Remove Metadata from VideoRemove Metadata from Video

A clip is more than frames and sound

Shoot ten seconds on a phone and you get a container that also records where you stood, which model you hold, which system version it ran and the second you pressed record. A drone adds flight logs. An editing program adds its own signature. Not a word of it shows on screen, and all of it follows the file wherever you send it.

• Global and per-stream tags: title, artist, comment, encoder, language, creation time.
• Location: a GPS position written as text. Android clips often carry something like +24.5000+054.3000/; iPhones use the QuickTime location key.
• Device: make, model and software version, for example com.apple.quicktime.model.
• Timestamps in the movie, track and media headers, accurate to the second.
• Timed tracks: GPS, speed and sensor readings stored next to the picture by drones, action cameras and dashcams.
• Extra boxes: XMP edit history from editors and signed C2PA Content Credentials.
• Chapters and attachments: chapter titles (one may be named after a street), cover art, embedded fonts.

What the report shows for an iPhone clip

A cleaned clip from a phone typically lists lines such as these (the values are illustrations).

• com.apple.quicktime.location.iso6709 was +24.8607+067.0011+012.000/ → removed
• com.apple.quicktime.make was Apple and ...model was iPhone 15 → removed
• com.apple.quicktime.software was 17.1 → removed
• com.apple.quicktime.creationdate was 2026-09-28T18:42:10+0500 → removed
• creation_time on the stream was 2026-09-28T13:42:10Z → removed

Note the “+0500” in that date. A time-zone offset narrows down where in the world you were even when the coordinates are missing.

Where and when, together

One location tag tells a viewer where you were at some point. Add the recording time and it says where you were on a particular evening. A dozen clips make a pattern: your commute, your neighbourhood, the days you travel. That is why the tool removes tags and header timestamps together, and why it makes sense to clean everything you publish, not only the clip you are about to post.

Who should clean before sending

The method: copy, do not convert

The server runs FFmpeg in stream-copy mode. It finds the video, audio and subtitle streams, writes them into a new file of the same container type and leaves everything else behind.

• Global tags, stream tags and chapters are not carried across.
• Timed metadata tracks, where phones and action cameras keep GPS and sensors, are dropped.
• Extra boxes such as XMP and Content Credentials are not copied.
• Header timestamps are written empty. In our tests a creation date we planted was gone from movie, track and media headers.
• The compressed picture and sound bytes are copied as they are, and rotation is preserved, so portrait clips still stand upright.

Because nothing is decoded, nothing can degrade: in our tests the cleaned video stream was bit-identical to the source. It also keeps the job short; most of the wait is the upload.

What stays on purpose

• What a player needs: duration, resolution, frame rate, codecs, colour settings and rotation.
• Everything visible or audible: faces, number plates, landmarks, voices, subtitles burned into the frames and overlays such as a dashcam's speed and clock.
• Encoder fingerprints inside the stream. x264 writes a settings string into H.264 video, and FFmpeg's audio encoder can store its version in the audio data. These sit in the compressed data and removing them would mean re-encoding. They name software, not you.
• Watermarks, visible or not, since they are part of the frames.
• The container type: MP4 stays MP4 and MOV stays MOV.

Special cases: Live Photos, edited exports, AI video

The video half of an iPhone Live Photo is an ordinary MOV with location and device tags plus an ID that pairs it with the still image. Shared on its own it needs cleaning like any other clip. Edited exports deserve a look too: some editors write XMP packets with software and project names into the render, and those boxes are not copied.

AI video tools may attach Content Credentials, a visible watermark or an invisible one. A manifest stored in an MP4 or MOV is deleted with the other boxes. Watermarks cannot be removed, and a platform that asks you to disclose AI use expects to hear it from you, whatever the file contains. The ideas are the same as for pictures; the main page explains them.

How to use it

1. Begin without signing up. Guests may clean 3 videos a month, a free account 10.
2. Add the clip by dragging it onto the page or choosing it. A bar follows the upload.
3. Wait a few seconds while the server copies the streams into a clean file and scans it.
4. Download and read the report. It lists the tags found and how many remain. Verified clean appears only at zero.

What our server does with the file

Pictures and PDFs are small enough to be cleaned in your own browser, and that is where we do it. Video is large, and doing it safely requires FFmpeg, which a web page cannot run reliably. So the file is sent over HTTPS to our server, cleaned and returned.

• The original is deleted the moment cleaning finishes.
• The clean copy stays for 15 minutes at most so you can download it, then it is deleted.
• We never open or watch the content. For limits and billing we keep usage counts, and the file name only until the file is deleted.

If your video is bigger than your plan allows, you can do the same on your own computer with FFmpeg. This is the 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 off the source

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

What apps and sites do with your upload

Video sites re-encode uploads and usually leave container tags out of the public copy, but they get your original first. Chat apps often recompress a clip sent as video and pass on the original if it goes as a file. E-mail, cloud links and USB sticks always pass on the original, so clean before using them.

Last look before you send

1. Read the report and the list of tags that were found.
2. Watch the clip like a stranger: street names, house numbers, plates, a school uniform, a screen with a name or a map.
3. Listen for spoken details, such as an address, a name or a plan.
4. Rename the file, and look for sidecar files, thumbnails and proxies next to it.
5. Keep the original somewhere private as your record of when and where it was made.

Verify the result

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

Containers handled

For bigger jobs

Videos have their own monthly allowance, separate from RAW photos. For heavy or recurring work 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 on request. The article about cleaning many files at once sets the options side by side. Photos from the same shoot belong in the image tool.

If something goes wrong

• Over the limit. Your plan's size cap applies to the file you add. Upgrade, or use the FFmpeg command above.
• Unsupported file. The tool takes MP4, M4V, MOV, MKV and WebM. Convert other containers first.
• Cannot be read. The recording may be incomplete, for instance after an interruption. If a media player cannot play it, it cannot be cleaned.
• Monthly allowance used up. It resets on the first of the month (UTC). A job that fails is not counted.

Questions