MOV2:14
MKV0:48
MP45:22
AVI1:08
WebM0:32
M4V3:48
MOV0:18
MP42:01
SiftVid is a local-first video library organiser that runs in your browser. Point it at a folder; it indexes 30,000+ MP4 clips, filters them with four-state tag chips, and follows you across devices when you choose to back things up.
SiftVid was built around the people who already had the problem. If your video folder structure stopped working three years ago, this is the tool.
Modern phones shoot H.264 MP4. Mom on the sideline, dad in the bleachers, an iPad on a tripod — all the same format. A-B loop the play. Tag by season, opponent, kid’s number.
“Loop the last twelve seconds of a play, twenty times, while we talk through it.”OBS, Zoom, Loom, Camtasia — every common screencast tool exports MP4. Tag by series and module, fuzzy-search across three years of recorded lessons.
“Search finds the lecture before I’ve finished typing the topic.”Zoom records to MP4. Teams records to MP4. A year of weekly all-hands becomes a haystack of identically named files. Auto-tag from filenames + folders, then actually find anything.
“I stopped re-recording walkthroughs once I could find the old one in three seconds.”GoPro, DJI, Garmin — H.264 MP4 by default. Hundreds of clips a month. Favourite the keepers, exclude the duds with one click, pull the highlight with A-B loop.
“The dice button surfaces the trips I forgot I’d filmed.”Every tag in your library is a chip with four states. Click to include, click again to require, click again to exclude, click once more to clear. The query include outdoor, require ceremony, exclude cutaway takes three clicks. No advanced-search modal, no boolean syntax to memorise.
A-B loop is a first-class control, not a hidden shortcut. Tap once to set point A, tap again to set point B, and the player loops the section indefinitely. Combine with speed cycling and you can break down a clip the way coaches and editors actually want to.
SiftVid runs entirely in your browser. It uses the File System Access API to read directly from a folder you choose — thumbnails, tags, search index all stay local in IndexedDB. The video stream goes from your drive to the player without a round-trip to our servers. No upload, no transcode, no telemetry.
We get asked about this often enough that it’s worth saying out loud. SiftVid is software for organising your own files. It is not, and will never be:
The full web app. Tag, search, A-B loop, fuzzy search across your local MP4 library — no signup needed.
Everything in Free, plus 250 GB encrypted personal cloud. Stream your library on a second machine or your iPad.
For people living in their library full-time — 500 GB cloud, beta features, dedicated support.
Only if you click upload. The free web app is fully local — your files, your thumbnails, your search index all stay on your machine. The browser reads directly from a folder you grant it; we don't even see filenames. Pro and Studio add an optional encrypted backup; uploads are deliberate, per-clip or per-folder, and you can delete them at any time.
No. There's no public-link feature, no shared folders, no "invite a friend" to your library. SiftVid is single-user software. If that's a deal-breaker for you, this isn't the right tool.
MP4. That's the player's native source type. It's the same format that modern phones, dashcams, GoPros, Zoom, OBS, Loom and most consumer cameras already write by default, so it covers most personal libraries without conversion. If your files are MKV, MOV, AVI or RMVB, you'll need to convert them to MP4 first — SiftVid isn't a transcoder.
Chromium-based browsers — Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Opera, Vivaldi. SiftVid uses the File System Access API to read your local folder, which Firefox and Safari don't yet implement. We recommend Chrome or Edge.
We test on libraries of 30,000 clips on external drives. Three-tier caching (memory → IndexedDB → cloud) means a fresh load takes seconds, not minutes. If your library is bigger than that, get in touch — we want to know.
Yours. SiftVid is a generic MP4 organiser — the same tool suits a high-school football coach, a course creator with three years of recorded lectures, someone backing up a year of Zoom calls, and a dashcam owner sorting trips. We don't host, distribute, or monetise content. See our Acceptable Use Policy for what’s prohibited.
Plex and Jellyfin are streaming servers — built to share content from a home server to a TV. SiftVid is a single-user library and review tool — built for the person doing the editing, culling, or coaching. We don't do public sharing, we don't do server-to-client streaming for guests, and we focus on review-grade playback (A-B loop, speed cycling) instead of living-room playback.
Open SiftVid in a Chromium browser, grant it a folder, and the first 1,000 clips index in seconds. Free forever for local use.
WEB APP · NO INSTALL · CHROME · EDGE · BRAVE · ARC · NO ACCOUNT REQUIRED