Finding That Video: Why Searching by Duration Changes Everything

6 min read Video Management

"I need that 2-minute clip from the client meeting. Which of these 500 videos is it?"

You know the frustration. Scrolling through endless thumbnails, opening files one by one, scrubbing through to check length. Hours wasted on what should be a simple task.

The Duration Problem

File size doesn't tell you video length. A 1GB file could be a 2-minute 4K video or a 60-minute compressed lecture. Without duration metadata, you're guessing.

Table of Contents

Why Duration Search Matters

Duration is one of the most useful video properties for search:

  • It's memorable: You often remember roughly how long something was
  • It's precise: Unlike tags or filenames, duration is objective
  • It indicates content type: Quick clips vs. full recordings vs. feature-length
  • It helps with planning: Know what you can fit in a presentation or edit

Real-World Use Cases

Video Editors

"Find all B-roll clips under 30 seconds for the intro sequence."

Educators

"Which lecture recordings are over an hour? I need to split those."

Marketing Teams

"Find 15-second clips for Instagram Reels vs. 60-second for YouTube Shorts."

Business Users

"Find that 5-minute client call recording from last week."

How Duration Search Works

The Process
  1. FileFortress scans your video files in cloud storage
  2. Local tools extract duration using FFmpeg
  3. Duration is stored in your searchable index (in seconds)
  4. Search by ranges: exact seconds, minutes, or time ranges

Search Examples

Find Short Clips

# Under 30 seconds (social media clips)
filefortress search --filter "duration:<30"

# Between 15 and 60 seconds (Shorts/Reels)
filefortress search --filter "duration:>=15 AND duration:<=60"

Find Medium-Length Videos

# 2-5 minute videos (meeting clips)
filefortress search --filter "duration:>=120 AND duration:<=300"

# Around 10 minutes (YouTube-length)
filefortress search --filter "duration:>=540 AND duration:<=660"

Find Long Recordings

# Over 30 minutes (lectures, meetings)
filefortress search --filter "duration:>1800"

# Over 1 hour
filefortress search --filter "duration:>3600"

# Full-length (over 90 minutes)
filefortress search --filter "duration:>5400"

Combined Searches

# Long videos from this year
filefortress search --filter "duration:>3600 AND modifiedAt:2024*"

# Short 4K clips
filefortress search --filter "duration:<60 AND width:>=3840"

# Medium-length videos in a specific folder
filefortress search --filter "duration:>=300 AND duration:<=900 AND path:*/projects/*"
Quick Reference
  • 30 seconds = 30
  • 1 minute = 60
  • 5 minutes = 300
  • 10 minutes = 600
  • 30 minutes = 1800
  • 1 hour = 3600

Getting Started

  1. Connect your video storage: S3, Backblaze, Google Drive, etc.
  2. Run FFprobe extraction: filefortress tools run --tool ffprobe
  3. Search by duration: Find any video in seconds
Learn More

See how to set up video metadata extraction in our S3 Video Metadata Guide.

Find Any Video in Seconds

Stop scrubbing through files. Search by duration and find exactly what you need across all your cloud storage.

Get Started Free View Documentation