Video Metadata Editor

It shows you what is already there

A small thing that makes this considerably more useful than the alternatives.

When you add a video, the existing metadata is read out and loaded into the form. You can see what the file currently says before you change anything.

Most metadata editors give you an empty form. You type a title, save, and whatever else was in the file is either overwritten blindly or left behind without your knowing — and you never find out what was there. Seeing the current values first means you can correct one field and leave the rest alone, and it is also the quickest way to answer "what is actually in this file?"

Quite often the answer is revealing. Exports from editing software carry the project name, the software version, sometimes a username. Downloads carry the source site. Phone recordings carry the device model and often a creation date. If you are about to send a file to a client, that is worth a look.

Nothing is re-encoded, which is the whole point

The technical detail that matters most, and the reason to use this rather than a general converter.

Metadata is a small block of text sitting alongside the video and audio inside the file. Changing it does not require touching either. This tool copies the video and audio streams across bit for bit and writes the new tags around them.

So: no quality loss whatsoever, and it is fast — near-instant for a small file and quick even for a large one, because nothing is being recompressed.

That is worth stating because the alternative is genuinely bad. A tool that re-encodes in order to change a text label puts your video through a full generation of compression loss to edit a word, and takes minutes doing it. If a metadata editor's progress bar looks like a conversion, it is one.

Where these tags show up, and where they do not

The most useful section here, because this is where expectations usually go wrong.

They do show up in: media players such as VLC, IINA and MPV, which display the title rather than the filename · Windows File Explorer and macOS Finder, in the details and info panes · media library software like Plex, Jellyfin, Emby and Kodi · iTunes and Apple Music for video files · most file management and search tools.

They do not affect:

YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Instagram or any other platform. This is the big one. Those take the title and description from the form you fill in when uploading, and ignore what is inside the file completely. Tagging a file will not change how it appears once uploaded, and there is no way to pre-set a YouTube title by editing the video.

The filename, which is separate and still whatever it was. Rename the file too if that is what you are actually after.

What Plex and Jellyfin decide a film is. Worth knowing if that was the goal: media servers identify content mainly by filename and folder structure, matched against online databases, not by the embedded title. A tidy tag on a badly named file will not help it get matched — the naming convention is what does that.

The file's created and modified dates as your operating system reports them. The Year field here is a tag inside the file, not the filesystem timestamp.

Clearing the tags, and what that does and does not do

The "clear all existing metadata first" option strips the tags out before writing whatever you have typed. Leave the fields empty and tick the box and you get a file with its tags removed.

That is a genuine and worthwhile privacy step. It removes the project names, software versions, device models, usernames, source URLs and dates that accumulate in a video without anyone intending them to. Before sending a file outside your organisation it is a reasonable habit.

Be clear about what it is not. It removes the metadata tags, not everything identifying about the file. Some information is inherent: the resolution, the frame rate, the codec and encoder settings, the duration, and the structure of the file itself, all of which can indicate what recorded or produced it. And of course the video content is untouched — faces, places, screens, documents and voices are all still there, and that is where real exposure usually lies.

So treat it as tidying rather than anonymising. If the concern is what is visible in the footage, Crop Video removes a region of the frame and a blur tool obscures one.

Filling the fields sensibly

The six fields come from a convention built for music, which is why they are named the way they are. Used for video, the ones that earn their keep are:

Title — the field almost every player displays instead of the filename, and the only one most people need. Make it what you would want to read in a playlist.

Artist — in practice the creator, channel, photographer or company. Useful for attribution on a file that will be passed around.

Album — a collection: a series name, a client, a shoot, a course. This is what groups related files together in software that sorts by it.

Year, Genre and Comment. Comment is the most under-used and the most practical — it is the right place for a licence note, a client reference, a version number or a line about where the footage came from, because it travels with the file when the filename does not survive being emailed around.

One note on the output: the result is written as an MP4. If your source was already MP4, nothing changes but the tags. If it was a MOV or MKV, the streams are moved into an MP4 container as they are — which works for common codecs and can fail for unusual ones. If you need the original container preserved exactly, a desktop tag editor is the safer choice.

Nothing is uploaded — the file is processed on your own device, which is the sensible way round for a tool whose purpose is often removing information you did not want to share.

Related tools

Video Compressor reduces the file size, which unlike this does re-encode — run it before tagging, not after. Video Thumbnail Maker pulls a frame out for a poster image. Trim Video cuts the clip itself.