Guide

Merceq works in four steps: import, clean and search, cull and file, export. This guide follows the same order.

Getting started

• System: an Apple silicon (M-series) Mac with macOS 12 Monterey or later. Merceq does not run on Intel Macs.
• Installing: open the .dmg you downloaded and drag Merceq into your Applications folder.
• First launch: there is no setup wizard. With an empty catalog, Merceq asks you to drag a folder in or use Import at the top left.
• Permissions: macOS asks for permission the first time Merceq opens a card, an external or network drive, or your Desktop, Documents or Downloads folder. Notifications are only asked for when an import or export finishes while the window is in the background. Merceq never asks for Full Disk Access, the camera or your Photos library.
• Updates: a few seconds after launch, Merceq asks once whether it should check for updates. Until you say yes, it never goes online to check.
• Only one copy of Merceq runs at a time.

Trial and license

• The trial starts from the License window with Try for 14 days. Each Mac gets one trial, and starting it needs the internet once.
• When the trial ends, only export and external plugins close. Import and culling stay open, and your clips and decisions stay where they are.
• Activating a license: go to Settings › General › License, open the license window and paste your key. The first activation needs the internet once; after that Merceq works offline.
• Two Macs: a license can be active on 2 Macs at the same time. To move to a third, use Move to another Mac… on one of them first. If you can’t get to that Mac, write to [email protected].

1. Import

Press Import at the top left, or ⌘O. The source can be a folder, an SD card or an external drive; you can also drag files in from Finder.

• By default your files stay where they are. Merceq doesn’t move or copy them; it only adds them to the catalog.
• Copy to disk first: choose this to copy a card to another drive. You can copy only, or copy and then import.
• Merceq asks where the copies should go and makes a dated folder there, for example 2026-10-03 DCIM. The whole card is copied: the videos plus their audio, XML and small preview files.
• Each file gets its real name only after its copy has been compared with the original. When the copy is done, an ASC MHL record is written into the folder. If the card already has an ascmhl history, it is kept, never overwritten.
• If something interrupts it: pull the card and Merceq waits, then carries on where it stopped when you put it back. If the app closes, Merceq asks on the next launch whether to continue. Your Mac stays awake while a transfer runs.
• To import from an iPhone, turn on Link in Plugins. Videos from a phone are always copied to a drive and checked by size and duration. Nothing is deleted from the phone.
• Supported formats: mp4, mov, m4v, avi, mkv, mts, m2ts, mpg, mpeg, wmv, flv, webm, 3gp, insv, braw, r3d, mxf. Files Merceq can’t open are listed by name in the import summary.
• Incoming videos: pick folders to watch in Settings. When new videos arrive there, the toolbar tells you how many; none are added until you say so.

2. Clean and search

Views

• Overview (⌘1): the grid. Cards come in small, medium and large. Move the pointer across a card to scrub through the clip.
• Lens (M): one clip at a time, for fast culling.
• List (⌘2): the clips as a list.
• Very heavy clips (8K, high-bitrate ProRes) play from a lighter 1080p preview copy so they stay smooth, and carry a “proxy” badge. HDR, Apple Log and S-Log3 footage shows in normal colour; the file itself is never touched.

Large preview (Space)

Space opens the large preview; Esc closes it. In the preview you can name a clip, add notes and tags, and send it to a folder. You also get:

• Scenes: mark the start with I and the end with O.
• Clip info (M): the clip’s technical details.
• Speech: the transcript, when Sense is on. You can download it as TXT or SRT.
• Focus (H) and full screen (Z).

Filters

The chips in the left panel filter your clips. Pick several and you get the clips that match all of them. Hover a chip to see how many clips it matches.

• Gray chips are measurements, such as Low resolution, Clipped audio, dark clips, no audio, Vertical, Horizontal, 4K, HDR, 90+ fps, Morning, Evening, Night.
• Blue chips are Sense’s guesses, such as With speech, No speech, Close-up, Wide, Selfie, Drone, In a vehicle, Indoor, Outdoor, retakes, blur and wind noise. Because they are guesses, they are sometimes wrong.
• All filters (L) opens the rest: duration, light, location, camera, source, import, resolution, frame rate, codec, colour, container, tags and saved searches. The shoot calendar is there too.

Search

Type in the search box (⌘F) and press Enter. Each thing you type becomes its own chip.

• It searches file names, the names you gave clips, notes, tags, folders and cameras.
• You can narrow a search by camera, tag, folder, duration and date in the same box. A date can be a year such as 2024, or a day such as 15.06.2024 or 2024-06-15.
• To leave a word out, press ⇧Enter or put - in front of it.
• Save this search keeps a search; saved searches show up in all filters.

Searching with Sense

With Sense on, you can describe what you’re looking for, such as “beach at sunset”. Merceq looks in what was said, in text on screen and in the picture, and gives one list: the certain results first, then the ones that maybe match. If nothing matches for certain, it says so.

