Managing a Video Library On Your Mac

Instead of storing your videos in the Photos app with your pictures, consider storing them as files in a folder in the Finder. You can place this folder on your iCloud Drive, on your local drive only, or on an external drive. You can organize them using file names, subfolders, tags and comments. You can use the Gallery view to look through your videos almost as if they were in a special video management app.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. So one of the things I like to do is store my videos, not in the Photos Library, but just in the Finder. Let me show you how you can do that and organize your videos too.
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I don't like to have my videos stored in my Photos Library. I like to leave that just for photos. For one thing it reduces the size of the photo library and that's especially important if you use iCloud Photos where large videos can easily take up a lot of space and take a long time to sync across your devices. I always know whether I'm looking for a photo or a video. So It's easy for me to go and look in my videos folder in the Finder for the videos I want and know that all my photos are in my Photos Library. I don't take that many videos. But if I did it would be even better because I can store those videos in an external drive and not take up a ton of space on my internal drive.
But just because you have your videos stored in a folder in the Finder doesn't mean it's hard to organize them. There are a ton of tools the Finder offers to allow you to organize and easily find your videos. So here's an example of what I'm talking about. In my Documents folder I've got a folder called Videos. In there I've got a bunch of different videos. Now I don't have to just store this in my Documents folder. That's where I have it here as an example. I could decide I want the videos folder to be at the main iCloud drive level. So now I've got a videos folder in my main iCloud drive that lives next to my Documents and Desktop folder. That's a great place for it as well.
This will, of course, sync it across to my other devices and make it available on my iOS devices which is great. But if my videos are taking up a lot of space you may not want to have it there either. I can store it locally just on the hard drive for this one Mac by going to my Home folder. Now there's already a folder in my Home folder called Movies. In there I'm going to find things like iMovie, and Final Cut Pro library. Also any other app that uses videos a lot is probably going to use this folder. This is a local folder just on my hard drive. So putting the videos folder here makes sense. I'm going to get a warning here because I'm removing these from iCloud drive and putting them on a local drive. So under Movies I've got Videos and that's where I can store my videos. That's a great place for it. Another great place is if you have an external drive with tons of space. You might want to create a Videos folder there as well.
Now how do you get videos directly into this folder. Well, instead of importing them into the Photos app you can bring them directly here. If it's a SD card or a camera that you're connecting directly to your Mac and you can access it in the Finder, you can drag the video files directly from the card into this folder and then get rid of them and then import the photos into the Photos app. Or when importing into Photos simply select only the photos and not the videos to import them in.
You can also use Image Capture. Works great for the iPhone. So I'm going to run Image Capture here and I've got my iPhone connected to this Mac. If I look here Image Capture is going to show me a list and I'm going to Sort By kind here. I can scroll through this list. There are a lot of photos on this camera. But I can find the videos pretty easily.  I can see them. There's just a few of them and they're listed as MOV as kind. So I can select one. I can drag and drop this into the Finder and it will pull that video out. I could also select a video and then choose to import it. I can even select the folder. So I could decide I want to go directly into that video's folder that I created under Movies, Videos, choose that one and then import the one that I've selected. You can also just airdrop the video directly from your phone to your Mac and then drag it to the videos folder.
But anyway you get your videos here there's a lot you can do to organize these. As you can see I like to give them good names so I can tell what each one is. You can give names that include dates or locations or anything that you want. But, of course, you're going to have the Date Modified here in the List View so you can use that as well. You can also select a video, or any file in the Finder for that matter, and you can add Tags to it. So you can Tag your videos to organize them. You can also add comments. Comments will show up when you do Spotlight searches. 
Another thing you can do is you can create subfolders in here. So you can create a new folder and add your videos into that. So you can have this structure here of folders and subfolders. Now you quickly see the videos here by going into Column View and selecting them. You'll see the Preview pane on the right and you can even click and view the video. You can also, of course, select any video you want in any view you want, like List View, and hit the spacebar and it will open up in Quick Look. You can use the Gallery View as well. You get a really cool way to view your videos. Almost like you're in some sort of library management app here because you can click through these. The videos have a little playback timeline at the bottom and a volume control. Also Mojave gives us the Quick Action so you have the ability to trim and rotate videos right here in the Finder. So it really does almost feel like you're in some sort of special video library app even though you're just viewing these files in the Finder.
If you want to Share a video you've got the Share button here or you can Control click on it and you Share. You can, of course, also double click on it and it should open up by default in QuickTime Player. From QuickTIme Player you're got the ability to trim. You've got the ability to Merge videos and put them on after each other. You can Share from here as well in various different ways and Export as well. 
So whether you just have a few videos or many you may want to consider storing those videos just as files in a folder in the Finder rather than in the Photos app or some other photo management tool.

Comments: 10 Responses to “Managing a Video Library On Your Mac”

Carlos Rivera

5 years ago

I do something similar. I keep my videos in a separate Photos library on an external drive which is not synced to the cloud. This way I can use some of the built in features like keywords, smart albums, etc. This library is included in my time machine backup but as mentioned not using iCloud space.

Debbie

Doesn’t exporting videos from the Photos app change the original date to the current date? That would be a problem for me.

Tom Abbott

I have been importing my photos and videos into the Photos app. How do I extract the videos out of the Photos library so that I can put them in their own folder as you discussed in this video?

Ruud

My Photos library consists of many small videos that are between 10 seconds or 1 minute long. They are taken on my iPhone and imported in Photos together with my pictures. For example during my last holiday I took 76 of those short clips. I kind of see them as part of the media I created on my holiday. Do you also exclude these from your Photos Library? One disadvantage of that would be that you cannot add some of these videos in a photo album that you create from your holiday.

Gary Rosenzweig

Debbie and Tom: File, Export, Export Unmodified Original.

Ruud: I don't include those in my Photos Library. But you don't have to do the same as me. Do what makes the most sense for how you like things.

Gene

Good questions. They helped me. I do have another: In your response to Debbie and Tom you said Export. Does that mean there will be 2 copies? One in Photos and one in Finder folder. Is there a way to automate deleting them from Photos?

Gene: Ideally, you want to never import them into Photos in the first place. But if you have them there already, you can select a bunch, export, and then delete the selection. Or, create an album, add everything to it. Export everything in the album. Then delete everything in the album too.

Dirk

So, any video taken with my iPhone X will automatically go into my Photos Library? And then I must physically relocate to Finder or my choice. I really like this idea, but just need to understand it better. Thanks for all your posts- very helpful and appreciated!

Dirk: If you are using iCloud Photos, then yes, you take a video with your iPhone, then it goes automatically into your library. Then what I'm suggesting may be good for some people is that they then move those out of the library into a videos folder on their Mac. Then your library is photos only, and your videos are all in a folder. It works well for me because I take mostly photos. If you take a lot of video, it may not be ideal for you.

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Managing a Video Library On Your Mac

Comments: 10 Responses to “Managing a Video Library On Your Mac”

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