File identification software

Revision as of 22:52, 25 June 2015

Software that automates the process of Identifying Files.

• Apache Tika (cross-platform, open source, website): "The Apache Tika™ toolkit detects and extracts metadata and structured text content from various documents using existing parser libraries." Written in Java.
• DROID (cross-platform, open source, website): "DROID is a software tool developed by The National Archives [of the United Kingdom] to perform automated batch identification of file formats." Requires Java 7 or 8 (Version 6.1.5).
• FIDO (cross-platform, open source) website: Format Identification for Digital Objects, written in Python.
• FIDOO (web-based online file identification): website
• File command (various implementations): a standard Unix command, found on almost all Unix and Unix-like (i.e., Linux) systems. See the Debian man page for an overview.
• File Information Tool Set: software from the Harvard University library to identify file formats and extract metadata
• FI Tools (Windows, commercial, website)
• G-Spot (Windows, freeware, website): Identifies audio and video codecs need to play a media file.
• JHOVE (tool to classify/identify/validate file formats)
• MediaInfo (cross-platform, open source, website): "MediaInfo is a convenient unified display of the most relevant technical and tag data for video and audio files."
• PHP PRONOM drip: Recognize file formats using PRONOM registry (open source, website)
• Siegfried (signature-based file identification tool) website blog post
• TrID (Windows/Linux, free for non-commercial use, website): identifies files using a database of filetype signatures. Also has an online version.

References

• http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/File_Format_Identification