Edit MP4 Metadata with exiftool

Question

I have an MP4 file with Title metadata:

exiftool movie.mp4

Which gives:

Audio Bits Per Sample           : 16
Audio Sample Rate               : 48000
Handler Type                    : Metadata
Handler Vendor ID               : Apple
Title                           : Movie Title

I want to completely remove this Title metadata. I have tried overwriting the title:

exiftool -Title="" movie.mp4
exiftool -Title= movie.mp4
exiftool -Title="" -overwrite_original movie.mp4

The command takes awhile to execute, but exits with:

0 image files updated
1 image files unchanged

What am I doing incorrectly? How can I view what the exiftool error is? How can I remove the Title attribute? According to the man page, MP4 seems to be a supported file type.

Thanks so much for your help!

Vanthe

Answer 1

Since the time of the original question, exiftool, as of ver 11.39, has gained the ability to create/edit a larger range of MP4/MOV metadata tags (see Quicktime tags page). To remove the Title tag from a video the original commands that @James Taylor used will work:

exiftool -Title= movie.mp4

Or in batch with

exiftool -Title= /path/to/files/

These commands creates backup files. Add -overwrite_original to suppress the creation of backup files. Add -r to recurse into subdirectories.

You can also use ffmpeg with a command similar to this, based upon this StackOverflow answer

ffmpeg -i InputFile -c copy -metadata title= OutputFile

But as is, I believe this command will remove all metadata. I think that -map_metadata 0 needs to be added to the command to keep the remaining metadata, but unsure of where.

Eudemonics

Yep! [QuickTime] Title So do you know of any alternative for editing this attribute? QuickTime does not have appear to have a CLI nor even a GUI option for this. Thanks again! – Vanthe

See edit on original answer. I think ffmpeg can do it for you. – Eudemonics

Awesome! This process seems to have worked. Thank you so much! – Vanthe