Workaround for broken(?) m4a files from ffmpeg, was Re: [PATCH] Output AAC as M4A for iTunes with metadata tags

[dinkypumpkin]

On 14/04/2011 21:47, richard wrote:
> On Tue Apr 12 17:38 dinkypumpkin wrote:
>
> Do you know of a similar utility to mp4dump that can print out a
> readable representation of an mp3 atom tree of mp3 files, and a utility
> like AtomicParlsey that prints an atom tree of mp3 files?
>
> I'm using Ubuntu.

Well, the term of art for MP3 files is "ID3 frame" rather than "atom". 
To list the frames in a MP3 file, you can used the id3v2 utility (id3v2 
package in Ubuntu):

$ id3v2 -l file.mp3

However, it only understands frames up to ID3v2.3, so won't show info 
from a file with ID3v2.4 frames.

I use the Python Mutagen library (python-mutagen package in Ubuntu), 
which installs an id3v2 work-alike utility called mid3v2.  To list frames:

$ mid3v2 -l file.mp3

mid3v2 understands all versions, but be warned that it writes ONLY 
ID3v2.4.  Shouldn't be a problem unless you put those files into Windows 
Media Player.  Mutagen, of course, requires Python, but if you only need 
the mid3v2 utility you don't need to dig into Python itself.