MF4 Viewer

ASAM MDF4 visualization in VSCode

The extension allows you to visualize an ASAM MDF4 measurement file in Visual Studio Code. It is inspired by asammdf and reworked to be used inside the editor.

To launch the visualization, simply open a file ending with ".mf4" or ".mdf". The file opens directly in the MF4 Viewer custom editor: a channel tree on the left, an interactive plot area in the center, and a metadata panel on the right.

The position of the zoom and the cursor is synchronized across all subplots in stacked mode.

Features

• Custom editor for *.mf4 / *.mdf — just open the file.
• Channel tree grouped by MDF channel group (collapsible and filterable).
• Stacked mode: one subplot per channel with peak-preserving min/max decimation and synchronized cursors.
• Overlay mode: all selected channels in a single plot, resampled onto a common time grid, with a separate Y axis per unit.
• Zoom / pan: drag to box-zoom on X, mouse wheel to zoom, live legend values.
• Metadata panel: file version, start time, and per-channel details (unit, group, and any embedded metadata when present).

Original Project

The data layout follows the ASAM MDF 4.x standard. The reader is a small, self-contained TypeScript implementation. Plotting is built on top of uPlot.

Requirements

None. The extension is self-contained and works out of the box — just install it and open an .mf4 or .mdf file.

Extension Settings

There are currently no extension settings. Both stacked and overlay modes plot the raw, unmodified stored values.

Known Issues

• Read-only viewer (no editing or saving of MF4).
• Supports sorted MDF 4.x files with fixed-length numeric channels (as written by common tools such as asammdf). Variable-length, array, and structured channels are listed but not plotted.
• In overlay mode, channels from different time bases share one X axis built from the union of their real timestamps; each channel keeps its own raw samples (no resampling) and consecutive samples are connected with straight lines.

Release Notes

Please refer to the version history for the changelog.

Works with

Universal