XDF Viewer

XDF Viewer Online is a purpose-built tool for inspecting and validating Extensible Data Format (.xdf) containers without installing software. It targets researchers, data engineers, and labs that routinely collect time-series data across multiple streams. The tool provides a structured, read-only view of the file's contents, including stream metadata, sample counts, and time stamps, enabling quick verification of data integrity before analysis. For example, a neurophysiology session might include EEG, auxiliary, and event streams; the viewer exposes their names, sampling rates, durations, and channel labels in a unified view.

Conceptually, the tool reads the XDF header and stream list, builds an index of streams, and exposes lightweight statistics without reconstructing raw samples. It supports streaming reads to accommodate large files in the browser, avoiding full in-memory loads. Users can filter streams by name, select export targets, and obtain reproducible metadata in JSON, CSV, or both. This aligns with research workflows that require audit trails for data provenance and easy sharing of dataset summaries with collaborators, reviewers, or pipeline systems.

Unique differentiators include browser-based operation, no local install, and chunked parsing that scales to multi-gigabyte containers. The tool emphasizes data integrity checks (coherent time stamps, non-decreasing sequences), and metadata extraction (start time, duration, sample rate, channel labels). It is suitable for pre-processing validation, data curation, and preparing datasets for analysis scripts in Python, MATLAB, or R, reducing setup time and improving reproducibility.

Core features and use cases include: streaming header parsing; per-stream metadata; quick export to CSV/JSON; partial reads for large files; and cross-platform compatibility. Typical use: you upload a file, inspect streams, export a stream list or a metadata JSON for ingestion into a data pipeline.