Get number of frames in scene from the command line? I'd like to know if there is a command-line option (or combination, or a way!) to get the number of frames that are included in a specified blender scene; for example I'd like to use is like this:

$ blender &lt;option&gt; file.blend
$ Number of frames in blender scene: xxxx
This information is stored in the blend files header, so you can find out without having to load Blender at all.

This has the advantage you can scan a directory of 100's (or 1000's) of blend files in a very short time (a few seconds even if the files are large).

Blender comes with a script in scripts/modules/blend_render_info.py which can extract this data from a blend file (you don't even need Blender to be installed just a copy of this file and Python is enough).

You can load the script as a module or execute it directly.

command line example:

# python blend_render_info.py /path/to/my_test.blend
1 250 Scene


python example:
This can run inside blender,
otherwise blend_render_info.py will have to be in Python's sys.path

import blend_render_info

filepath = "/path/to/my_test.blend"
frame_start, frame_end, scene = blend_render_info.read_blend_rend_chunk(filepath)

print("total frames:", (frame_end - frame_start) + 1)


As you can see the frame range and active scene is stored, if you want more info you'll have to use a script and load the file into Blender.