How to extract MOOV atom/metadata from MP4 file? Can one "dump"/extract the MOOV atom from an MP4 file? If so, how? Hoping for an obscure FFMPEG command.

I need to be able to process/play a stream without searching for the MOOV atom over and over again. For very long streams, this can run into several megabytes of data. It's rather strange, I don't think the MOOV atom is huge, I just think that it is scattered thruout the first N megabytes (i.e. toplevel data at the begnning, with references to further atoms that are later in the stream).

Thus, it would make sense for me to extract the MOOV atom out of the file, keep it
Maybe I'm a bit late, but I'd use bento4 mp4dump, it's really easy to install on mac with brew brew install bento4

mp4dump 1.mp4 

[ftyp] size=8+16
  major_brand = iso5
  minor_version = 200
  compatible_brand = iso6
  compatible_brand = mp41
[moov] size=8+740
  [mvhd] size=12+96
    timescale = 1000
    duration = 0
    duration(ms) = 0
....