Remove video metadata
Videos carry the same kind of hidden data as photos — where they were shot, on what, and exactly when. Cleaning rewrites the container only, so a large file finishes in seconds and the video itself is untouched.
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Reads metadata in: JPEG · PNG · WebP · HEIC/HEIF · AVIF · MP4 · QuickTime MOV · WebM · PDF · MP3 · WAV · M4A
Your file never leaves your device. Processing happens entirely in your browser.
Where video metadata hides
MP4 and MOV are box-structured files. The classic location is a udta box holding QuickTime atoms such as ©mak, ©mod, ©swr and ©xyz — the last being an ISO 6709 coordinate string. Apple devices additionally use a meta box containing a keys table paired with an ilst value list, which is where an iPhone records make, model, software and GPS.
On top of that, mvhd, tkhd and mdhd headers each store a creation and a modification timestamp, counted in seconds from 1904. These are easy to overlook and are zeroed during cleaning. WebM is different again: it stores a Title, MuxingApp, WritingApp, DateUTC and a unique SegmentUID, plus optional Tags.
Why this is not a transcode
Re-encoding a video to remove metadata would take minutes, degrade the picture, and be entirely unnecessary — the metadata is not inside the video stream. Cleaning here removes the metadata boxes and leaves the mdat payload, which holds every encoded frame, completely untouched.
There is one subtlety that makes naive tools corrupt files: the sample tables store absolute byte offsets into mdat. Delete bytes earlier in the file and every one of those offsets becomes wrong, producing a video that will not play. The cleaner here builds an offset map from the edits it makes and rewrites the stco and co64 tables to match.
WebM and the size that does not change
WebM records byte positions in its SeekHead and Cues elements. Rather than deleting metadata and invalidating those, the cleaner overwrites each element with an EBML Void element of exactly the same size — the mechanism the format defines for this situation.
The result is a file whose metadata is genuinely gone but whose length is unchanged. That is deliberate: it is what keeps the video seekable. MuxingApp and WritingApp are mandatory elements, so they are emptied rather than removed, which keeps the file standards-compliant.
Drone and action camera footage
Drone video is worth particular attention: it almost always carries GPS, and often a flight log. GoPro and DJI files add vendor-specific boxes alongside the standard ones, which are detected and removed as metadata.
Some devices also record telemetry as a separate track inside the media structure rather than as metadata. The analysis reports the track count so you can see when a file contains more than video and audio.
Frequently asked questions
How long does cleaning a large video take?
Seconds. Because nothing is re-encoded, the time is dominated by reading the file and writing the result, not by processing frames. A file of several gigabytes is limited mainly by how fast your browser can hold it in memory.
Will the cleaned video still play everywhere?
Yes. The cleaner updates the sample tables (stco and co64) to account for every byte removed, which is the part that would otherwise produce an unplayable file. Duration, frame rate, resolution and colour primaries are untouched.
Does this remove the GPS coordinates?
Yes. Both the QuickTime ©xyz atom used in udta and the Apple keys/ilst location pair are removed. Timestamps in mvhd, tkhd and mdhd are zeroed.
Can I clean GoPro or DJI video?
Yes. GoPro and DJI proprietary metadata atoms (fdsc, gpmd) are detected and stripped along with the standard tracks.