Open the movie or video file you like to inspect in QuickTime Player, then go to Window > Show Movie Inspector. Launch the QuickTime Player, which is the default movie player on Mac, from the Launchpad. Once installed, run the software on your computer, then just drag and drop media files onto the main interface to view meta tag and technical information about them, and the audio and video codecs required to play on your computer. With the help of it, you can identify video codec with ease.

MediaInfo is a free, cross-platform and open-source program that helps you analyze and display detailed technical and tag information for audio and video files.

With VLC, open the file you want and open Tools > Codec Information to identify what codecs the file uses, or go to Tools > Media Information > Codec.Įxcept VLC player, you can opt for other video or codec inspector tools below. It is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, iOS, Android and more OS. VLC (also known as VLC player, VLC Media Player) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player and streaming media server. In fact, you can directly find out video, audio codecs using some media players, such as QuickTime Player for Mac, VLC media player, etc. Since a video codec is hidden behind the container or wrapper, how can I tell what codec a video uses? Identify video codec in VLC player In addition to a codec, each video file has a container, also called a file extension since they are often seen in file names, such as MP4, MKV, MOV, WMV, AVI, WebM, etc. Here are some popular video codecs: H.264, HEVC, XVID, DIVX, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VP8, VP9, AV1, etc. A codec is a software or hardware that compresses your video so it can be stored and played back. When you are troubleshooting video not supported, can’t open video, or unsupported video codec issues, you most likely have thought of video codec.

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