dano

Rust CLI wrapper for ffmpeg. Checksums internal media streams, not file containers. The hash stays the same when you rename a file, change metadata, or repackage MKV to MP4.

dano -w 'video.mkv'
# murmur3=2f23cebfe8969a8e11cd3919ce9c9067

ffmpeg -i 'video.mkv' -metadata author="Me" 'video.mp4'
dano -w 'video.mp4'
# murmur3=2f23cebfe8969a8e11cd3919ce9c9067  ← same hash

Modes

• write – generate and store checksums (xattrs or hash files)
• test – verify stored checksums
• duplicates – find duplicate media by stream content
• print/dump – inspect checksum data

Why this matters for video apps

Traditional checksums (md5, sha256) break when you touch metadata, re-encode, or change containers. dano hashes the actual bitstream – the video and audio data inside.

Duplicate detection across sources: same video from Camera Roll (MOV), WhatsApp (MP4), Google Photos (MP4 re-encoded) can share identical streams. dano catches that.

Verification after processing: ffmpeg pipeline ran, did the output stream survive intact? dano checks without re-encoding.

Ideas for Life2Film

Life2Film imports thousands of videos from phones, cloud, messengers. Duplicates are everywhere.

1. Import dedup – hash streams on import, skip files with known hashes. One video in 3 containers = 1 entry in the library
2. Integrity check – after proxy generation or montage export, verify source streams weren’t corrupted
3. Smart merge – user has videos on iPhone + Google Photos + local backup. Stream hashes unify them into one timeline without duplicates

Implementation: dano is CLI-only (173 stars, MPL-2.0). Better to take the approach (ffmpeg stream hashing via -f hash) and build it as a Rust module directly. The core idea is ~50 lines of ffmpeg invocation.

Hash algorithms

murmur3 (default, fast), MD5, SHA256, SHA512, adler32, CRC32. --decode mode hashes decoded output for lossless format verification (FLAC → ALAC).

Links

• GitHub
• Inspired by hashdeep, md5tree, ffmpeg