Native macOS app · Universal binary

See inside
any media file.

Complete codec and stream metadata, real frame thumbnails, bitrate graphs, fixity checksums, and polished PDF reports — everything a media file has to tell, one drag and drop away.

Requires macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon & Intel

MP4MKVMOVWebMAVIMXFMPEG-TSDVD-VideoH.264HEVCAV1ProResVP9MPEG-2Dolby VisionHDR10HLGDolby TrueHDDolby DigitalDTSAACFLACOpusMP3PCM

What's new

New in version 3.4

Reports, rebuilt: six purpose-built documents in a new Export Report window — and every measurement Media Inspector takes, now on paper.

Six reports, one window

QC Report, Spec Sheet, Archival Report, Contact Sheet, Delivery Manifest and Comparison Report, each built to answer one question — in a new three-pane Export Report window that now hosts the Text, JSON and CSV metadata exports too.

A QC verdict you can sign

Check a file against any conformance policy and get PASS, PASS WITH WARNINGS or FAIL, every issue with what was actually found, and a sign-off block with signature lines and Approved / Rejected boxes.

Measured vs. declared, on paper

Bit rate, loudness, true peak, MaxCLL and MaxFALL are measured from the essence and printed beside what the file claims — Matches, Differs by +160%, or Not declared.

A spec sheet for clients

One page in plain words: a hero frame, a headline like “4K · HDR10 · 23.976 fps”, the picture and file details, and every audio and subtitle track — always exactly one page.

Delivery manifests

Every file in one table, with totals, a pass / warn / fail tally and checksums in full — plus a CSV export with raw seconds and bytes for your spreadsheet or MAM.

Comparison reports

Two or three files side by side, differences first — master against proxy, before and after a transcode — with an optional SHA-256 check for byte-identical copies.

It measures for you

When a section needs loudness, light levels, bit rate or checksums, the measurement starts on its own and shows its progress. Exports wait for it, so a finished report never contains a placeholder.

Your brand, every format

A brand kit in Settings — name, logo, accent color, contact line — styles every report. Export a vector PDF, PNG or JPEG pages, a self-contained HTML file that reads well on a phone, or CSV for tables.

Reports in Shortcuts

Generate Report now takes a report type, a policy and a format — PDF, HTML or CSV. Manifests and comparisons turn every input file into one document, and existing shortcuts keep working.

See the complete changelog →

Everything about every stream

Drop in a file and get an instant, beautifully organized breakdown of what it really contains.

Deep metadata

Container, video, audio, subtitle, chapter, and image streams — codecs, profiles, bit rates, color primaries, HDR, chroma, languages, and more.

Frame thumbnails

A grid of real frames decoded straight from the video stream, evenly spread across the timeline, with optional timecodes.

Cover art & posters

Embedded artwork is extracted losslessly from the container, displayed beside the metadata, and saved back to disk in its original bytes.

Six report types

QC verdicts, client spec sheets, archival records, contact sheets, delivery manifests and comparisons — branded, measured, and exported as vector PDF.

Private by design

Fully sandboxed and 100% offline. No analytics, no network access — your files never leave your Mac.

Truly native

A modern SwiftUI app built for Apple silicon and Intel. Fast, light, and at home on macOS.

Speaks your language

Fully localized in English, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Russian, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese.

1,500+ properties, your pick

Every property MediaInfo knows, with per-stream toggles for what shows on screen and what makes it into printed reports.

A batch at a time

Open a whole folder's worth of files — each stays in the sidebar with its format badges, one click from comparison.

Bitrate over time

One pass charts every stream's bitrate plus the container total — spot VBR spikes, starved sections, and encoding problems at a glance.

Fixity checksums

MD5 and SHA-256 computed in a single streaming pass — copy them, print them on reports, and carry them in every export.

JSON & CSV export

Machine-readable metadata with raw and formatted values and stable keys — ready for MAM ingest, catalogs, and spreadsheets.

EBU R128 loudness

Integrated loudness, loudness range and true peak, measured from the audio to ITU-R BS.1770-4 — with a short-term curve for the whole programme.

HDR light levels

MaxCLL and MaxFALL measured from the picture and compared with what the file declares — across HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision.

Automatic analysis

Flip two switches and every file measures itself on open — audio waveform, loudness and bitrate, video HDR light levels — with the results already on screen.

Metadata

The truth, not the file extension

Media Inspector reads what's actually inside the container — every stream, every property — and formats each value the way humans read it: Mb/s, timecodes, byte sizes, dates.

  • Codec, profile & level, resolution, frame rate, scan type
  • Bit depth, chroma subsampling, color space, HDR metadata
  • Audio channels & layout, sample rate, compression mode
  • Subtitle tracks, chapters, and per-stream languages
  • Fixity checksums and a live bitrate graph, right on the Container tab

Audio

See the sound. Measure the loudness.

Every audio stream draws a waveform with one lane per channel — and Media Inspector measures its loudness to the EBU R128 standard from the decoded audio itself, never from metadata.

