Video and audio files: what is inside, will it play, and where was it filmed
Drop a video or audio file to play it here if this browser can, or to see which track and codec stops it. One line says whether a phone video carries the place it was recorded, and a button saves the frame on screen as a PNG. Below that: every track's codec and settings, and MediaInfo's complete report.
The file is read by this tab on your own device, in small pieces, so a 2 GB video works as well as a 2 MB one. It is never uploaded, so checking a video for its location does not hand the location to anyone.
What you get
- The file playing, when this browser can decode it. When it cannot, one plain sentence naming what stops it, for example This browser cannot play the video track: HEVC (H.265), or This browser cannot play AVI files. A Try playing it anyway button is there for when a browser is more capable than it admits.
- One line about location. Either This video contains the place it was recorded: 55.67610, 12.56830, with the altitude when the phone stored one and a button that copies the coordinates, or No recording location found in this file. No map is drawn: a map would fetch tiles from someone's server and tell them where to look.
- Save this frame as PNG. Pause on the frame you want; it is saved at the video's own resolution, lossless, straight from the frame this browser decoded.
- A summary: container, duration, file size, overall bitrate, and the recording date and phone or camera make and model when the file carries them.
- A table per track type. Video: codec and profile, resolution, display aspect, frame rate, bit depth, HDR format and rotation. Audio: codec, channels and layout, sample rate, bitrate and language. Subtitles: format and language. And the number of chapters.
- MediaInfo's complete field list, collapsed at the bottom with a filter box: often 300 or more fields, including the encoder's settings string.
How "will it play" is decided
A container such as MP4 or MKV is only the box; what a browser has to decode is each track inside it. The page works out each track's codec string, the short code browsers are asked about, and asks this browser two questions: canPlayType() on a media element and, where it exists, MediaSource.isTypeSupported(). The answer shown is this browser's own, on this device, not a table of what browsers usually do. The codec strings are in the track tables. Examples:
avc1.64001F- H.264, High profile (0x64 = 100), level 3.1 (0x1F = 31). H.264 with AAC audio in MP4 plays in every current browser.
hvc1.1.6.L93.B0- HEVC (H.265), Main profile, level 3.1 (93 = 3.1 × 30). What iPhones record by default ("High Efficiency"). Safari plays it; Chrome and Edge play it only where the device has a hardware HEVC decoder and the operating system exposes it; Firefox mostly does not. That is exactly why the answer is measured.
vp09.00.31.08,av01.0.08M.08- VP9 profile 0, level 3.1, 8-bit, and AV1 Main profile, level 4.0, 8-bit: the codecs of most WebM files and of YouTube downloads.
mp4a.40.2,opus,mp3,flac- AAC-LC (HE-AAC is
mp4a.40.5), Opus, MP3 and FLAC audio.
Two honest caveats. The H.264 and HEVC strings are rebuilt from the profile and level MediaInfo reports, so the constraint bits may differ from the bytes in the file; browsers decide on profile and level. And MOV and 3GP files are asked about as video/mp4, because they are the same box structure and browsers read them with their MP4 reader. AVI and FLV are asked about under their own types, and current browsers answer no for both.
Where a phone video keeps its location
Phones write the position into a video the same way they do into photos, unless the camera app has no location permission. It is not EXIF: it sits in the file's moov box, which is usually at the start or the very end of the file. This page reads that box directly, with small reads, and never the video data itself.
- iPhone and iPad
- A metadata key named
com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709, for example+55.6761+012.5683+010.000/: latitude, longitude and altitude in metres, in the ISO 6709 format. Next to it:com.apple.quicktime.make,modelandcreationdate. - Android phones, GoPro-style cameras, ffmpeg
- A
©xyzatom inmoov/udtaholding the same kind of string without the altitude, for example+55.6761+012.5683/. Some 3GP files use alocibox instead, whose fixed-point numbers keep about five decimals. - How precise
- Four decimals of a degree (0.0001°) is about 11 metres north–south: one building. 55.6761, 12.5683, the example here, is the square in front of Copenhagen City Hall.
Whether the location survives sharing depends on how the file travels. Messaging apps that re-compress a video usually drop it; e-mail attachments, cloud-drive links, AirDrop, and a chat app's "send as file" or "document" option pass the original bytes on, location included. On an iPhone, the share sheet's Options › Location switch leaves it out.
What it cannot do
- Convert, trim or re-encode. Nothing here changes the file. HandBrake or ffmpeg convert; VLC and mpv play almost everything.
- Remove the location from a video. It shows the location; it does not write a copy without it. Re-exporting the video from the phone's own editor with location turned off, or
ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -map_metadata -1 -c copy out.mp4, does that. - Play DRM-protected files. An iTunes
.m4por a streaming service's download is described, but never plays in a web page. - Play what this browser cannot decode. Playback, and the saved frame, depend entirely on this browser's codecs. The description does not: MediaInfo reads every track either way.
- MIDI. A .mid file holds notes, not recorded sound, and is not handled here.
- Check that the whole file is intact. MediaInfo reads the headers and samples the stream; a file cut short or damaged in the middle can still look complete in the summary.