When I try using the normal way in Windows 10, it throws an error. I have some videos I uploaded to a YouTube channel a long time ago, and I’d like to share them, but first I need to remove the metadata.
The normal way I do this for images is to right click and select “Remove Properties and Personal Information,” but when I try to do this with an mp4, it doesn’t succeed. I’ve checked the security settings to make sure I have full control over this file, which I do, but it seems impossible to remove this metadata. I’ve tried saving-as using VLC and even tried within different folders, but nothing works.
Surely there must be a tool to remove metadata from a mp4 just as there is with an image, but none of my searches have been helpful. I’d much appreciate it if anyone can help!
Use FFmpeg. You can copy only the audio and video channels (and subtitles) without anything else using a command like:
ffmpeg -i INPUT.mp4 -map_metadata -1 -c:v copy -c:a copy -c:s copy OUTPUT.mp4I’ve downloaded FFmepg in the past, but I’m too dull and non-techy to understand it. I’m bound to royally fuck up anything in command prompt. Is there a setting I can use in Windows to allow me to remove the metadata by right clicking like I can with documents or images?
You can try installing Handbrake, it’s basically a user interface to make using FFmpeg easier. As far as removing all the metadata with a click, I’m not aware of anything that does that.
Honestly though, I think this is a simple enough case that you could figure it out even if you’re non-techy. The basic steps would be:
make a folder somewhere to keep everything in one place
download FFmpeg from here (this is one of the official Windows builds)
extract the 7z file you downloaded, there’s a folder inside called “bin” and inside of that should be three .exe files, one of which is just named “ffmpeg.exe”. Put that .exe into the folder you made earlier
open Notepad, copy/paste the command from my first comment into Notepad, and save it as something like “remove_metadata.bat” to your folder from earlier. In the window where you choose where to save the file, make sure you choose the file type “all files” from the drop down in order to save it as a .bat.
After setting it up, you can just put any .mp4 into the same folder, rename it INPUT.mp4, and run your .bat file by double-clicking it. It should create a new file called OUTPUT.mp4 in the same folder with all of the metadata removed.
I’ll try this, thanks! It’s really surprising though that you can’t just delete the metadata like you can with a normal file. Is there something unusual about mp4 format that disallows this?
I think it’s just that software to edit video streams is inherently more complicated than editing images. Although the metadata shouldn’t be encoded into the streams, so maybe it’s just a case of no one has gotten around to making such a program yet.
Hi, Thank you so much for your help, but when I double click the .bat file, it just opens it inside Notepad++
I made sure to select “all files” and use the .bat extension, but no dice.
Any idea why?
Here’s what my folder looks like with the mp4 renamed “INPUT.mp4”
Here’s what my .bat document looks like
I’m lost…
Sorry for the late reply, but it looks like somehow Notepad++ got set as the default program to open .bat files. Right click the .bat file, choose “open with”, and you should get an option to open it with command line / cmd.
EDIT: or just change it to .cmd, which should work basically the same way.
I too am sorry for the late reply, but thank you so much! I’ll try it again asap.