BrowserTools

Video Viewer Online

Play, inspect, control playback speed and snapshot local videos

By Guga — BrowserTools maintainer, Tbilisi, Georgia Updated 2026-08-12
Free Private No uploads
What is Video Viewer Online?

A video element pointed at a local file, plus the controls a native player leaves out. You get 0.25x to 2x playback, ±5 second jumps, loop, picture-in-picture, fullscreen, and a capture button that copies the frame currently on screen into an offscreen bitmap at the video's own pixel dimensions — so a 3840×2160 clip yields a 3840×2160 PNG, not a screenshot-sized one. Nothing is re-encoded and nothing is downloaded, so it opens instantly. Two honest caveats: the ±1 Frame buttons move a fixed 40 milliseconds rather than a computed frame boundary, which is one frame at 25 fps but not at 30; and MKV or ProRes MOV files pass the type check yet may not decode, because that is the browser's business.

Play and inspect local video files right in your browser with zero uploading. Supports MP4, WebM, MOV, and MKV with frame-by-frame scrubbing, 0.25x–2x playback speed, Picture-in-Picture, and high-resolution frame screenshot capture.

Private Video Viewer Online In Your Browser

Video Viewer Online is processed locally with client-side JavaScript. Your files never touch a server, and there is no queue to wait in.

Step-by-Step

How to use Video Viewer Online

1

Drop a file onto the drop zone, or press Choose Video File; MP4, WebM, OGG, MOV, MKV, AVI and M4V are accepted.

2

Use the transport row to play, rewind or advance five seconds, step in single frames, and toggle loop.

3

Set Speed from the dropdown between 0.25x and 2x, adjust volume or mute, and pop the player out with PiP or fullscreen if supported.

4

Press Capture Frame to save a PNG of the visible frame, or Save Video to write the original file back out unchanged.

Key Capabilities
  • Captures the current frame to PNG at the video's full native resolution, named with the whole-second timestamp.
  • Offers eight playback rates from a quarter speed to double, applied to the element in place without re-encoding.
  • Shows the source file's size, duration and pixel dimensions in a footer alongside the player.
  • Opens files through a local object URL, so playback begins immediately with no engine download and no upload.
Common Use Cases
  • A motion designer stepping through a reference clip frame by frame to match a camera move precisely.
  • A QA engineer pulling a full-resolution PNG of the exact moment a rendering glitch appears on screen.
  • A developer checking whether a browser will actually decode a client's MOV before wiring it into a page.
Clear Answers

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does +1 Frame not land on the next frame?
Because the step is a hardcoded 40 milliseconds, not a lookup of the real frame rate. On 25 fps footage that happens to be exactly one frame; on 30 fps it overshoots by about 6.7 ms, and on 24 fps it is a touch fast. For frame-accurate work on non-25 fps material, scrub with the timeline slider and watch the timecode instead.
I dropped an MKV and got a black screen. Is the file broken?
Probably not. The extension check lets MKV and AVI through, but whether anything appears depends entirely on the browser's demuxer and codec set. A ProRes or DNxHD MOV from a camera fails the same way, while H.264 inside an MP4 is universally fine. Transcode it first if you need to inspect it.
What does Save Video actually do?
It downloads the file you opened, unchanged and re-encoded by nothing. It is a round trip through the download manager, useful only if you want a copy in a different location. It does not apply anything you did in the player — speed, loop and volume are playback settings, not edits.
Is there a frame counter or audio extraction here?
Neither. The player reports elapsed time to two decimals and nothing about the codec or bitrate — for that, the metadata page is the one to use. And extracting an audio track is a conversion job rather than a viewing one.