How to get video file duration from video URL

Question

I am working on a C# application where I need to get the duration of a video file from a given URL. The video files are hosted online, and I need to fetch their durations programmatically.

I’ve searched online but haven’t found a clear solution for doing this in C#. Most of the examples I found deal with using 3rd party libraries. Could someone guide me on how to achieve this without any library?

Here is what I’ve tried so far: MediaInfo Library: FFMpeg: HttpClient:

Code Snippet:

using System;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
class Program
{
   static async Task Main(string[] args)
   {
       string videoUrl = "https://example.com/video.mp4";
       using (HttpClient client = new HttpClient())
       {
           HttpResponseMessage response = await client.GetAsync(videoUrl);
           if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
           {
               
               byte[] videoData = await response.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync();
               
           }
       }
   }
}

Answer 1

There are two ways I can suggest you to get the video duration of a video file from URL.

1. Using C#
2. Using Javascript (In case of a web application and you want it be generated on the fly)

Using C# (Need to include shell object dll)

string VideoDuration = string.Empty;

Thread thread = new Thread(() => { VideoDuration = GetVideoDuration(videoPath.Replace("/", "\\")); });
thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
thread.Start();
thread.Join();
thread.Abort();

[STAThread] // Add STAThread attribute here
public static string GetVideoDuration(string filepath)
{
    string formatedduration = "";

    // Create Shell32 Shell object
    Shell shell = new ShellClass();

    // Get the folder that contains the video file
    Folder folder = shell.NameSpace(System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(filepath));

    // Get the video file
    FolderItem folderItem = folder.ParseName(System.IO.Path.GetFileName(filepath));

    // Get the duration property
    string duration = folder.GetDetailsOf(folderItem, 27); // 27 is the index of the "Duration" property

    formatedduration = GetTimeFormat(duration);

    return formatedduration;
}


private static string GetTimeFormat(string timeformat)
{

    // Split the time format string into hours, minutes, and seconds
    string[] parts = timeformat.Split(':');

    // Parse hours, minutes, and seconds
    int hours = int.Parse(parts[0]);
    int minutes = int.Parse(parts[1]);
    int seconds = int.Parse(parts[2]);

    // Construct TimeSpan object
    TimeSpan timeSpan = new TimeSpan(hours, minutes, seconds);

    string formattedTime = "";

    if (timeSpan.Hours != 0)
    {
        formattedTime += $"{hours}hr{(hours != 1 ? "s" : "")} ";
    }
    if (timeSpan.Minutes != 0)
    {
        formattedTime += $"{minutes}min";
    }
    if (timeSpan.Seconds != 0)
    {
        formattedTime += $"{seconds}sec";
    }

    return formattedTime;
}

Using Javascript

<video id="videoId" width="1920" height="1080" controls>
  <source src="yourVideoURL.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>

<script>
let videoTag = document.getElementById("videoId");
alert(vidTag.duration);
</script>