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How to check video resolution and frame rate on Windows 10

Monitor resolutions are improving and phones aren’t exactly lagging behind. In fact, chances are your phone already has a better screen than your monitor. Naturally, you want the media you watch on your devices to be in HD as well. If you need to check video resolution and/or the frame rate of a video on Windows 10, you can do so from File Explorer.

Video resolution and frame rate

In File Explorer, navigate to where the video you want to check the resolution and frame rate for is. Right-click the video file, and select Properties from the context menu.

In the properties window, go to the Details tab.  Scroll down and you ought to see a Video section which will tell you everything you need to know. The frame rate is given but the resolution doesn’t have its own entry. Instead, what you get is the frame width and height which is basically the resolution.

From the screenshot below, you can see that the video resolution is 1920 x 1080.

Generally speaking, this information cannot be ‘faked’. If you download a video that claims it is a certain resolution, the creator of said video will not be able to mess with the meta data of the video to misrepresent its resolution or frame rate.

If you think Windows 10 isn’t reporting the correct resolution though, you have two alternatives; you can use the Photos app on Windows 10, or you can use VLC player,

Photos app

Open the video in the Photos app. It will open the video for editing. At the top right, you will see a more options button (the one with three dots). Click it and from the context menu, select File Info. This will open a side panel that will show you the video resolution and frame rate.

VLC Player

Open the video in VLC player. Go to Tools>Codec information. In the window that opens, check the Stream 0 section which gives you details about the video. The video resolution and the frame rate are both explicitly stated.

It’s not impossible to fake meta data for a video. It would just require a lot of effort and whatever measures are applied to fake it, it is highly unlikely that it would fool all media players. If you suspect Windows 10, and File Explorer, aren’t showing you the correct resolution for a video, you can try the other two apps mentioned above.

If you have a 4K video which isn’t playing in 4K, make sure you have a 4K monitor and that it’s set up correctly.

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