How To Organize Videos With Facial Recognition
AI-generated, human-reviewed.
If you’ve digitized family films and want a smarter, faster way to find and group people within those videos, Hands-On Tech has practical advice. Using face recognition software, you can make organizing large video archives much more efficient—no more manual scrubbing through hours of footage.
Why Organize Videos by Faces?
Sorting old home videos helps preserve memories for generations and makes it easy to share special moments with family. However, most face recognition solutions are designed for photos, not videos—creating a challenge for anyone wanting to split up scenes by who appears on screen. On Hands-On Tech, host Mikah Sargent tackled a question from Mike about grouping digitized Super 8 family movies, revealing which tools actually work for this project.
Quick Summary
- Apple Photos (on macOS) can identify faces in both photos and videos, offering a simple, built-in option.
- Most popular Windows media managers only support face detection for photos, not videos.
- For more advanced or customizable sorting, the open source tool Immich offers powerful face recognition and works with Docker on Mac or Windows.
- Manual editing is still possible with editors like DaVinci Resolve or iMovie, but it’s time-consuming for large libraries.
How to Organize Videos Using Apple Photos
If you have a Mac (especially a newer Mac mini or MacBook), the Photos app is your easiest route:
- Import Your Videos: Add all MP4 files to the Photos library.
- Let the Process Run: Allow your Mac to analyze the videos. This background task may take a day or more, depending on the size of your archive and your Mac’s performance.
- Identify Faces: Once analysis is done, open a video, select "Show Face Names" in the View menu, and assign names to each recognized face.
- Create People Categories: The app then auto-groups videos by recognized faces under the People & Pets section, letting you filter and export clips by person.
Limitations:
- Processing time is unpredictable, as Apple doesn’t let you control or speed up the facial recognition background task.
- You may need to leave your Mac running (not shut down) until it finishes.
Using Immich for Advanced, Open-Source Facial Recognition
If you want more control or need a solution that also works on Windows, Immich is a new, free, and open-source alternative:
- Self-hosted: Runs on your Mac using Docker Desktop (free for personal use) or any other suitable local/server setup.
- Supports Videos and Photos: Immich’s facial recognition works for videos, helping categorize by individual faces.
- Community Supported: Backed by strong documentation and an active user base.
- Optional Support: While free, there’s a one-time $25 donation option to support ongoing development.
How to Apply:
- Install Docker Desktop.
- Use Immich’s quickstart guide to launch the app.
- Import your video files.
- Let the tool scan and categorize by faces.
- After sorting, you can export grouped video segments back to your preferred editor.
Considerations:
- Immich uses significant disk space and CPU while running.
- Suited for one-off, large projects rather than continuous, everyday use.
What This Means for You
Automating the process saves hours of manual work and ensures special moments aren’t missed. Whether you’re archiving decades of family footage or looking to create highlight reels for individual relatives, these methods help streamline your workflow and preserve memories.
- Apple Photos is perfect if you’re already in the Apple ecosystem and want a hassle-free, mostly automated process.
- Immich is for those who need more customization, cross-platform support, or face detection for both photos AND videos beyond what macOS offers.
- Manual sorting can be a last-resort for smaller collections or spot-checking results, but is impractical for large archives.
The Bottom Line
For most users with a Mac, using the built-in Photos app is the simplest way to organize old family videos by who appears in them. If you don’t mind a slightly more technical process and want extra flexibility, self-hosting Immich is worth exploring. Both options are free for personal use and require minimal additional investment—just some setup time and patience while processing.
Don’t let your precious family memories get lost in unlabeled digital vaults—try these tools and bring order to your video archive.
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