Media info
Look inside a file: streams, codecs, resolution, frame rate, bitrate, duration.
Your file
Drop a file here, or click to choose
It stays on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Settings
What you get
This runs FFmpeg's own inspection on the file and shows what it reports. That includes the container, every stream in it, the codec each stream uses, resolution and frame rate for video, sample rate and channel layout for audio, and any metadata tags such as rotation, creation date or encoder.
When it is useful
- Finding out why a file will not play somewhere, usually an unusual codec in an ordinary-looking container.
- Reading the exact resolution before setting up a crop.
- Checking whether a phone video carries a rotation flag.
- Confirming a file really is what its extension claims.
Container and codec are different things
Nearly every "why will this not play" question comes down to confusing the two, and this tool is the fastest way to separate them. The container is the wrapper, the part the extension names: MP4, MKV, MOV, WebM, AVI. The codec is how the pictures and sound are actually encoded inside it: h.264, h.265, VP9, AAC, Opus. A player can support a container and refuse what is inside it, which is why an .mp4 that came off a modern phone sometimes opens as sound with a black picture. That is h.265 in a container the software understands, and it is a codec problem wearing a container's name.
Once you can see both, the fix is usually obvious. A container problem is solved by rewrapping, which is fast and lossless. A codec problem needs a real conversion with convert video.
Reading a bitrate
Bitrate is the number that explains file size, and it is the one people most often look for in the wrong place. A two hour film at 2 Mbps is about 1.8 GB; a two minute phone clip at 40 Mbps is about 600 MB. The second is a fifth of a percent as long and a third the size, because phones record at enormous bitrates. If a short video is inexplicably large, that is why, and compress video will take most of it back with no visible difference.
The tags nobody looks at
Alongside the streams, this shows the metadata written into the file: creation date, device, encoder, and on video from a phone, the rotation flag that explains why a clip looks upright in one app and sideways in another. Photographs and some video also carry GPS coordinates. If you are about to send a file to someone, it is worth knowing what is riding along with it. View metadata goes into that in more detail, and remove metadata strips it without touching the picture.
It reads, it never writes
Nothing here modifies your file, and nothing is uploaded to be inspected. FFmpeg reads the headers in the tab and prints what it found, which is why the answer arrives almost immediately even on a file of several gigabytes: only the beginning of the stream has to be touched.
Common questions
Why does it say the run failed?
It does not, inspection produces no output file, which FFmpeg reports as an error. The information is still read correctly.
Is the whole file read?
Only the headers and the first part of the stream, so it is quick even on large files.