File Detective is a useful tool whether you’re faced with a mystery media file, or any other kind of file.

We do various different pieces of software development R&D (research and development) at Cleanfeed. One of the areas of interest is file handling in web browsers, an area where there is room for innovation. In the case of Cleanfeed we have large audio files which are recordings of sessions and we’re always interested in new and better ways we could handle this data.

As a spin-off of this, we’ve shared a new online tool: File Detective.

File Detective will identify any file from its content. It works by looking at the data inside the file, and so it works even if the file extension (eg. “.wav” or “.zip”) is not correct. It will also identify empty files and other forms of corruption, perhaps by an incomplete download.

Only a web browser is required; there’s no need to download any additional software.

For people working with audio and video it’s even more powerful, with a breakdown of codecs and metadata; such as resolution, aspect ratio and more. It will do this even for large files which would take too long to upload. So you can now use it to check whether that 200 gigabyte video file you have on your system is really in the exact format you expected.

The File Detective exists as a technology test. It’s a very useful tool in its own right, but by testing it you’ll also be helping us to understand some of the technology and research that, in turn, benefits Cleanfeed. You can find it at file-detective.com.