Google Docs, IBM Docs) and PDF. The readable meta tags by Directory List & Print Pro are continuously updated and added according to customer requirements. For detailed information about updates and amendments visit our change log.

Metadata in Exif

Exif-Tags “Exchangeable Image File Format” is a standard tag in order to add information such as date taken, time taken, location as well as technical specifications as shutter speed, focal length, ISO sensitivity etc. to image files in the JPEG and TIFF format.

For more detailed information about Exif data visit the post on http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/exif-photo-data-find-understand/ by Tim Brookes

Directory List & Print reads among others following Exif tags in the image files:

Exif User Comment
Exif Rating Value
Exif Rating Percent
Exif Software
Exif Camera Manufacturer
Exif Camera Model
Exif Focal Length
Exif Aperture F-Stop
Exif Exposure Time/Shutter Speed
Exif Sensitivity ISO
Exif Color Space

Metadata in IPTC

The metadata in IPTC  (International Press Telecommunications Council)  is used in various media such as text, photos, graphics, audios or videos and is especially designed to describe the media in more details by adding keywords, headlines, comments and copyright notices. The metadata in IPTC format is widely used by stock photo agencies and image archives.

Detailed information about the IPTC standard you find on the website iptc.org.

Directory List & Print Pro allows to create file lists including following metadata in IPTC:

IPTC Time created
IPTC Country
IPTC Sublocation
IPTC Source
IPTC Editor

Metadata for Audio Files

The ID3 tag is the standard format for metadata in MPEG3 files. More details about metadata in audio files provides Rob Schlette on The Pro Audio Files.

Directory List & Print Pro reads among others following metadata in audio files as  MP3,  Ogg and  VMA:

AUDIO Publisher
AUDIO Copyright
AUDIO Comment
AUDIO Length
AUDIO Beats Per Minute BPM
AUDIO Sampling Rate KHZ
AUDIO Bit Rate Kbps
AUDIO Bit Rate Mode
AUDIO Format

Metadata for Video Files

Detailed information about metadata for video provides Video University.

In order to list and print directory contents of your MP4, MPEG, FlashVideo, AVI, DIVX, XVID etc., Directory List & Print Pro reads following metadata in videos:

VIDEO Movie Series
VIDEO Movie Season
VIDEO Director
VIDEO Producer
VIDEO Publisher
VIDEO Subject
VIDEO Description
VIDEO Keywords
VIDEO Copyright
VIDEO Comment
VIDEO Application

Metadata in Office Documents

There is metadata in Office documents such as PDF, Word, Excel, OpenOffice, LibreOffice as well as in executable files as EXEs and DLLs.

DOCUMENT Date created
DOCUMENT Time created
DOCUMENT Date modified
DOCUMENT Time modified
DOCUMENT Modified by
DOCUMENT Revision
DOCUMENT Encryption
DOCUMENT Software
DOCUMENT Version