Tesla has historically kept the rich telemetry data generated by its vehicles under strict guard. While owners could view video footage, the underlying truth of an incident - braking pressure, steering angle, and FSD/Autopilot status - was often buried in the proprietary logs only accessible to Tesla’s engineering teams.
With the 2025 Holiday Update, Tesla has introduced basic telemetry visible in the in-vehicle Dashcam UI, but it actually goes beyond what you see onscreen.
Tesla has also released an official Dashcam Tools repository on GitHub that provides more telemetry information from Dashcam clips.
Tesla has effectively handed owners the keys to their own “black box,” providing a standardized, open-source method to decode and visualize the forensic data embedded within their dashcam footage.
The Official Forensics Viewer
The centerpiece of this release is a web-based drag-and-drop file viewer. Tesla’s holiday update encoded telemetry data directly into the video file, but this isn’t just abstract data. It’s frame-by-frame metadata of how much the accelerator was pressed, whether FSD was active at that very frame, and much more.
When using the tool, Tesla will display your video, along with the synchronized data associated with the footage to the right.
On the right side of the screen, it displays:
SEI version
Gear State
Frame Sequence Number
Vehicle Speed (m/s)
Accelerator Pedal Position (value between 0 and 1, depending how much the accelerator is pressed)
Steering Wheel Angle
Blinker On Left/Right
Brake Applied
Autopilot State (OFF, AUTOSTEER, FSD, TACC)
Latitude (4 digits)
Longitude (4 digits)
Heading
Linear Acceleration Mps2 X, Y, and Z
For owners involved in insurance claims or legal disputes, this is a game-changer. It transforms a standard video clip into verifiable data. Instead of relying on visual estimation to argue that a driver was braking or that a turn signal was active, the tool extracts the hard numbers directly from the file. The repository also includes a metadata extractor for those who need to export the raw telemetry for further analysis.
The SEI Standard and Hardware Requirements
This new capability relies on a fundamental change in how Tesla encodes video, introduced in the 2025.44.25 update (the Holiday Update).
The release notes confirm that vehicles now embed SEI (Supplemental Enhancement Information) data directly into the video stream. This method marries the telemetry to the visual frames, ensuring perfect synchronization.
Only vehicles equipped with HW3 or HW4 have the processing overhead to encode the additional data. Tesla also notes that if the vehicle is parked and the recording is from Sentry Mode, the SEI data may not be present, as the vehicle sleeps non-essential sensors to conserve energy.
Local Logic: Built for Privacy First
Crucially, Tesla has architected this tool with privacy as a priority. Despite the tool being web-based, it is designed to run locally within your browser.
When you drag and drop a clip into the viewer, the data is not uploaded to a Tesla server or a third-party cloud. The processing happens entirely inside your browser, on your own computer. This ensures that sensitive footage never leaves the owner’s possession during analysis.