  • One waveform lane per channel — a silent, swapped or dead channel is obvious at a glance
  • Integrated loudness, loudness range and true peak (LUFS, LU, dBTP)
  • A short-term loudness curve across the whole programme
  • Measured to ITU-R BS.1770-4 — the standard broadcasters check against
  • Measured values can be tested by your own conformance policies

HDR & Dolby Vision

HDR, measured — not just declared

Media Inspector decodes the picture and measures its real light levels — MaxCLL and MaxFALL in nits — then shows them next to the values the file declares. When an encoder ships zeros or boilerplate, you see it immediately.

  • Measured MaxCLL and MaxFALL, side by side with the declared values
  • A brightness timeline of peak and average light level across the programme
  • PQ (HDR10, HDR10+) and HLG, in 8, 10 and 12-bit
  • Dolby Vision profile 5 fully decoded — true colour, not the magenta cast other tools show
  • Thumbnails display with real highlight range on an HDR display

Conformance

Every file, checked against your spec

Describe what your files are supposed to be — codec, resolution, frame rate, channels — and every open file gets a pass/fail verdict, with failures explaining exactly what was found versus what was expected.

  • Typed, unit-aware rules: resolutions, frame rates, bitrates, kHz
  • Quantified scopes — every stream, any stream, or exact stream counts
  • Built-in policies for web delivery, broadcast, podcasts, and preservation
  • One click drafts a policy from a known-good master file

The policy editor: every rule composed from menus — severity, stream scope, property, operator, value. Policies are shareable files.

Thumbnails

See the content, not just the numbers

Frames are decoded directly from the video stream itself — no guesswork, no proxies — and laid out on an adjustable grid with frame-accurate timecodes.

  • Evenly distributed across the file's whole timeline
  • Adjustable thumbnail size, optional timecode overlay
  • Perfect for verifying content and spotting corruption

Comparison

Spot the difference — instantly

Select two or three files and the inspector becomes a diff: every property side by side, streams paired automatically, and only the real differences highlighted.

  • Differences-only view — or every property at a glance
  • Dates, sizes, and other always-different noise are ignored by default — you decide what counts
  • Missing streams are flagged; a thumbnails row confirms you're comparing the right clips

Reports

A report for every handoff

Pick the document the job calls for. The Export Report window previews it live, measures whatever it needs on its own, and exports a crisp vector PDF in your brand — for one file or a whole delivery.

  • QC Report — did it pass? The verdict, every issue, and the measured values behind it
  • Spec Sheet — one page for clients: a hero frame, the specs in plain words, every track
  • Archival Report — the complete technical record: every stream, fixity, measurements and frames
  • Contact Sheet — frames and key facts: the whole file at a glance
  • Delivery Manifest — every file in one table, for handoffs and archive ingest, with CSV
  • Comparison Report — two or three files side by side, differences first
  • Export a vector PDF, a self-contained HTML file, PNG or JPEG pages, or CSV — presets remember every setup

See every report

Real exports, made by Media Inspector from demo files with a sample brand kit. Download any PDF to judge the full quality.

Exports

Data that travels well

Reports are for people; exports are for pipelines. Every inspection leaves the app in whichever shape the next tool needs.

  • JSON — nested streams with raw and formatted values and stable keys, for MAM ingest and tooling
  • CSV — one flat table of every property, spreadsheet-ready
  • Plain text — the classic human-readable report
  • Computed checksums ride along in every export
  • All three open in the Export Report window with a live preview — for one file, or a whole folder of them in one go

macOS Integrations

It lives where you work

Open anything straight from Finder, and drive batch analysis, reports and checksums from native Shortcuts actions.

Explore macOS integrations

Archives & collections

Built for people who keep media safe

Archival facilities, film and tape archives, post houses, and serious collectors — Media Inspector turns every ingest into documentation you can file, print, and trust.

Provenance on the page

Add your own fields to every report — facility, original media, catalog number, barcode — and they render as a dedicated card right below the file summary.

Verify every transfer

Confirm a digitization came out right — codec, bit rate, bit depth, color, HDR metadata — then seal it with MD5/SHA-256 fixity checksums before the source tape goes back on the shelf.

A visual fingerprint

Contact sheets give each asset a recognizable face — spot the right master at a glance and catch corrupted or black frames without scrubbing.

Your letterhead, not ours

Your brand kit — company name, logo, accent color and contact line — on every report, so the paperwork looks like it came from your facility, because it did.

PDF, image, paper

Export a vector PDF for the digital catalog, a high-resolution image for the MAM or the tape box, or print it and drop it in the physical file.

Safe for closed networks

Fully offline and sandboxed — nothing is uploaded, ever. Use it on air-gapped ingest stations and restricted facility networks with confidence.

Your files never leave your Mac

Media Inspector is fully sandboxed and works completely offline. It has no network access, collects no analytics, and phones home to no one. Everything happens on your machine — as it should.

Read the privacy policy →

Frequently asked questions

What file formats does Media Inspector support?

Everything its FFmpeg and MediaInfo engines can parse: MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, MXF, MPEG-TS, and DVD-Video among the containers, with video codecs from H.264, HEVC, AV1, ProRes and VP9 to MPEG-2, and audio from Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital and DTS-HD to AAC, FLAC, Opus, MP3 and PCM. If a file plays somewhere, Media Inspector can almost certainly dissect it.

