The Cliptag blog

Guides for people with too much footage.

How to name it, tag it, file it, search it and get the words out of it. Written for editors and creators who shoot on a Sony, a GoPro, a drone and a phone in the same week, and have to find one specific shot six months later.

Start here · Tools & comparisons

AI video asset management: what it actually does in 2026

What the AI actually does to a clip, where the metadata should live, and how to set it up without handing your library to a subscription database.

8 min read
Organize footage
How to organize photos and video from the same shoot One folder structure for stills, clips and audio, why photo-first and video-first tools fight each other, and how to keep a shoot together across all three. 6 min read How to tag B-roll so you can actually find it later Subject, function and quality: the three axes of a tag system that still works after twenty projects, plus a starter vocabulary. 6 min read How to rename video files in bulk on a Mac Finder's hidden batch rename, a few safe terminal one-liners, and the difference between renaming by pattern and renaming by content. 6 min read How to organize GoPro videos: chapters, LRV files and 800 clips What GX010042.MP4 actually means, which files you can safely delete, and how to get from an action camera dump to something you can search. 6 min read How to organize Sony footage without losing a single C0001.MP4 The Sony card structure explained, why two bodies overwrite each other, and a naming system that still makes sense after the project is done. 7 min read
Find what you shot
Local AI video search: what runs on your own Mac in 2026 What Apple Silicon can actually do to your footage offline, how much worse it is than the cloud, and when that trade is obviously correct. 6 min read Find drone footage fast: from DJI_0001.MP4 to a searchable library Why aerial footage is the hardest to search, what the SRT sidecar files are actually for, and how to find one specific coastline shot in ten seconds. 6 min read Search videos by objects: what actually works, and what does not How object recognition on footage really performs, the difference between tags and descriptions, and why timecode-level search is a different problem. 6 min read How to find clips without opening Premiere Why NLE metadata disappears the moment a project closes, and how to build a search layer that works on any drive, from any application. 6 min read
Transcripts & audio
How to transcribe video on a Mac, and what to do with the transcript Getting accurate transcripts offline, choosing between TXT, SRT and DOCX, and the second life a transcript has once you stop thinking of it as subtitles. 6 min read How to organize audio recordings when every file is called ZOOM0007 Recorder files, wild sound and interview audio, made findable. Including the sync problem and what to do about ambience with no words in it. 5 min read
Tools & comparisons
The best DAM for videographers is the one you will still use in year three The four categories of footage management tool, the questions that actually decide it, and the trap of metadata that only exists inside one app. 7 min read The best Finder alternative for videos might be a better-fed Finder What Finder is genuinely bad at, the four features that fix most of it, and when a dedicated browser actually earns its place. 6 min read

Stop scrubbing through C0042.MP4.

Cliptag names, tags and files your video, photos and audio by what is actually in them, on your Mac. Free plan, no account needed, on-device mode free and unlimited.

Download free for Mac RSS feed