[FFmpeg-user] Option to make ffprobe output easily parseable by computer programs

[Leo Izen]

Hello,

If I'm writing an easy-to-use GUI for FFmpeg in a language that can't 
easily link to the libav* libraries (say Java), then it seems easiest to 
use ffmpeg/ffprobe executables as a backend. However, ffprobe output is 
designed to be human-readable and not machine-readable, so parsing 
through the information is much more difficult for computer programs to 
do. The XZ Utils have an option --robot that makes the xz tools print 
information in an easily parseable fashion, where it systemically 
separates numbers by tab characters and newlines, without making 
human-readable calculations such as figuring out the width of a tab 
character and using two if appropriate.

Does ffprobe (or ffmpeg -i) have an option to print out easily 
machine-parseable data (such as a one-item-per-line list of info or XML)?

Thanks,

Leo Izen