Browse and filter

Sort the grid, search filenames and transcripts, stack filter chips, and save presets

The Library grid is where most days start. Tiles, hover-to-preview, click to select. The job of this article is the four levers above the grid: sort, search, filter, presets.

Sort

Five sort options at the top of the grid:

• Name
• Date Added, the default
• Date Modified
• Duration
• Size

Date Added is the default because it answers "what did I just bring in." Switch to Duration when you're hunting for a specific length, or Size when you're cleaning up a heavy source.

Search

This is the feature people remember about the app. Type a phrase into the search field at the top of the sidebar and ReelChest finds every clip in the library that says it. Doesn't matter which drive it's on, which shoot it came from, or what the file was named. The hits surface on the grid, click one and you land at the exact word in the exact clip.

The search field takes ⌘F from anywhere in the app.

A note on the threshold. With one or two words, the search runs against filenames, asset categories (video, image, audio, font), and tag names. Type "interview" and you get clips named interview, plus anything tagged interview, plus the audio category if "audio" matches. Once your query is three words or more, ReelChest also searches inside the full transcript index. So "the part where I" finds the clip where you said it, even if the filename is B_Roll_007.mov. It's a substring search, so partial matches count.

The reason three words and not one: a single-word search would flood the grid with every clip containing the word "yeah." Three words is enough specificity to make the search useful. If you know the exact wording, it's already enough; if you don't, type the closest fragment you remember.

Filter chips

Filters stack. Add as many as you need.

The chips: category, source, rating (minimum), color label, file extension, duration range with min and max, file size range with min and max, and tags. Tags use AND-logic, so picking two tags shows only assets with both. Rating is a minimum threshold, so picking three stars gives you three, four, and five.

There's also a "Needs conversion only" filter for clips ReelChest has flagged as needing transcoding before they'll play smoothly.

The size filter is the one most people forget exists. It's surprisingly useful for finding the heavy outliers (a four-gig take in a folder of 200-meg clips) or for cleaning up the underweight ones (everything under five megabytes is probably a thumbnail or a bad export).

Save a preset

Once you've stacked a filter combination you'll come back to, save it as a preset. Presets are scoped to where you saved them: a source, a project, a category. Loading a preset replaces the current filter state, it doesn't merge.

Useful presets we keep around: "B-roll, 4-star and up, under 30 seconds." "Interview audio, this shoot, untagged." Whatever you find yourself rebuilding twice, save once.

The honest tradeoff: search and filter are fast because the index is local and tight, but it means a fresh source has to finish indexing before deep filters return everything. Give big drives a minute on first add.