Import videos from your phone
You can cull videos from your phone alongside your other footage. Merceq copies the videos you select to a disk first; then you work from those copies.
You can’t use videos directly from their locations on your phone. That’s why there’s no Import button for the phone source. The bottom row says “Videos on the phone are copied to your Mac first.” The primary button is Copy to disk, then import, with Copy to disk only beside it. (If you’ve also added a folder from a card or disk to the selection along with the phone, the bottom row is as usual: Import is disabled, and the action is in the Copy to disk first menu.)
Connect your iPhone
- Connect your iPhone to your Mac with a cable.
- Unlock your phone.
- If your phone asks “Trust This Computer?”, tap Trust.
- Open the Import window in Merceq and select your phone on the left.
Your phone appears in the list, but can’t be opened while Link is turned off. If you select the phone and it says “To import from a phone, turn on Link in Plugins.”, turn on Link from Plugins.
Select and import your videos
When you select your phone, you’ll see video thumbnails on the right. This view is similar to the Photos app, with up to eight videos in a row and the newest at the top. Thumbnails get larger as you widen the window. Each frame shows the video length in its bottom-right corner; hover over a frame to see the recording time at the bottom left. Vertical videos are shown uncropped, with black bars on the sides.
Videos are grouped by the day they were recorded. A day’s heading stays at the top as you scroll and summarizes that day, for example, “Saturday, October 3 · 4 clips · 210 MB”. Videos you’ve already added to your library look dim and say “already imported” in the corner; the heading also counts them, for example, “· 2 already imported”.
The top row shows the phone’s total and your selection: “51 clips · 9.8 GB · 12 selected · 1.1 GB”. The same row has the New only checkbox (hides videos already imported), Select all, and Deselect.
Ways to select:
| What you want to do | How |
|---|---|
| Select or deselect a video | Click its frame. The selected frame gets an amber outline and a checkmark appears at the top right. |
| Select several videos in a row | Click one, then ⇧-click the last one. Videos marked “already imported” in between are skipped. |
| Select multiple videos by dragging | Start in the space between frames and drag; a box appears and selects the videos it touches. The list scrolls by itself when you approach an edge. |
| Remove videos from the selection by dragging | Hold ⌥ while dragging. |
| Select an entire day | Click Select all in the day heading. A second press (Deselect) clears that day. |
| Select everything | Use Select all at the top or ⌘A. |
| Clear the selection | Use Deselect at the top or Esc. |
| Navigate with the keyboard | Arrow keys move from frame to frame; the Space key selects or deselects. |
“Select all” doesn’t select videos you’ve already imported. To import one of those again, click its frame yourself.
You’ll see thumbnails for the first six selected videos in Selected. If there are more, the count appears as “+N”. The summary below might say, for example, “12 clips · 1.1 GB · 3 days”.
- Select the videos you want to import.
- Click Copy to disk, then import. To copy only, use Copy to disk only.
- Choose the destination folder. Merceq tells you what’s already at the destination: “Destination: RAW · 40 new · 10 already in this folder” or “All already in this folder — no new videos to copy”.
- Click Copy and import (or Copy to disk). Click Cancel to stop.
- Keep your phone connected until the task finishes.
You can scroll through hundreds or even thousands of videos on your phone without trouble: Merceq loads thumbnails from the phone only for videos visible on screen and when you stop scrolling. Frames may briefly look blank while you scroll quickly.
Short motion segments attached to Live Photos on iPhone aren’t listed as independent videos.
If your phone locks during a transfer, it says “{ad} locked — unlock it and the transfer picks up where it left off.” Unlock it and the transfer will continue.
Connect Android
On Android, choose PTP (Picture Transfer) from the connection options. MTP (File Transfer) is a different connection method. If videos don’t appear on your phone, unlock it, tap the USB settings in notifications, and choose “Picture Transfer” (PTP). Your videos will then appear in the list.
With this connection type, Android shows only videos in the Camera (DCIM) and Pictures folders. Screen recordings and videos in Movies, WhatsApp, Telegram, Downloads, and some albums don’t appear here. To import a video from another folder, copy it to an album visible here using your phone’s Gallery app, then check the list again.
Android files over 4 GB: Android doesn’t report the exact size of these files. Merceq checks the end of the file to verify whether the whole file was copied. These files aren’t added to the “You can free up space on your phone” list. If there’s a problem, it says “this file is over 4 GB and may be incomplete: its end couldn’t be read. Try again”.
“You can free up space on your phone” screen
When the transfer finishes, Merceq may show videos that were copied to disk and verified. Beside the count, it says “videos copied to disk; size and length match the phone”. Video thumbnails are sorted newest to oldest. Use the recording date and time to find the same video on your phone. Close the screen with OK.
Merceq doesn’t delete anything from your phone. If you want to free up space on your phone, you have to delete the videos yourself. Open and check the copies on disk first; keep a second copy on another disk for important footage.
If you sync with iCloud Photos or Google Photos, keep in mind that deleting a video from your phone may also affect the copy in the cloud and on other devices using the same account.