Today’s Question: My hard drive is getting a bit full, so I want to free up some space. I thought I would start with video files, since those tend to be quite large. Is there a way to view just the video clips in a given folder in Lightroom Classic?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can easily set a filter to only view videos rather than still photos with the video setting for the Kind option on the Attribute tab of the Library Filter bar or among the filter criteria on the bottom panel at the top-right of the filmstrip.
More Detail: Videos are indeed generally among some of the largest files you’ll find on your hard drive, assuming you’re capturing videos of at least a moderate duration. It can therefore be a good strategy to target videos when you want to try to free up hard drive space quickly, although videos do have the added disadvantage of generally needing to be played back to review, which takes longer than reviewing a still photo.
You can set a filter to view only videos in the current location, whether that is an individual folder or even the “All Photographs” collection in the Catalog section at the top of the left panel in the Library module.
The filter option can be found on both the Library Filter bar and among the filter settings found at the top-right of the bottom panel. On the bottom panel you can click the “Filter” text if you don’t see the full range of filter options. When the filter list is expanded, you’ll see a set of three icons toward the far right. The third of these icons is the video option, and you can click that to filter based on videos. The other two button options, by the way, are original photos and virtual copies.
The same control can be found under the Kind heading at the far right of the Attribute tab of the Library Filter bar above the grid view display. If the Library Filter bar isn’t currently displayed, you can enable it by choosing View > Show Filter Bar from the menu. To the right of the Kind label, you’ll find the same set of three buttons, so you can click the far right of those buttons to filter for videos.
