Videre app icon

Workflow · Metadata repair

Fix the tags. Keep the pixels.

A graded HDR deliverable bounces QC over a wrong or missing color tag, and the pixels were never the problem. Videre rewrites the color tags, the mastering display volume, and the content light level of an MP4 or MOV without re-encoding: read what the file actually carries, stage the fixes in Metadata mode or one command, and write a copy whose video and audio are verified byte-identical before the save succeeds.

macOS No re-encode SMPTE ST 2086 MaxCLL / MaxFALL H.273
Read the guide section All of Videre

one-time purchase · macOS 14+

Videre's Metadata mode on an HDR file: the guided-fix toolbar over the container tree, staged values shown next to the file's current ones.
Metadata mode. The fixes open pre-filled with what the file carries now, so what you change is exactly the delta. Footage: Tears of Steel (CC) Blender Foundation.

A wrong tag bounces a right master

The grade is correct. The file says otherwise. A player believes the file.

An HDR deliverable carries its meaning in container metadata. The color tags declare which primaries, transfer, matrix, and range the pixels are coded in; the mastering display volume (SMPTE ST 2086) records the display the grade was made on; MaxCLL and MaxFALL summarize how bright the content gets. Players and QC tools read those boxes, not your intent. When one is missing or wrong, the pixels get interpreted under the wrong assumptions, the QC report flags the file, and the delivery comes back.

The pixels themselves are fine. A wrong tag is a labeling error, yet the usual fix is a full re-encode: hours of render time and a generation of quality spent to change a few dozen bytes of metadata. Videre edits those bytes directly. The video and audio data are not touched, and the output is checked against the original before the save succeeds.

master.mp4 PQ pixels · colr bt709 players trust the tag renders flat, everywhere Retag colr → bt2020-pq fixed.mp4 QuickTime agrees the pixels never change: colr is bit-spliced into a new file, the rest is byte-identical master.mp4 PQ pixels · colr bt709 players trust the tag renders flat, everywhere Retag colr → bt2020-pq · bit-splice fixed.mp4 QuickTime agrees the pixels never change: colr is bit-spliced, the rest is byte-identical
What Retag changes. Only the container's colour boxes: the fix is bit-spliced into a new file, the encoded pixels are byte-identical, and the output is verified against the original before the save succeeds.

The repair, step by step

Bounce email to redelivery in four steps. No render queue involved.

1 · Diagnose what the file says
Open the deliverable. The metadata readout in the info panel (⌘I) shows the declared tags; the container inspector (⌃8, Container mode) shows the boxes themselves, colr, mdcv, and clli, with every field decoded. The bitstream inspector reads the color signalling inside the coded stream too, so a container problem and a bitstream problem are distinguishable before you pick the fix.
2 · Stage the fixes in Metadata mode
Metadata mode (⌘6) puts the guided fixes in the toolbar, each opening pre-filled with the file's current tags. Keep, set, or remove each one; presets fill BT.709, BT.2020 PQ (HDR10), and BT.2020 HLG, and the fields accept any H.273 code point, so an unusual tag is not a dead end. Mastering display values are entered in the raw integers x265's master-display string uses, with the derived chromaticities and cd/m² shown beside them. Staged values render inline in the container and bitstream trees next to the current ones, so the whole plan is reviewable before anything is written. The same toolbar holds the rest of the fix catalog - chroma siting, aspect ratio, HLG compatibility, stripping dynamic HDR metadata, QuickTime compatibility, fast start, edit-list repair - listed in full in the guide.
3 · Let the write prove itself
Write Metadata Copy… writes the whole plan at once. The original file is never modified; the repaired copy goes to a new file. Before the save succeeds, the output must pass three checks: the video and audio data byte-identical to the source, the requested tags reading back exactly, and the file re-opening. If any check fails, the output is deleted and the error names the reason. There is no state where a half-repaired file looks done.
4 · Redeliver, or script it
For one file, save and send. For a pipeline, the same engine runs from the command line: videre retag takes the presets, an x265-style master-display string, and per-track selection, so the fix drops into the script that already packages the deliverable. Minutes instead of a re-render.

What it rewrites, and what it doesn't

Three boxes, each independently kept, set, or removed. Edits apply to every video track; the CLI's --track picks one.

colrPrimaries, transfer, matrix, range: how a player converts the coded pixels to light. Presets or any H.273 code point.
mdcvThe SMPTE ST 2086 mastering display volume: primaries, white point, and luminance range of the grading display. The static metadata HDR10 is built on.
clliMaxCLL and MaxFALL: the brightest pixel and the brightest frame average, the numbers downstream tone mapping reads.

Dynamic metadata is a removal, not a rewrite. Strip dynamic HDR metadata takes the HDR10+ metadata out of every carrier it uses, leaving a plain HDR10 deliverable. Videre reads those payloads and can remove them; it never authors or edits their contents.

Scope: both layers. Color signalling also lives inside the coded stream itself (VUI in the parameter sets, SEI messages), and decoders prefer it over the container tags, so every fix carries a scope control: container, bitstream, or both. Both is the default, so the layers agree after a repair. The container and bitstream inspectors show both layers side by side, so where the two disagree you see it before you pick the fix.

Videre's container inspector on a repaired file: the colr, mdcv, and clli boxes unfolded with every decoded field visible.
Check the result yourself. The container inspector decodes the boxes the repair wrote, field by field. Footage: Tears of Steel (CC) Blender Foundation.

In a delivery script

The app and the command line share one engine, so a scripted repair behaves exactly like the sheet, verification included:

videre retag graded.mov -o graded-fixed.mov --colr bt2020-pq \
    --cll 1000,400 \
    --master-display "G(13250,34500)B(7500,3000)R(34000,16000)WP(15635,16450)L(10000000,1)"

videre retag --help lists the edit flags, including --remove-colr / --remove-clli / --remove-mdcv for stripping a box, and --track for multi-track files.

Fix the label, keep the master

A bounced deliverable does not have to go back through the render queue. Read what the file carries, correct the tags in Metadata mode or from the command line, and send an output whose pixels are the ones you graded, verified byte for byte. The full reference, including every fix and preset, is in the user guide.

Read the guide section → Back to Videre