🎵 Media Forensics
Inspect audio and video files down to their container structure, metadata clues, browser-decoded media, hashes, readable strings, and raw bytes. You can stage byte-level edits without overwriting the original file.
This tool is client-side only. Everything happens in your browser and none of your data is shared.
Overview
Playback / Browser Decode
Structural recognition and playback support are separate. A browser can recognize a media container while still being unable to decode one of the codecs inside it.
Container & Stream Anatomy
A container organizes streams and metadata; a codec describes how audio or video samples are encoded. MP4, for example, is a container rather than a video codec.
Metadata & Embedded Clues
This view scans readable byte runs for likely metadata clues such as encoder names, titles, dates, comments, software identifiers, and locations. These strings are evidence that text exists in the file, not proof of its origin.
Audio Analysis
When the browser can decode an audio stream, this section measures the resulting PCM samples: sample rate, peak and RMS amplitude, DC offset, clipping, waveform, and a frequency snapshot. These measurements describe decoded audio rather than the exact compressed bitstream.
Waveform
Frequency Spectrum Snapshot
Video Analysis
Browser-decodable video exposes dimensions, duration, and playback timing. The frame microscope captures the currently displayed decoded frame; it does not imply that those pixels were stored literally in the compressed file.
Printable Strings
Readable byte runs can expose encoder names, tags, URLs, track labels, identifiers, and other text that may not appear in a normal media player. A string is a clue, not authoritative metadata.
Hashes
SHA-256 fingerprints the exact file bytes. A one-byte change produces a different hash, making it useful for comparing copies byte-for-byte rather than identifying their semantic content.
Hex Microscope / Editor
Each hexadecimal pair represents one byte. Select a byte to see its offset, decimal value, binary value, ASCII interpretation, and nearest recognized structure. Raw edits can make a file invalid, so they remain staged in memory until export.
Pending Changes
Byte edits are explicit and reversible. Reparsing asks the inspectors to interpret the staged bytes so you can see what a mutation changed or broke.
Export
Raw export preserves every byte except edits you explicitly staged. It does not transcode the file or otherwise alter codecs, quality, or media samples.
About This Tool
Media Forensics is an audio and video file analysis tool for inspecting media containers, metadata, streams, chunks, encoded structure, hashes, printable strings, and raw bytes. It recognizes common formats including MP4, WebM and other EBML media, WAV, AVI, FLAC, MP3, Ogg, and AIFF.
The container inspector shows how a media file is assembled and where recognized structures occur within it. Format-specific parsers expose details from RIFF chunks, MP4 boxes, EBML elements, audio headers, and other records stored alongside the encoded media.
Audio files can be examined through waveform and frequency-spectrum views, while supported video files can be inspected frame by frame through captured still images. Hashes, strings, and the hex inspector provide lower-level views when metadata and normal playback do not explain what is present in the file.
Raw byte edits can be staged, undone, and reparsed to see how a change affects the file structure. Export preserves the media data as stored except for byte changes that were explicitly staged.