Mediaextract

Extract media files that are embedded within other files.

Setup

make builddir
make BUILD_TYPE=release
sudo make install BUILD_TYPE=release PREFIX=/usr

The default BUILD_TYPE is debug.

Cross compile for Windows (uses i686-w64-mingw32-gcc):

make TARGET=win32 builddir
make TARGET=win32

Or (uses x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc):

make TARGET=win64 builddir
make TARGET=win64

Warning: This program only works correctly on platforms that allow unaligned memory access (e.g. x86 and ARM, although it might be quite slow on the latter).

Note: 32bit binaries can only process 2 GB of a file at once. The rest of bigger files will be ignored. You need to run this program several times with different --offset values to process such a file whole.

This also means that using a 32bit binary extracted files can never be larger than 2 GB.

This is because mediaextract uses mmap to read files, which maps files to memory. On 32bit platforms the address space of the main memory is simply not big enough. 64bit binaries can read up to 8 EB (8 Exabytes) at once.

Usage

mediaextract [option...] <filename> [<filename> ...]

Examples

Extract .wav, .aif and .ogg (might actually be .ogg, .opus or .ogm) files from the file data.bin and store them in the ~/Music directory.

mediaextract -f riff,aiff,ogg -o ~/Music data.bin

This will then write files like such into ~/Music:

data.bin_00000000.ogg
data.bin_00FFB2E3.wav
data.bin_01F3CD45.aif

The hexadecimal number in the written file names give the offset where in the data file the audio file was found.

Extract .mp3, .mp2 and .mp1 files (with or without ID3v2 tags). The mpg123 option yields a lot of false positives because there is no nice way to unambigiously detect MPEG files. These false positives are however usually very small, so using the --min-size option one can hopefully extract only real MPEG files.

mediaextract -f id3v2,mpg123 --min-size=100k -o ~/Music data.bin

Options

  -h, --help             Print this help message.
  -v, --version          Print program version.
  -q, --quiet            Do not print status messages.
  -s, --simulate         Don't write any output files.
  -o, --output=DIR       Directory where extracted files should be written. (default: ".")
  -a, --filename=FORMAT  Format string for the file names.
                         (default: "{filename}_{offset}.{ext}")

                         Supported variables:

                           filename   Filename of the extracted archive.
                           offset     Offset within the archive in hexadecimal.
                           index      0-based index of the extracted file in decimal.
                           size       Size of the extracted file in decimal.
                           ext        Extension associated with the filetype of the
                                      extracted file.

  -i, --offset=OFFSET    Start processing at byte OFFSET. (default: 0)
  -n, --length=LENGTH    Only process LENGTH bytes.
                         (default and maximum: 8 EB)
  -m, --min-size=SIZE    Minumum size of extracted files (skip smaller). (default: 0)
  -x, --max-size=SIZE    Maximum size of extracted files (skip larger).
                         (default and maximum: 16 EB)

                         The last character of OFFSET, LENGTH and SIZE may be one of the
                         following:
                           B (or none)   for Bytes
                           k             for Kilobytes (units of 1024 Bytes)
                           M             for Megabytes (units of 1024 Kilobytes)
                           G             for Gigabytes (units of 1024 Megabytes)
                           T             for Terabytes (units of 1024 Gigabytes)
                           P             for Petabytes (units of 1024 Terabytes)
                           E             for Exabytes  (units of 1024 Petabytes)

                         The special value "max" selects the maximum alowed value.

  -f, --formats=FORMATS  Comma separated list of formats (file magics) to extract.

                         Supported formats:

                           all        all supported formats
                           default    the default set of formats (AIFF, ASF, AU, AVIF, BINK,
                                      BMP, GIF, HEIF, ID3v2, IT, JPEG, MPEG 1, MPEG PS,
                                      MIDI, MP4, Ogg, PNG, RIFF, S3M, SMK, XM, XMIDI)
                           audio      all audio files (AIFF, ASF, AU, ID3v2, IT, MIDI, MP4,
                                      Ogg, RIFF, S3M, XM, XMIDI)
                           text       all text files (ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE,
                                      UTF-32LE, UTF-32BE)
                           image      all image files (BMP, PNG, JPEG, GIF, AVIF, HEIF)
                           mpeg       all safe mpeg files (MPEG 1, MPEG PS, ID3v2)
                           tracker    all tracker files (MOD, S3M, IT, XM)
                           video      all video files (ASF, BINK, MP4, RIFF, SMK)

                           avif       AVIF image files
                           aiff       big-endian (Apple) wave files
                           ascii      7-bit ASCII files (only printable characters)
                           asf        Advanced Systems Format files (also WMA and WMV)
                           au         Sun Microsystems audio file format (.au or .snd)
                           bink       BINK files
                           bmp        Windows Bitmap files
                           gif        Graphics Interchange Format files
                           heif       HEIF images files
                           id3v2      MPEG layer 1/2/3 files with ID3v2 tags
                           it         ImpulseTracker files
                           jpeg       JPEG Interchange Format files
                           midi       MIDI files
                           mod        Noisetracker/Soundtracker/Protracker Module files
                           mpg123     MPEG layer 1/2/3 files (MP1, MP2, MP3)
                           mpeg1      MPEG 1 System Streams
                           mpegps     MPEG 2 Program Streams
                           mpegts     MPEG 2 Transport Streams
                           mp4        MP4 files (M4A, M4V, 3GPP etc.)
                           ogg        Ogg files (Vorbis, Opus, Theora, etc.)
                           png        Portable Network Graphics files
                           riff       Resource Interchange File Format files (ANI, AVI, MMM,
                                      PAL, RDI, RMI, SGT, STY, WAV, WEBP and more)
                           s3m        ScreamTracker III files
                           smk        Smaker files
                           utf-8      7-bit ASCII and UTF-8 files (only printable code points)
                           utf-16be   big-endian UTF-16 files (only printable code points)
                           utf-16le   little-endian UTF-16 files (only printable code points)
                           utf-32be   big-endian UTF-32 files (only printable code points)
                           utf-32le   little-endian UTF-32 files (only printable code points)
                           xm         Extended Module files
                           xmidi      XMIDI files

                         WARNING: Because MP1/2/3 files do not have a nice file magic, using
                         the 'mpg123' format may cause *a lot* of false positives. Nowadays
                         MP3 files usually have an ID3v2 tag at the start, so using the
                         'id3v2' format is the better option anyway.

                         The detection accuracy of MOD files is not much better and of MPEG TS
                         it is even worse and thus the 'mpg123', 'mpegts' and 'mod' formats
                         are per default disabled.

                         NOTE: When using only the 'mpg123' format but not 'id3v2' any ID3v2
                         tag will be stripped. ID3v1 tags will still be kept.

                         NOTE: The 'text' format might detect too much bogus text in UTF-16 or
                         UTF-32 encodings. I recommend to use 'utf-8' or 'ascii' instead, if
                         you can.

                         If '-' is written before a format name the format will be
                         removed from the set of formats to extract. E.g. extract
                         everything except tracker files:

                           mediaextract --formats=all,-tracker data.bin