Insights · Metadata

Metadata stripping: how a re-exported video loses its proof

February 2026 · 4 minute read

One of the quietest ways to ruin good video evidence is also one of the most common: making a copy.

The metadata that establishes when a file was captured, the record the camera wrote at the moment of recording, lives in the original. Re-export it from an editor, screen-record it, or send it through a messaging app, and that metadata is often stripped, overwritten, or replaced with the date of the copy. What looks like the same video has quietly lost the thing that made it provable.

Why it matters for authentication

Self-authentication under Federal Rule of Evidence 902(14) depends on a clean original that can be hashed and certified, as Duke Law's Judicature has explained how the rule. A copy several generations removed from the source undercuts that, and it hands the other side an easy question: which version is this, and what happened to it along the way?

It is why a disciplined pipeline works only from original device files. If the verifiable metadata is not there, the honest answer is to say so, not to stamp a date that cannot be defended.