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Re: Duration attachment field (video files)

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Quentin_Guestin
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Hello!

I’m looking for a few hours to get the duration of a video file in an attachment field. Is it possible?

Thank you!

Quentin

1 Solution

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ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

As @Justin_Barrett said, you can not get the duration of a video file from Airtable. This information is never provided by Airtable. (Although other metadata about video files is available via Airtable’s API, such as the size of the video in bytes.)

However, other apps like Google Drive & Dropbox do make the duration of a video file (in milliseconds) accessible via their APIs.

So, as Justin said, you could write your own custom JavaScript script to access this duration information from the Google Drive URL or the Dropbox URL, using their APIs. (Justin is also a fantastic script writer, so you might be able to hire him to help you create these JavaScripts for your Airtable base.)

Alternatively, if you don’t want to write any code at all, you can just do what I’ve done for other clients in the past who have needed this functionality:

They simply upload the video file to Google Drive first, and then I have Integromat automatically move the file into Airtable and grab the duration of the video file at the same time. Then, Integromat automatically types in the duration of the video into Airtable. (Integromat is a low-code/no-code automation platform that doesn’t require any coding knowledge.)

p.s. I am a professional Airtable consultant and an Integromat Partner, and the Integromat link contains my personal referral code. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert consultant to help, please feel free to contact me through my website at ScottWorld.com.

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3 Replies 3

Unfortunately attachment metadata isn’t accessible in Airtable. There might be a way to use the real file’s URL—which can be obtained either via a formula field or through a script—and get the data that way, but I haven’t tried going that far with attachment inspection, so I can’t say for sure.

ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

As @Justin_Barrett said, you can not get the duration of a video file from Airtable. This information is never provided by Airtable. (Although other metadata about video files is available via Airtable’s API, such as the size of the video in bytes.)

However, other apps like Google Drive & Dropbox do make the duration of a video file (in milliseconds) accessible via their APIs.

So, as Justin said, you could write your own custom JavaScript script to access this duration information from the Google Drive URL or the Dropbox URL, using their APIs. (Justin is also a fantastic script writer, so you might be able to hire him to help you create these JavaScripts for your Airtable base.)

Alternatively, if you don’t want to write any code at all, you can just do what I’ve done for other clients in the past who have needed this functionality:

They simply upload the video file to Google Drive first, and then I have Integromat automatically move the file into Airtable and grab the duration of the video file at the same time. Then, Integromat automatically types in the duration of the video into Airtable. (Integromat is a low-code/no-code automation platform that doesn’t require any coding knowledge.)

p.s. I am a professional Airtable consultant and an Integromat Partner, and the Integromat link contains my personal referral code. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert consultant to help, please feel free to contact me through my website at ScottWorld.com.

Quentin_Guestin
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

This is very interesting, thank you. I will try to look at integromat for possible solutions. I’m curious :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

I’ll be sure to come back to you both if I need to.