Video Cull

Tear through a massive video library in minutes. No cloud. No account. Just you, your files, and a keyboard.

You've got a folder full of videos — dashcam clips, downloaded channels, drone footage, years of random stuff you never got around to sorting. Opening each one in VLC is not a workflow. Video Cull is.

Point it at a folder. It scans everything, generates thumbnail strips for every video, and gives you a fast, keyboard-driven interface to decide what stays and what goes. When thumbnails aren't enough, hit play and scrub through it right there. Mark, move on, repeat.

When you're done, one command sends everything marked for deletion to the Recycle Bin. Nothing is permanently gone until you say so.

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Screenshots (v1.4.0)

Landing	Grid

Review Mode

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Download

Grab the latest installer from the Releases page.

Installs for the current user — no admin rights needed. On first launch Windows may show a SmartScreen prompt since the app isn't code-signed yet; click "Run anyway" to proceed.

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Features

Grid View

The main screen shows your entire library at a glance — every video represented by a strip of thumbnails pulled from different points in the file, so you know what you're looking at without opening anything.

• Adjustable card size (zoom in/out with Ctrl++ / Ctrl+-)
• Group videos by subfolder, with per-folder totals
• Filter by status (All / Pending / Keep / Delete)
• Filter by file size (50 MB+, 100 MB+, 500 MB+, 1 GB+)
• Sort by name, size, duration, or date — ascending or descending
• Quick inline preview for supported formats, external player for everything else

Review Mode

A fullscreen, one-at-a-time view for when you actually want to pay attention. Keyboard only. Make a call, move to the next one.

• Thumbnail strip with dynamic aspect ratio — no black bars, no guessing
• In-app video player with scrubbing support
• Metadata at a glance: filename, filesize, duration, date
• Undo any decision at any time before you commit the batch delete
• Bookmarks — press B while playing to drop a timestamped bookmark; bookmarks persist across sessions and appear as clickable chips below the player
• Playback speed — [ / ] to step through 0.5×, 0.75×, 1×, 1.25×, 1.5×, 2×; speed persists as you move between videos

Thumbnail Generation

Video Cull uses FFmpeg in the background to extract frames. A few things worth knowing:

• Configurable frame count — 1, 2, 4, 6, or 9 thumbnails per video (default: 6)
• Intro skip — first frame is offset by a configurable delay (default: 3 seconds) to avoid black fades
• Parallel processing — configurable concurrency: auto-detect, or set manually from 1 to 8 threads
• Cached — thumbnails are stored in the app cache directory (userData/video-cache/thumbs), so already-processed videos are skipped on rescan
• Hardware acceleration — optional GPU-assisted decoding (beta, may not work with all formats)

Cache & Progress

Progress is saved in a per-folder SQLite database (.db) under userData/video-cache.

• Existing .video-cull-cache.json files are migrated automatically on first scan
• Status and bookmarks are preserved during migration
• Thumbnail paths are managed in SQLite, with files stored under the cache thumbs directory

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Keyboard Shortcuts

Grid & General

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl + O	Open directory
F5	Rescan directory
Ctrl + Z	Undo last action
Ctrl + Backspace	Send all marked videos to Recycle Bin
Ctrl + Shift + R	Clear thumbnail cache
Ctrl + E	Reveal file in Explorer
Ctrl + + / Ctrl + -	Zoom cards in/out
F11	Toggle fullscreen
?	Open keyboard shortcuts reference

Review Mode

Shortcut	Action
K	Keep
D	Mark for deletion
S	Skip (leave status unchanged)
Z	Undo
Space	Play / pause
← / →	Previous / next video (or scrub 5s when playing)
Enter	Play in-app
Ctrl + Enter	Open in external player
B	Drop bookmark at current position
[ / ]	Decrease / increase playback speed
Esc	Stop playback / exit review

All review shortcuts are fully customizable in Settings.

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Settings

Setting	Options	Default
Thumbnails per video	1, 2, 4, 6, 9	6
Default card scale	0.5× – 2.0×	1.0×
Default sort	Name / Size / Date / Duration	Name
Group by folder	On / Off	On
Concurrent processing	Auto / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 8	Auto
Limit FFmpeg to 1 thread per file	On / Off	On
Intro skip delay	0 – 60 seconds	3s
Hardware acceleration	On / Off	On
Keybindings	Any single key	K / D / S / Z / Space

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Supported Formats

Plays natively in-app: .mp4 .webm .mov .mkv .m4v

All other formats (.avi, .wmv, .flv, .ts, .mts, etc.) open automatically in your default system player. FFmpeg generates thumbnails for anything it can decode — which is basically everything.

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Building from Source

Requires Node.js 20+. FFmpeg and FFprobe are bundled — no separate install needed.

git clone https://github.com/stippie-dot/VideoCull.git
cd VideoCull
npm install
npm run dev

Available Scripts

Command	Description
npm run dev	Start Vite + Electron in development mode with hot reload
npm run build	Vite-only production build (renderer only, no packaging)
npm run package	Full production build + Windows installer (NSIS)

To build the Windows installer yourself:

npm run package

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Stack

Electron · React · Video.js · FFmpeg · Zustand · TypeScript · Vite

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License

GNU General Public License v3.0