How do you get Video Duration in Box.com API for a file?

Question

I'm looking to get video durations for a list of box.com files but can't find anywhere in the API how to do it. I'm needing this for lots of videos uploaded to Box so I'm hoping to grab the video duration (you can see it on the video preview) instead of downloading the entire file. I'm working in Python

Answer 1

This question has been puzzling me for some time, to somehow read the length of the video without downloading the entire file.

Doing some tests with the pymediainfo library, came up with this:

import time
from boxsdk import JWTAuth, Client
from pymediainfo import MediaInfo


video_folder_id = '191494027812'
user_rb_id = '18622116055'

def main():
    auth = JWTAuth.from_settings_file('.jwt.config.json')
    auth.authenticate_instance()
    client = Client(auth)

    user = client.user(user_rb_id).get()
    print(f"User: {user.id}:{user.name}")

    user_client = client.as_user(user)


    folder = user_client.folder(video_folder_id).get()
    print(f"Folder: {folder.id}:{folder.name}")

    items = folder.get_items()
    for item in items:
        print(f"Item: {item.id}:{item.name}:{item.type}")
        if item.type != 'file':
            continue

        item_url = item.get_download_url()
        # print(f"URL {item_url}")

        tic_download = time.perf_counter()
        media_info = MediaInfo.parse(item_url)
        print(f"MediaInfo w/ URL time: {time.perf_counter() - tic_download} seconds")

        tic_download = time.perf_counter()

        with open('./tmp/tpm_'+item.name, 'wb') as tmp_file:
            item.download_to(tmp_file)

        media_info = MediaInfo.parse('./tmp/tpm_'+item.name)
        print(f"MediaInfo w/ download time: {time.perf_counter() - tic_download} seconds")

With the following results:

Folder: 191494027812:Video Samples
Item: 1121082178302:BigBuckBunny.mp4:file
MediaInfo w/ URL time: 3.798498541000299 seconds
MediaInfo w/ download time: 21.247453375020996 seconds
Done

Looking at the time it takes to run the MediaInfo.parse(), it seems it doesn't need to download the entire file.

Try this approach on a small sample for your use case, to see if it works for you.