diff --git a/libavformat/dump.c b/libavformat/dump.c
index 8c49ef9236..56b37ff7d8 100644
--- a/libavformat/dump.c
+++ b/libavformat/dump.c
@@ -347,8 +347,14 @@ static void dump_stream_format(AVFormatContext *ic, int i,
     AVStream *st = ic->streams[i];
     AVDictionaryEntry *lang = av_dict_get(st->metadata, "language", NULL, 0);
     char *separator = ic->dump_separator;
+    char **codec_separator = av_opt_ptr(st->codec->av_class, st->codec, "dump_separator");
+    int use_format_separator = !*codec_separator;
 
+    if (use_format_separator)
+        *codec_separator = av_strdup(separator);
     avcodec_string(buf, sizeof(buf), st->codec, is_output);
+    if (use_format_separator)
+        av_freep(codec_separator);
     av_log(NULL, AV_LOG_INFO, "    Stream #%d:%d", index, i);
 
     /* the pid is an important information, so we display it */