Video Info Viewer

What this tool does

Video Info Viewer reads the technical metadata of MP4, MOV, M4V, 3GP, WebM and MKV files directly from their container structure. It lists every video, audio and subtitle track with codec, profile, resolution, frame rate, sample rate, channels, bitrate and language, plus creation date, GPS tags and browser playback support.

Before you upload, edit or convert a video it helps to know what is actually inside it. A file called .mp4 might hold H.264 or HEVC video, AAC or Opus audio, at 24, 30 or 59.94 frames per second. Upload limits, editing software and older TVs care about exactly these details, and phone videos may also carry the GPS location where they were shot.

This viewer parses the container itself. For MP4 and QuickTime files it locates the moov box with a few small reads, even in multi-gigabyte files, and decodes the movie header, each track header, the sample description (codec and profile from avcC, hvcC, vpcC, av1C or esds) and the sample tables to compute frame count, frame rate and per-track bitrate. For WebM and MKV it reads the EBML header, Segment Info and Tracks elements. The browser’s own decoder adds the displayed resolution and tells you whether it can play each codec. No part of the file is uploaded.

How to use Video Info Viewer

1. Drop a video file onto the upload area or click to browse.
2. Read the Overview: container, duration, resolution with aspect ratio, frame rate, file size and overall bitrate.
3. Check the Tracks table for each stream’s codec, profile and level, resolution or sample rate, bitrate and language.
4. Look at Dates and file for the recording date stored in the container and whether the file is optimised for streaming (fast start).
5. Review Embedded tags for camera make, model, software and location.
6. Click Copy report for a plain-text summary or download the details as JSON.

Tips for better results

• If the container date and the file’s last-modified date differ, the container date is usually the real recording time; file dates change when files are copied.
• Fast start “No” means the index sits at the end of the file, so web players must download all of it before playback; re-muxing with faststart fixes that.
• A frame rate of 29.970 or 59.940 is NTSC-style timing, common on phones and cameras sold in North America and Japan.
• An H.264 level tells you the decoding power needed: level 4.1 covers 1080p at 30 fps, level 5.1 covers 4K at 30 fps.

Common use cases

• Checking whether a phone video is HEVC before sending it to someone with an older device.
• Confirming the frame rate and resolution before editing or combining clips.
• Finding when and where a video was recorded from its embedded date and GPS tags.
• Verifying that an export has the bitrate and audio format a platform requires.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Trusting the file extension: .mov, .mp4 and .m4v can all contain the same codecs, and .webm files can contain VP8, VP9 or AV1.
• Comparing the overall bitrate with the video track bitrate; the overall figure also includes audio and container overhead.
• Sharing a phone video publicly without checking for location tags.