Editing metadata of H.264 MP4 videos

Question

Windows lets me edit some metadata fields of H.264 encoded videos, such as “Title” and “Comments.” Such data seem to be preserved inside the file itself, which is what I want.

Some applications make use of a field called “Description,” and I have found no way of adding this metadata field to H.264 videos. iTunes lets users edit this video field, but unfortunately doesn’t seem able to process H.264 MP4 videos at all.

What’s the most effective approach when it comes to editing metadata of already existing H.264-encoded MP4 files?

Answer 1

Most of the fields can be filled in using MP4Box as follows:

MP4Box -itags writer=me file.mp4

You can have a list of supported tags with MP4Box -tag-list. If some fields are not supported, file an issue.

Answer 2

As of version 11.39, exiftool has the ability to edit tags in MP4/Mov files. To edit the tags listed in this question, the command would be

exiftool -Title="New Title" -Description="New Description" -Comment="New Comment" file.mp4

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

See exiftool's Quicktime Tag page for a list of the tags that exiftool can edit.