Remove Metadata from Video

A video file records more than pictures and sound. Phones write the place where you filmed, the device model and the exact time. Drones and action cameras add flight and sensor data. Editors and encoders add their own names. A video metadata remover deletes those records and copies the picture and sound as they are, so nothing is re-encoded and nothing loses quality. Add a file above, read what it contained, and download a clean copy. Video is cleaned on our server and deleted within minutes.

What a video file remembers

Who is exposed

• Anyone sending phone clips as files. Email, cloud links and messaging apps in file mode deliver the original, with the location tag inside.
• Drone pilots. Flight logs and positions can reveal a home point and the aircraft that flew.
• Dashcam and body-camera footage shared with insurers, forums or the press.
• Journalists, activists and witnesses, for whom a location or a device model is a risk.
• Creators delivering to clients or selling stock footage, who want to hand over the video and nothing about how and where it was shot.
• Parents sharing school-event clips of children with a wider group than the school.

What a typical phone clip contains

This is the kind of list the report shows for a clip filmed on an iPhone. The values here are examples.

Why the date matters as much as the place

A location on its own tells someone where you were at some point. A location with a date and time tells them where you were and when, and a series of clips shows a routine: when you leave home, where you work, which days you travel. Time zone offsets add a rough position even when the coordinates are missing. That is why the tool removes the tags and the header timestamps together, and why it is worth cleaning a whole folder at once rather than only the clip you are about to post.

How the video metadata remover works

The tool uses FFmpeg, the standard open-source video toolkit, in stream-copy mode. It opens the file, picks out the video, audio and subtitle streams, and writes them into a new file of the same type. Everything that is not one of those streams is left behind.

• Global tags, per-stream tags and chapters are not carried over.
• Timed metadata tracks, where phones and action cameras keep GPS and sensor data, are dropped.
• Extra boxes such as XMP and Content Credentials are not copied.
• The header timestamps are written as empty. In our tests a planted creation date was gone from the movie, track and media headers.
• The compressed video and audio bytes are copied untouched, and rotation is kept, so a portrait clip still plays upright.

Because nothing is decoded or re-encoded, quality cannot drop. In our tests the cleaned video stream was bit-identical to the original. It also means the job takes seconds, and most of the time is the upload.

What stays, and why

• What a player needs: duration, resolution, frame rate, codecs, colour settings and rotation.
• Anything you can see or hear: faces, number plates, landmarks, voices, on-screen text, and overlays burned into the picture such as a dashcam’s timestamp and speed.
• Encoder fingerprints inside the stream. Some software encoders write their name and settings into the compressed data itself. x264 adds a settings string to H.264 video, and FFmpeg’s own audio encoder can write its version into the audio data. That belongs to the stream, and removing it would mean re-encoding. It identifies software, not you.
• Watermarks, visible or invisible. They are part of the frames, not metadata.
• The container. An MP4 stays an MP4 and a MOV stays a MOV. The tool does not convert formats.

Live Photos and edited exports

The video half of an iPhone Live Photo is an ordinary MOV with the same location and device tags as any other clip, plus an identifier that pairs it with the still image. If you share that MOV by itself, clean it like any other video. Edited exports deserve a look too: some editors can write XMP packets with software and project details into the files they render, and those boxes are not copied into the clean file.

AI-generated video

Some AI video tools attach Content Credentials to what they export, add a visible watermark, or embed an invisible watermark in the frames. The remover deletes a Content Credentials manifest stored in an MP4 or MOV file together with the other boxes it does not copy. It cannot remove a visible watermark or an invisible one, and a platform that requires AI disclosure will want to hear it from you whatever the file contains. The AI metadata cleaner overview covers the same ground for images, with a section on using these tools responsibly.

Clean a video in four steps

1. No account needed to start. Guests can clean 3 videos a month, a free account 10.
2. Add the video. Drag it anywhere on the page or choose it. The upload shows its progress.
3. Wait a few seconds. The server copies the streams into a clean file and scans the result.
4. Download and check. The report lists the tags that were found and how many remain. A file is marked verified clean only when none are left.

Why video is cleaned on our server

Images and PDFs are small enough to clean inside your browser, and we do that. Video files are large, and doing this safely takes FFmpeg, which a web page cannot run reliably. So the file is uploaded over HTTPS to our server, cleaned there, and sent back.

• The original is deleted as soon as cleaning finishes.
• The clean copy is kept for at most 15 minutes so you can download it, then deleted.
• We never open or watch the content. We keep your account’s usage counts for limits and billing, and the file name only until the file is deleted.

If your video is bigger than your plan allows, you can do the same operation yourself with FFmpeg. This is the command pattern we use:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -map 0:v -map 0:a -dn -map_metadata -1 -map_metadata:s:v -1 -map_metadata:s:a -1 -map_chapters -1 -c copy -fflags +bitexact clean.mp4

Turn location off at the source

Stopping the metadata being written is better than cleaning it later, though it does not help with clips you have already recorded.

• iPhone: Settings, Privacy & Security, Location Services, Camera, Never.
• Android: switch off location tags in the camera app’s settings.
• Drones and action cameras: turn off GPS logging and telemetry recording in the companion app.
• Dashcams: disable the GPS stamp, or keep it for evidence but clean copies before sharing them.

What happens on video platforms and in apps

Video platforms re-encode what you upload and usually drop container tags from the copy they serve, but they receive your original first. Messaging apps often recompress a clip sent as a video and deliver the original when you send it as a file. Email, cloud links and USB sticks always pass the original along. Cleaning before sharing is the dependable choice.

A short checklist before you share a clip

1. Clean the file and read the list of tags that were found.
2. Watch it once as a stranger would. Street names, house numbers, number plates, a school uniform, a screen showing a name or a map can all give a place away.
3. Listen for spoken details, such as an address, a name or a plan.
4. Rename the file, and check for sidecar files, thumbnails and proxies next to it.
5. Keep the original somewhere private. It is your record of when and where the clip was made.

Check the result yourself

exiftool -a -G1 -s clip-clean.mp4
ffprobe -v error -show_entries format_tags:stream_tags -of json clip-clean.mp4

Supported formats

Several videos, or a regular job

Videos have a monthly allowance of their own, separate from RAW photos. For a larger or regular workload, the API cleans a video with one request, and the MCP server, included on every plan, lets an assistant such as Claude or Cursor clean the videos in a folder on your computer when you ask. The guide to cleaning many files at once compares the options. Photos from the same shoot go through the image metadata remover.

If something goes wrong

• File over the limit. The size limit of your plan applies to the file you add. Use a higher plan or the FFmpeg command above.
• Unsupported file. The tool accepts MP4, M4V, MOV, MKV and WebM. Move other containers into one of those first.
• File could not be read. The file may be incomplete, for example a recording that was interrupted. If it will not play in a media player, it cannot be cleaned.
• Monthly allowance used. It resets on the first of each month (UTC). A cleaning that fails does not count against it.

Frequently asked questions