A video reveals where it was filmed
Phone cameras write GPS into the container, not the pixels. A clip of your flat or your street can carry coordinates accurate enough to find the building.
Remove metadata from videos
Videos record where they were shot, on which device, and when. iPhone clips can carry the same GPS coordinates as a photo, plus the model and the app that saved them. This tool clears those boxes in place, without re-encoding a single frame.
- No upload
- No signup
- No re-encoding
- Free
01
The fields we look for
MP4 and MOV are box-based containers. Metadata lives in dedicated boxes (udta, meta, uuid) that can be emptied without touching the video track.
| Field | Risk |
|---|---|
| GPS coordinates | high |
| Device make & model | medium |
| Creation & modification time | low |
| Encoder / software | low |
| Title, author, comment | medium |
| C2PA manifest | medium |
02
Why it matters
Editing software leaves a trail
The encoder field, creation date and title box often name the app, the project and the client. That is useful for a studio archive and unnecessary in a public upload.
No re-encoding means no generation loss
Metadata boxes are overwritten with zero bytes and their type is changed to “free”. The video and audio samples are untouched, so the file plays exactly as before.
File size stays the same
Because the boxes are emptied in place rather than cut out, the byte offsets in the container remain valid. The trade-off is that the file does not get smaller — the metadata is gone, the space is not.
03
How to use it
- 01
Drop an MP4, MOV or M4V file into the box above. Files up to 500 MB are processed in memory on your device.
- 02
Check the fields. GPS, device and time entries are listed with the raw values.
- 03
Download the cleaned file and verify it plays in your usual player.
04
Limits worth knowing
- —MP4, MOV and M4V only. WebM, MKV and AVI are not supported yet.
- —Very large files are limited by browser memory, not by an upload quota. 500 MB is the practical ceiling we allow.
- —Chapters, subtitles and timed metadata tracks are left alone; this tool targets descriptive metadata.
- —Some cameras write metadata into the video stream itself (baked-in overlays). Those are pixels and cannot be removed without re-encoding.
05
FAQ
Does removing metadata re-encode the video?+
No. The metadata boxes are zeroed in place and marked as free space. The video and audio samples are copied byte for byte.
Why is the cleaned file the same size?+
Because the boxes are emptied, not deleted. Cutting them out would shift every byte offset in the container and require rewriting the index; zeroing keeps the structure valid and the file playable.
Will the video still play in QuickTime, VLC and on my phone?+
It should — the container structure is unchanged. Test the cleaned file before deleting the original, as you would with any file editor.
Is the video uploaded to a server?+
No. The file is read and rewritten in a Web Worker on your device. A 500 MB file never leaves your machine.
Can I remove metadata from several videos at once?+
Not yet. Batch processing is planned; the current version handles one file at a time.
Files are processed on your device. Erasemetadata cannot read them.MP4 · MOV · M4V