Not sure about that video file's attributes? MediaTab can help

Dealing with media files can be a bind, especially video ones as the sheer number of permutations for each file can seem infinite. If you're editing video it really helps to get everything in the same format or at the very least know the format of the files you're using to ensure that your PC can handle them properly.

Generally when you right click a file in Windows and choose "Properties", you can find some basic information, including embedded data for the likes of music files that may include the title, artist, originating album and bitrate amongst others. You don't get full access to information about the codec used to produce the file or much of the key information that can help you to play a stubborn file, so you can find the right software to make it render properly.

MediaTab opens up a world of increased media file information. Once you've downloaded and installed it on your PC, you get an additional tab in the properties dialog for media files. Select this to see all the relevant information listed helpfully for you. Just click Analyze to detect it. Highlight some of the text produced and right click -- copy it to use it elsewhere. You can also click Export > Text to copy the whole lot to the clipboard.

To see the data in a structured manner choose "Tree" and expand or contract the different sections to view them. Click the "Advanced" button to see the file information in more detail. At the very least when trying to splice video files, you need to ensure that they're of the same resolution. You can find this out using MediaTab and, if necessary recode them using a video processing program like Avidemux.