Free Online SEG-Y Trace Viewer: Wiggle and Grayscale Sections
Choose a SEG-Y file up to 50 MB, or load the demo section. Your data never leaves this page.
From header to picture
Our SEG-Y header inspector tells you what is inside a file: the sample interval, the trace count, the format code. This viewer goes the rest of the way and draws the section itself. It reads the binary header, walks the traces, decodes the samples, and paints them either as classic wiggle traces or as a grayscale image, with a real time axis down the side. For a quick answer to did this file survive the transfer, or what does this old line actually look like, that picture is worth every header byte.
What it decodes
The viewer handles the sample formats that cover almost every file in circulation: the venerable IBM floating point that SEG-Y was born with in 1975, modern IEEE floats, and 32, 16, and 8 bit integers. It detects byte order automatically, so files written on the wrong endian machine still open, and it reads the sample interval and trace length straight from the binary header, falling back to the trace headers when the file is sloppy about it. Amplitudes are balanced with a global gain so both faint and hot sections display sensibly.
Honest limits
This is a quick look tool for files up to about 50 megabytes, showing up to 400 traces: a shot record, a stacked 2D line, a brute stack from the field. It is not a workstation: no picking, no filtering, no headers per trace beyond what display needs. Files with exotic extended headers or variable trace lengths may confuse it, in which case the header inspector next door will usually tell you why. And as with everything on this site, the file is parsed in your browser and never uploaded, which matters when the line is confidential.
Related Calculators and Reference
- SEG-Y Header Inspector: read the file anatomy before you draw it.
- LAS File Viewer: the well log sibling of this tool.
- Seismic Wave Simulator: watch the physics that made these reflections.
- Dix Equation: turn stacking velocities from a section into interval velocities.
- SEG Wiki: the full SEG-Y standard and its history.