How do I find and delete a bunch of short (Live Photo) video files in a Macos folder containing 1400 iPhone video files?
I have 1400 videos from various iPhone backups. Amongst them are a number of short videos resulting from the iPhones having Live Photo enabled. I thought it would easy to sort by duration in Finder, so I could delete all files < 3.5 seconds, but the duration data must not be available from the files (an assortment of mov, m4v, and mp4 files). I imported all the videos into a new, clean library in Photos, but cannot find a way to sort or filter by duration using it, either. This seems like a fairly basic use case so what am I missing? ----- Tim
Start at the folder where you know all of these files are located. It is OK if you have to be at a top level like Documents or such. As long as the files you want are all in subfolders under that.
Then start a Finder search. Use File, Find.
Where it shows Kind is Any, change that to Kind is Movie.
Then click the + button to the right. Instead of "Name" select Other and then search for "Duration." Choose that and set the criteria for "is less than" and 0 hours, 0 minutes and 4 seconds.
Now you should have results showing all videos under that location that are less than 4 seconds. I'd double-check the list to make sure you haven't got any other video files there too, just the ones you want.
You can select them all with Command+A and drag to the Trash.