ffprobe - How to limit stream info in the output to just the video bitrate?

Question

If I run FFprobe on an .MKV file, with the simplest syntax of FFprobe "TheMovie.mkv", there is a lot of output I don't need to see. How do I limit the output of FFprobe to just the bitrate of the video stream?

I've researched the resources http://ffmpeg.org/ffprobe-all.html#Synopsis and https://hintsandmemories.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/ffprobe-help-output/
but these are bit steep for a simple history teacher, so I ask forgiveness for not being able to figure that out. Please help.

Answer 1

You can use something like this:

ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream=bit_rate -of default=noprint_wrappers=1 "input.mp4"

Answer 2

It seems that using the -hide_banner switch is doing the trick.

So, the command is gonna be:

ffprobe -i "input.mkv" -hide_banner

It's not a perfect solution, because then the output would JUST be the line with the bitrate in kb/s, but this will do. Any answers which do that, I will give them my blessing. This works on files with videocodec V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC, and video codec avc1. No "bit_rate=N/A" output-duds whatsoever.

Remarks:

• This also works with ffmpeg, but it then starts to complain via error massage about output files.
• Combined with a registry hack plus a batch file, it's possible to add this to the context menu. Which I have done.
• Perhaps a modification could be made so it works on other formats like mp4 and avi, tóó, but that is for another time.