Is Media Inspector a MediaInfo app for the Mac?

Media Inspector is built on MediaInfoLib — the same open-source engine behind MediaInfo — wrapped in a fully native macOS app. It also goes beyond metadata: real decoded frame thumbnails, embedded cover-art extraction, and branded, print-ready PDF reports.

Do my files ever leave my Mac?

No. Media Inspector is fully sandboxed and works completely offline — it has no network access, no analytics, and no telemetry. Everything is analyzed locally on your machine.

Can it generate contact sheets?

Yes. The Contact Sheet report lays real decoded frames on the page with frame-accurate timecodes under a header of key facts, and exports as a vector PDF or a high-resolution PNG or JPEG image — ready for a MAM system, a catalog, or a printed folder.

Which metadata properties can it display?

Over 1,500 properties across container, video, audio, subtitle, chapter and image streams. You choose per stream type which properties appear on screen and which are included in printed reports.

Can it verify files with checksums (fixity)?

Yes. Media Inspector computes MD5 and SHA-256 in a single streaming pass — on demand or automatically on open — shows them on the Container tab, prints them on QC, Archival and Delivery Manifest reports, and includes them in JSON and CSV exports.

Can it graph bitrate over time?

Yes. A single pass over the file charts the bitrate of every stream plus the container total — the combined graph on the Container tab, per-stream graphs on the Video and Audio tabs — and the graph prints on the QC and Archival reports.

Can I export the metadata as JSON or CSV?

Yes. Alongside PDF and plain-text reports, every inspection exports as machine-readable JSON (raw and formatted values with stable keys) or a flat CSV — ready for MAM ingest, catalogs, and spreadsheets.

Why is Media Inspector a good fit for archival facilities and film archives?

It turns every ingest into filing-ready documentation. The Archival Report combines full per-stream metadata — enough to verify that a digitization came out right before the source tape goes back on the shelf — with fixity checksums, measured loudness and light levels, custom provenance fields and your facility's branding. The Contact Sheet gives every asset a recognizable visual fingerprint, and the Delivery Manifest logs a whole ingest batch in one table, with a CSV for the catalog.

Can reports carry my company's branding and archival metadata?

Yes. A brand kit in Settings — company name, logo, accent color and a contact line — styles every report, and custom fields carry whatever your workflow needs (Facility, Original Media, Catalog Number, Barcode…). Save a report's setup as a preset and a whole collection gets consistent documentation.

Does it work on air-gapped or restricted facility networks?

Yes. Media Inspector has no network capability at all — analysis, reports, and exports all happen locally, so it behaves identically on ingest stations and QC workstations that never touch the internet. Nothing is uploaded, logged, or phoned home.

What are the system requirements, and what languages does it speak?

Media Inspector requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later and runs natively on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs. The app is localized in English, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Russian, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese.

Does Media Inspector work with Shortcuts and automation?

Yes. It ships four native Shortcuts actions — Analyze Media File (to JSON or CSV), Generate Report (any of the six reports as PDF, HTML or CSV, by report type or from a saved preset, with an optional conformance policy), Compute File Checksum (MD5 or SHA-256), and Open in Media Inspector. Chain them into your own workflows, run them from a Finder right-click as Quick Actions, or drive them from automations — all without opening the app.

Can I batch-process an entire folder of files?

Yes — the actions are batch-aware. Select many files and run a Quick Action, or hand a whole folder to a shortcut, and Media Inspector produces one report, export, or checksum per file in a single pass — or one Delivery Manifest for the whole batch. A whole tape collection or ingest batch becomes a single command instead of an afternoon of clicking.

Can reports be generated automatically, without opening the app?

Yes. The Generate Report Shortcuts action renders the same reports as the app — pick a report type, a policy and a format, or use a saved preset — entirely in the background. Trigger it from a Finder Quick Action, a keyboard shortcut, or a folder-based automation, and the finished files land wherever you point them.

Can Media Inspector make a QC report with a pass/fail verdict?

Yes. The QC Report checks a file against a conformance policy — one of the built-ins or your own — and prints PASS, PASS WITH WARNINGS or FAIL, every failed rule with what was actually found, a measured-versus-declared table for bit rate, loudness and HDR light levels, and a sign-off block with signature lines and Approved / Rejected boxes. Any measurement the report needs runs automatically before it exports.

Can I make a delivery manifest, or compare files in a report?

Yes. Select several files and the Delivery Manifest lists them in one table — container, duration, resolution, codecs, audio, size, checksums and verdict — with totals and a CSV export. The Comparison Report puts two or three files side by side and lists only what differs, with an optional SHA-256 check that proves two copies are byte-identical.

Can I export a report as HTML?

Yes. Every report also exports as one self-contained HTML file — images and charts inlined, no JavaScript — that reads well on a phone and prints cleanly from any browser. Handy for emailing a QC result or posting a spec sheet to a review portal.

Get Media Inspector

The complete media analyzer for your Mac — available now on the Mac App Store.

Requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later · Universal binary for Apple silicon and Intel