🐛(summary) support media files with bad streams

Rarely media files may have one or multiple
empty streams when they are badly formatted.
The extract metadata code would crash when that happened.
We now avoid crashing and create a clean file
from the bad one to make sure API calls with that data
works properly (observed some failures otherwise
in my tests).

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ and this project adheres to
 - 🚀(front) fix frontend build failure
 - 🐛(makefile) fix args in make test
 - 🩹(backend) fix case-insensitive email deduplication in merge command
+- 🐛(summary) support media files with bad streams #1478
 
 ## [1.22.0] - 2026-07-03
 

src/summary/summary/core/file_service.py

@@ -142,6 +142,7 @@ class MediaInfo:
     has_video: bool
     audio_duration_seconds: float | None
     audio_codec_name: str | None
+    has_bad_stream: bool = False
 
 
 def get_media_info(local_path: Path) -> MediaInfo:
@@ -174,8 +175,9 @@ def get_media_info(local_path: Path) -> MediaInfo:
     data = json.loads(result.stdout)
 
     streams = data.get("streams", [])
-    has_audio = any(el["codec_type"] == "audio" for el in streams)
-    has_video = any(el["codec_type"] == "video" for el in streams)
+    has_audio = any(el.get("codec_type") == "audio" for el in streams)
+    has_video = any(el.get("codec_type") == "video" for el in streams)
+    has_bad_stream = any(el.get("codec_type", None) is None for el in streams)
     audio_codec_name = next(
         (
             stream.get("codec_name")
@@ -193,10 +195,11 @@ def get_media_info(local_path: Path) -> MediaInfo:
         has_video=has_video,
         audio_duration_seconds=audio_duration_seconds,
         audio_codec_name=audio_codec_name,
+        has_bad_stream=has_bad_stream,
     )
 
 
-def extract_audio_from_video(media_info: MediaInfo) -> Path:
+def extract_audio_from_media(media_info: MediaInfo) -> Path:
     """Extracts the audio track from a video file and saves it as a separate audio file.
 
     Based on the provided audio codec,
@@ -451,7 +454,12 @@ class FileService:
 
             if media_info.has_video:
                 logger.info("Video file detected, extracting audio...")
-                processed_path = extract_audio_from_video(media_info)
+                processed_path = extract_audio_from_media(media_info)
+            # Bad streams may cause transcription issues on WhisperX,
+            # So we extract the audio properly
+            elif media_info.has_bad_stream:
+                logger.info("Bad stream detected, extracting audio...")
+                processed_path = extract_audio_from_media(media_info)
             else:
                 processed_path = downloaded_path
 

src/summary/tests/unit/test_file_service.py

@@ -1,12 +1,15 @@
 """Unit tests for the file service."""
 
+import json
 from pathlib import Path
+from unittest.mock import Mock
 
 import pytest
 
+from summary.core import file_service
 from summary.core.file_service import (
     MediaInfo,
-    extract_audio_from_video,
+    extract_audio_from_media,
     get_media_info,
 )
 
@@ -110,12 +113,40 @@ def test_media_info_invalid_file() -> None:
     )
 
 
+def test_media_info_ignores_empty_stream_entry(monkeypatch: pytest.MonkeyPatch) -> None:
+    """Test stream parsing when ffprobe returns an empty stream object."""
+    ffprobe_payload = {
+        "programs": [],
+        "stream_groups": [],
+        "streams": [
+            {"codec_name": "vorbis", "codec_type": "audio"},
+            {},
+        ],
+    }
+
+    run_mock = Mock(
+        return_value=Mock(stdout=json.dumps(ffprobe_payload), stderr="", returncode=0)
+    )
+    monkeypatch.setattr(file_service.subprocess, "run", run_mock)
+    monkeypatch.setattr(
+        file_service, "get_media_duration_seconds", Mock(return_value=2.5)
+    )
+
+    media_info = get_media_info(BASE_PATH / "audio-sample-android-firefox.ogg")
+
+    assert media_info.has_audio is True
+    assert media_info.has_video is False
+    assert media_info.has_bad_stream is True
+    assert media_info.audio_codec_name == "vorbis"
+    assert media_info.audio_duration_seconds == 2.5
+
+
 def test_extract_audio_from_video():
     """Test that extract_audio_from_video can extract audio from a video file."""
     path = None
     # A bit of cleanup logic since this is not a generator
     try:
-        path = extract_audio_from_video(MEDIA_INFO_SAMPLE_VISIO)
+        path = extract_audio_from_media(MEDIA_INFO_SAMPLE_VISIO)
         assert path.name.endswith(".m4a")
     except Exception as e:
         pytest.fail(f"Failed to extract audio from video: {e}")