How To Create .nfo Files [Windows, Linux and Mac OSX]

MediaInfo is a free, open source and multi-platform (works on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX) application which supplies technical and tag information about a video or audio file, which we are going to use to create .nfo files.

What information can I get from MediaInfo?

• General: title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration...
• Video: codec, aspect, fps, bitrate...
• Audio: codec, sample rate, channels, language, bitrate...
• Text: language of subtitle
• Chapters: number of chapters, list of chapters

DivX, XviD, H263, H.263, H264, x264, ASP, AVC, iTunes, MPEG-1, MPEG1, MPEG-2, MPEG2, MPEG-4, MPEG4, MP4, M4A, M4V, QuickTime, RealVideo, RealAudio, RA, RM, MSMPEG4v1, MSMPEG4v2, MSMPEG4v3, VOB, DVD, WMA, VMW, ASF, 3GP, 3GPP, 3GP2

What format (container) does MediaInfo support?

• Video: MKV, OGM, AVI, DivX, WMV, QuickTime, Real, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DVD (VOB)...
  (Codecs: DivX, XviD, MSMPEG4, ASP, H.264, AVC...)
• Audio: OGG, MP3, WAV, RA, AC3, DTS, AAC, M4A, AU, AIFF...
• Subtitles: SRT, SSA, ASS, SAMI...

Download MediaInfo [Downloads for Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat, Mandriva, Fedora, CentOS, openSUSE, and ArchLinux]

MediaInfo comes with a very easy to use GUI for Windows which, unfortunately is incomplete for Linux so Windows users can just use that, and I'm going to cover how to create the .nfo file in Linux using command-line. In Windows, just export the info to a .txt file and rename it to .nfo.

Using MediaInfo in Linux

Actually, it's quite easy to use. Just open a terminal and navigate to the folder containing the file you want to create the .NFO file for. Then, type this:

mediainfo --LogFile=nfo_file_name.nfo movie.avi

(presuming you want to create a NFO file for an avi).

Just replace the text in bold with the appropriate values and that's it:

Here is a NFO file I just created.

[via paraisolinux]