How to determine the length of multiple MP4 video files on a MacOS system

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: January 31, 2024

If you ever need to determine the length of one or more video files (MP4 files) on a MacOS system, I can confirm that this ffmpeg command works:

for f in `ls FINAL*mp4`; do
    ffmpeg -i $f 2>&1 | grep "Duration"| cut -d ' ' -f 4 | sed s/,//;
done

Note that you may have to install ffmpeg first.

When you run it from the MacOS Terminal, you will see output like this:

00:03:15.07
00:18:09.83
00:11:34.03
00:06:47.83
00:05:33.13

That output is hours, minutes, seconds, and then that last column.