• Search in this clip (S): runs the search inside one clip and shows the closest moments.
• Setting up Sense: Sense is off on a new install. Press Download in Plugins (or in Settings › General). About 2.75 GB comes down. You can pause the download, and it picks up again if it stops. Once it’s done, Sense doesn’t use the internet.
• Sense turns speech into text, recognises pictures and on-screen text, and tells sounds apart. All of it runs on your Mac.
• Choose the languages spoken in your footage in Settings › General (6 languages, several at once).

3. Cull and file

• 1–9: puts the clip in that number’s folder and moves to the next clip. An empty number makes a new folder.
• F: Hold. R: Out. Press the same key again to clear the decision; 0 clears it too.
• C: adds the clip to the active folder, or takes it out.
• ⌘Z: undoes the last action. There is no redo.
• A clip you’ve decided on leaves the queue. The tabs are queued, Selected, Hold, Out and Overview.
• Your folders become the folder structure on disk when you export. One key both decides and files.
• Compare (V): puts 2–4 selected clips side by side. With two clips Merceq asks Which one stays?: pick one with ← and →, keep it with Enter, or press M to keep both.
• Similar clips (G): other takes of the same shot, and with Sense on, scenes that look alike.
• Duplicates: several copies of the same video are gathered in one place in the left panel.
• Shot list: list the scenes a video needs and put the best clip in each slot. There are ready-made templates, or you can build your own list.
• Tag (T), note (N), name (Enter).

How deleting works

Merceq never deletes anything for good.

1. Clips you reject first go to Merceq’s own Trash. The files don’t move, and you can bring them all back.
2. In the Summary step of export, you can send rejected clips to the macOS Trash. Finder’s Put Back works. Clips on a card never go to the Trash.

4. Export

Press Export, or ⌘E.

1. Summary: how many clips are going out, and how many are on hold or out.
2. Destination and layout: where they go and how they are named.

• Copy, Link, Move. Link only works on the same drive. Moving to another drive copies first, checks the copy, then sends the original to the macOS Trash.
• File naming: build names from parts such as the project name, your folder, orientation, decision, tag, camera, date, time, sequence number or the original name. You can save your settings as a preset.
• Also write to a backup disk: a second, verified copy on another drive.
• When the export finishes, an ASC MHL record and a receipt are written. Past exports stay listed.
• Export runs in the background, in Machine, so you can keep working.
• Exporting needs a license.

Sending to your editing app (Link)

• Merceq prepares an FCPXML project for Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve, and an XMEML project for Premiere Pro. Your folders become bins or keywords, decisions become labels, scenes become markers, and camera timecode is kept. A loss report shows anything that doesn’t carry over.
• CapCut gets no project; your vertical clips go into a separate “Shorts” folder.
• From the export receipt you can also write XMP sidecar files, make a selects package (a page and small videos for a client to pick from), write an editor’s brief and a delivery note, and list what is safe to delete.
• In Link’s section of Plugins, you can fix wrong camera clocks (undoable) and find markers you left while shooting: spoken cues, a double clap and a thumbs-up.

Recall

Open Recall from its door in the left panel. When it finds something new, a dot appears on the door.

• Folders as they were: look at an earlier state of a folder and put it back.
• Kept but never exported: clips you meant to use and forgot.
• Videos you’ve seen before: if your latest import contains clips you decided on before, you can apply the old decisions in one go.
• Your habits: after enough decisions, it tells you which clips you usually reject.
• Memory copy: before a rejected clip goes to the Trash, Merceq can keep a small copy of it in a “Memories” folder. If that copy can’t be written, the original is not sent to the Trash.
• You can turn Recall off in Plugins.

Machine

Machine in the toolbar shows all background work in one place: copying to disk, importing, exporting and Sense. Each job has a sentence and a percentage; time remaining is left out on purpose.

• Each job can be paused on its own. Half-finished jobs can be resumed or dropped from here.
• Below 20% battery, background work waits until you plug in.

Backups and reset

• Your catalog is backed up automatically from time to time, and the last 20 backups are kept. From the backups window you can make a new one, restore one, or back up to a file. Restoring never throws away your current catalog; it is kept first.
• reset in the left panel offers four levels, from clearing your culling decisions to wiping everything. A backup is taken first every time. None of them touch your videos.

Keyboard shortcuts

See them all in the app with ⌘K.

Key	What it does
1–9	Puts the clip in that folder, or makes a new one
F	Hold
R	Out
0	Clears the decision
C	Adds to or removes from the active folder
⌘ Z	Undoes the last action
Space	Opens the large preview
Esc	Closes, or steps back once
M	Lens (in the preview: clip info)
V	Compares the selected clips
G	Shows similar clips
S	Searches inside this clip
L	Opens all filters
J K L	While playing: slower, stop, faster (1x · 1.5x · 2x)
⇧ ← →	Steps frame by frame in the preview
I · O	Scene start · end
Z · H	Full screen · focus, in the preview
A	Sound on or off
T · N · Enter	Tag · note · name
⌘ F	Goes to the search box
⌘ A	Selects all (in a search, the certain results first)
⌘ 1 · ⌘ 2	Overview · list
⌘ O · ⌘ E	Import · export
⌘ ⇧ R	Shows the file in Finder
⌘ ,	Settings
⌘ K	Shortcuts window

Help

If you get stuck, write to [email protected].