Catch media problems before delivery

Playhead checks playback, file integrity, delivery concerns, track coverage, HDR signaling, and private photo metadata. Every issue includes an explanation and a practical next step.

Run the built-in Sample Audit to compare one ready file with one deliberately problematic file, without granting file access or finding a test clip first.

A list tells you a film has twelve subtitle tracks. It cannot tell you that one of them appears for ninety seconds in the middle, which is what a forced narrative track looks like, or that the second audio track stops at the credits.

Playhead lays every track on one clock: the picture as a filmstrip, each sound track named by its own title, each subtitle track drawn where it actually appears.

Most tools report the format as "SMPTE ST 2086" and leave the name you recognise in a different field. Playhead leads with HDR10 or Dolby Vision, says what a player without it falls back to, and turns the mastering data into brightness you can read: the monitor it was graded on, the brightest pixel, the brightest frame.

Other tools guess from rules like "10-bit 4:2:2 usually lacks hardware decoding". Rules like that are wrong on some machines the day they are written.

Playhead hands your file's own codec configuration to VideoToolbox and asks your Mac directly, so the answer accounts for the exact profile, depth and chroma in front of you. It also checks the frame rate against your display's refresh rate, and whether your screen can actually show HDR.

Open a JPEG, HEIC or raw file and Playhead reads the camera, the lens, the shutter, the aperture and the ISO, along with the copyright and caption fields.

If the photo still carries the coordinates of where it was taken, Playhead says so plainly, before you share it with anyone.