What Is Metadata: How to Download Metadata for Videos?

When you upload a video to a website or social media platform, the website will often save metadata about the video. This includes the length, title, author, and source.

But what is metadata? Why is it essential? How do you access it? And how should you use it? We'll answer all of these questions and more in this article. We'll also show you how to download your videos' metadata.

Section 1: What is Metadata?

1.1 Metadata Definition

Metadata is the data that is behind other data, which in this case is content data. Meanwhile, video metadata is the data that is behind videos. It is information that helps a user or computer figure out what a video is about. For example, a video's metadata includes the size, length, and date it was created. There are many more types of visible and hidden metadata that can help you figure out what the video is about.

Metadata is important for all types of files and content. And you can see how useful it is if a video has metadata, the reason is that a video is a complicated type of content that combines sound and pictures into a single asset. With metadata, the creator can add more descriptive details to the video. Thus, making the video can easily be searched on search engines.

1.2 The Importance of Metadata for Video

By understanding how a search query works in a search engine, it is simple to understand the importance of video metadata. Written information offers a particular level of simplicity, allowing it to be easily searchable by using specific search terms. In contrast, a video not only includes two different types of information (audio and images), but it is also a type of "flowing" content, making it much more difficult to identify, especially among a large number of files and content.

Video metadata provides video content with the context it needs, making it easier for people to find what they're looking for. It lets you navigate within the video, like searching inside a written document.

1.3 Data Inside Video Metadata

There are three pieces of data that are essential for video metadata.

1.3.1 Video Title

Even though it may not seem important, the title you give your video will affect whether search engines find it and how they list it. Think of this as the book's label: the more it describes its content in a way that is easy for search engines and internet users to understand, the better.

Also, a good title will help people decide whether or not they want to watch the video. If you give your video the right title, you might get more people to watch it. That could lead to more people staying on your page longer.

1.3.2 Video Description

What you include in your video description will appear in search engine results as text. It also helps search engines identify and show your video when similar terms or keywords are searched for online. The best approach to ensure that your video is discovered is to optimize these keywords. In other words, use commonly searched-for keywords.

1.3.3 Video Tags

Tags (or meta tags) are an additional method for helping search engines and users discover your videos. Tags differ from keywords because they do not appear on search engine results pages. However, search engines factor them while indexing your website or video.

1.4 Types of Video Metadata

There are three types of video metadata that you need to know to make assets more discoverable.

• Descriptive Video Metadata

Descriptive video metadata includes information about the assets that can be used to find and identify them later. Because there are many ways to describe an asset, descriptive video metadata is the most well-known and is usually considered the most robust. Descriptive video metadata examples:
1. Physical and Technical Attributes (such as file dimensions, color codes, or file types)
2. Bibliographic/Added properties (such as descriptions, titles, and relevant keywords)

• Administrative Video Metadata

Administrative video metadata is the metadata that has to do with rights and intellectual property because it gives information about the owner and where and how it can be used. An example of administrative video metadata is a Creative Commons license.

• Structural Video Metadata

Structural video metadata is the data about how an asset is put together, like how a book's pages are put together to make chapters. Structural video metadata examples:
1. Video chapters
2. Indexes
3. Table of contents

1.5 Is There a Metadata Viewer?

Yes, there are many softwares designed to help you find and view metadata without advanced computer skills, such as:

1.5.1 MediaInfo

MediaInfo is a software that automatically extracts metadata from files. Despite its powerful ability to identify and show video metadata, it can also manage other sorts of media files. MediaInfo is available on Linux, Microsoft Windows, and macOS. Follow the steps below to use MediaInfo.

• Download and install MediaInfo.
• Right-click a video file on your computer and select MediaInfo.

• After that, the MediaInfo software will launch and reveal the file's metadata.

1.5.2 Metadata2go

Metadata2go is a metadata viewer that requires no installation to use. It's a cloud-based service that lets you upload the relevant video file and obtain its metadata. If you don't have much space to install any app on your hard drive and just need some quick information about a video file, you can use Metadata2go. Here are the steps for using Metadata2go.

• Visit the Metadata2go website.
• After that, drag and drop your video file to the purple square in the middle. You can also click the "Browse" button to locate and select your file.

• After completing the upload process, you should see your video file metadata.

1.5.3 Manual Approach for Windows and Mac

Here's how to inspect the metadata of video files on Windows if you don't want to use a third-party app.

• Find the video file that you want to inspect.
• After that, right-click the video file and click on "Properties".

• In the "General" tab, you will find basic video metadata, such as the file size and creation date.
• Next, click the "Details" tab. This will display details such as the title, length, and frame rate.

For Mac, follow the steps below.

• Locate the video file.
• After that, press the Command + I button on your keyboard.
• At this point, you should see the metadata on your video file.

Section 2: How to Download Metadata for Videos?

After learning about what is metadata and metadata viewer, in this section, we will show you how to download them. You can download metadata with StreamFab.

StreamFab is a streaming video downloader suite that allows you to download streaming videos from many paid and free streaming services and video platforms, such as YouTube, Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, and more.

In this section, we will use one of the StreamFab products, StreamFab YouTube Downloader. It allows you to download and save online videos with metadata.

Before using StreamFab YouTube Downloader Pro, make sure you have met the requirements.

• Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7 (32/64-bit) / macOS 10.10 - 12.4
• Core 2 Quad or above
• 2GB of RAM (Windows), 4GB of RAM (macOS)
• 10GB of free hard disk space

Below are the steps for using this YouTube video downloader

• Firstly, download StreamFab YouTube Downloader.
• After the download is completed, launch the file and follow the on-screen instructions until the installation finishes.
• After that, choose the "YouTube" menu on the left.

• Next, from the card list, pick the card that you want to download the video from. We will choose YouTube for this example.
• Find the video that you would like to download its metadata. After you have found the video, let it play for a while until you see the "Analyzing Video URL…" message.
• At this point, you should see the orange button at the bottom. Click on the button to start the download process.

• Your download will be displayed in the "Downloading" tab, and when it is finished, it will be shown in the "Downloaded" tab.
• In the "Downloaded" tab, you can locate your downloaded video by clicking the folder icon. Your video will be saved in MP4 format along with its metadata.

Conclusion

After reading the above content, you should know what is metadata and why it is important. Metadata is information that is included inside data, for example, a file containing the details about the video, such as the video title, description, and tags. Metadata helps people find what they are looking for in search engines.

There are third-party softwares that can help you to view video metadata like MediaInfo and Metadata2go. You can also view it without third-party software on Windows and Mac. If you want to download video along with metadata, you can use downloaders from StreamFab, like StreamFab YouTube Downloader.