Is there a way to get Exiftool to recursively scan the metadata of files embedded within files?

Question

Certain media formats can contain other entire media formats fully embedded.

I believe some image formats contain thumbnail images which are themselves full image files rather than just the bitmaps. Another example is that MP3 files can include full image files embedded within them for things such as album art. Those image files seem to be able to have their usual kinds of metadata in them.

I know Exiftool can recursively scan metadata formats within metadata formats, such as XMP within Jpeg Exif or MP3 ID3 metadata.

But so far I can't find a way to get it to also recursively scan the metadata of embedded files.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to do this? If not I'll go ahead and file a feature request (-:

Answer 1

Not directly, no. For a single embedded file, you could extract it with the -b (binary) option and pipe the output to another instance of exiftool (see this exiftool forum post for an example).

In some cases, such as video or pdf files, you can get a bit more data by adding the -ee (extractEmbedded) option, but that still doesn't give full processing of embedded files.