Building it remote · Free guide
How I sorted 13,000 videos with Claude
I had years of videos on my phone and could never find anything. Now every clip is tagged, searchable, and one prompt away from my next edit. Here's the exact setup, prompts included. Copy them, change the categories to fit your life, and go.
Before you start
The setup
Get your footage off your phone
Export the full-quality originals. Don't shrink them to 1080. You can always make smaller copies later, but you can't add quality back, and re-exporting can strip out the dates and locations the sorter uses.
If you use iCloud Photos on your Mac:
- In Photos, go to Media Types → Videos and select one year.
- Choose File → Export → Export Unmodified Original. Don't use "Export X Videos…", which is the option that asks you for a size.
- In the export window, set these options. This part confused me the first time:
- Check Export IPTC as XMP. This keeps each clip's info (date, location and other details) in a small file next to it, so the sorter can read it.
- File Name: Use File Name
- Subfolder Format: Moment Name
- Save to a folder on your SSD, such as
Footage Library/2026.
If your videos are only on your phone: plug the phone into your Mac, open Image Capture, select videos only, and import them to the same folder.
Do one year at a time. Don't delete anything from your phone or iCloud until you've opened a few files on the SSD and checked that they play.
Open Claude Code
In the Claude desktop app, open the Code tab, choose New session, and pick your Footage Library folder on the SSD. Claude will ask permission before it runs anything. Read each request and approve it, which is normal. Then paste:
This folder is my footage library on an external SSD, with one folder per year. Check that FFmpeg and ffprobe are installed and working. If anything is missing, install it and tell me what you did, including anything I need to do myself.
Build the sorter and test it
Change the categories to fit your life. Mine are my content buckets, and yours can be anything.
IMPORTANT: only work inside the 2026 folder for now. Don't read, move or change anything in the other year folders. Build me a footage sorter for this folder. For every video in 2026: 1. Read its date, length, resolution, orientation, location and whether it's HDR. 2. Grab 4 small preview frames and look at them to decide what it is: - shot type: talking head · b-roll · travel · screen/laptop · people · pets · events · food - place: home · my city · travel (city/country if you can tell) - a "keeper" score 1–5 (how usable it is for content) - a one-line description 3. Save everything to a catalog file (in a _Library folder at the top level) so you never re-scan a clip. 4. Move each clip into Sorted/<shot type>/2026/. Never delete anything, and keep a log so every move can be undone. 5. Build a dashboard page I open in my browser (in the _Library folder): total counts, a live view of clips flying into category buckets while sorting, a thumbnail grid per category, filters (year, place, shot type, keeper score), search, and click-to-play. Start with a test run on 50 clips and show me the dashboard before doing the rest.
Fix the test run
Open the dashboard and look for anything sorted wrong, or a category you're missing. Then paste:
Corrections from the test run: - [clip description] should be [category] - add a category: [name] for [what] - [anything else about the dashboard] Apply these, re-check the 50 test clips, then show me again.
Sort the rest
Looks good. Sort the rest of the 2026 folder the same way. Still don't touch the other year folders. Update the dashboard as you go and tell me when you're done, with counts per category and anything you weren't sure about.
Save the rules
So every future session sorts exactly the same way.
Save the sorting rules, categories, folder structure and dashboard details to a CLAUDE.md in this folder. Include the rule: only work in the year folder I name.
For each new year you import, paste:
Read CLAUDE.md. The 2025 folder is finished importing. Sort only 2025 using our rules and update the dashboard.
Prompts for everyday use
This is the part I use every week. Open a session in your footage folder and ask in plain words:
Find 5 street clips from my city with a keeper score of 4+, and copy them (don't move) to [your project folder].
Show me every clip of my dog from 2025, best keeper score first.
Pull all my travel b-roll from Bali into a new folder called "Bali reel" so I can start editing.
Use "copy" when you mean copy. That way your sorted library stays exactly as it is.
Honest notes
Start small.
The 50-clip test is the step everyone wants to skip. Don't skip it. Fixing your categories at 50 clips takes five minutes, and fixing them at 13,000 takes all day.
It uses your Claude plan's usage.
Claude looks at preview frames for every clip, so thousands of clips takes real time and usage. Doing one year per session works well.
It's not perfect.
Some clips will land in the wrong bucket. The search and filters still make it a hundred times better than scrolling your camera roll.
Nothing gets deleted.
Every move is logged, so you can always ask Claude to undo it.
I'm still figuring this out too. If you build one, tag me @chie_endo. I want to see your categories.
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