Are you worried about hidden personal data when uploading?

[utaysidun]

Hi,

I'm wondering if any of you uploaders are worried about personal info stored in the metadata of files you upload.

Like, I have created an account on a site offering a (legal) paid video streaming/download service. This means that when I download videos from there, the site knows about my real identity to some extent (through e-mail address and - more importantly - payment information). Now if I want to create a torrent with some of those videos I downloaded, it would be possible for information related to my user account to be stored in the video file's metadata, e.g. my user name from the paid site, which could be used to identify me as the original uploader.

Now, I could just take a look at the file's metadata, but that is not really safe either. Data could be hidden as some kind of cryptic token or user ID that I would not recognize when looking at it. Or worse even, it might actually be embedded as a sort of watermark in the video data (barely visible to the eye), or hidden away in some obscure section of the video file that is usually unused.

I know there is really no way to be sure something like this doesn't happen. But do any of you uploaders have a procedure you go through to reduce the risk of identifying info being leaked before uploading? Or any cases where this info was actually used to identify and maybe prosecute uploaders?

[fiveofseven]

If something is written in the metadata, you can remux the video in MKVMerge or My MP4 Box.
Check the new files metadata to ensure the offending details are gone.

[no_Steam]

If something is written in the metadata, you can remux the video in MKVMerge or My MP4 Box.
Check the new files metadata to ensure the offending details are gone.

Will this affect quality?

[Sid]

No, it won't.

But the fact that you ask the question implies that you don't understand the terminology so research moar if you're planning on trying this.

Remuxing means copying without alteration the audio and video streams from one container (mp4) to another (mkv), and writing a new set of metadata. It doesn't affect the quality because it doesn't actually change anything that you will see or hear; it only changes parts of the file that your TV/Computer/other device deals with. Because it's doing no heavy processing remuxing only takes a minute or two.

Depending on how you configure the job (and the options the developers of your app-of-choice have provided) you may (rather than re-muxing) re-encode, and that WILL reduce the quality because it will convert the audio and/or video streams to a different codec. Or perhaps even convert them to the same codec if that is what you have specified--which will also reduce the quality in the same way taking a photocopy of a photocopy does. Depending on the file size, codecs involved, and power of your computer, re-encoding will generally take at least 5-10 minutes and perhaps even longer. i.e. if your job takes a long time, you're doing it wrong.