5 · Find the shot you're looking for
Quick filters: Clean up · Weed out · Find
Click the filter icon in the tool rail on the left. The Quick filters panel that opens has three stages so you can review your library in order:
| Stage | Question |
|---|---|
| 1 Clean up | are the files intact |
| 2 Weed out | is the footage usable |
| 3 Find | what are you looking for (Find never ends) |
Step circles
The numbered circle at the start of each stage is only a progress marker; it isn’t a keyboard shortcut.
- The first stage you haven’t completed yet appears amber. This shows you where to start.
- Upcoming stages appear gray.
- A completed stage shows a green ✓. Its name and dimmed chips stay in place so you can see what you’ve checked. It works like a checklist.
1. Clean up
This helps you check whether files are technically intact. These chips are available:
- Unreadable
- No preview
- Empty file
- Extra copy
A cleanup row appears below. For details, see Clean up empty files and extra copies.
2. Weed out
This helps you find footage that may have image or audio problems.
- Gray chips (measured by Merceq): Under 2 s, Out of focus, Shaky, Low resolution, Dark, Clipped audio, No audio.
- Blue chips (estimated by Sense): Blurry, Retake called, Windy.
Out of focus and Shaky show footage with these problems in some moments. You can see the problem sections from the orange timeline markers in the video player (section 4).
3. Find
Find the footage you need by its properties. These rows are available:
- Frame, Resolution, Frame rate, Length, Speech, Time of day, Camera, Location, Color.
- Blue rows (Sense): Shooting (Selfie, Drone) and Topic.
The Find stage avoids showing the same chip twice:
- A chip shown in Weed out isn’t shown in Find.
- If there are gray and blue chips with the same name, the blue one is hidden.
- If your library has an iPhone and no other phone brand, the Phone chip isn’t shown in the wing (it remains in All filters).
- Chips that don’t narrow the results aren’t shown in the Find stage.
Dimmed chips: “none” and “scanning”
All chips appear in the Clean up and Weed out stages. You can see what’s been checked even when no problems were found.
- A chip with no matching clips looks dim and can’t be selected. Its tooltip says “{ad} none”, for example “Unreadable none”. The No audio chip says “No clips without an audio track”.
- If a condition is still being analyzed and its result count is zero, it says {ad} · scanning instead of none. These chips are Out of focus, Shaky (defect scan), Windy, and Retake called (speech scan). The count is final when analysis finishes.
- If the match count for a selected chip drops to zero, you can still click it to turn off the condition.
Blue chips
Blue chips show estimates based on Sense’s image or audio analysis. Gray chips are based on Merceq’s measurements. When a blue chip is in the wing, a short note appears beside the QUICK FILTERS heading: “Blue: Sense’s estimate”.
How many clips match?
Chips don’t show a count. When you hover over a chip:
- The bottom row of the wing says “{ad} · {n} clips match”.
- Clips that don’t match the filter dim on screen. This lets you preview its effect before applying it.
When the pointer isn’t over a chip, the bottom row tells you how many clips are currently shown. When a filter is active, a clear link appears in the bottom row; click it to turn off all active filters.