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I have to open the files in VLC to see what the file duration is which frankly is ridiculous due to Finder not showing any information, even if I look in Get Info there is nothing

Is there a way to force it to calculate the duration for all the video files? avi, mp4, mkv etc..

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  • I ran across the same issue, in 2022. Incredible how Apple doesn't address simple things like these. Not possible to see all media info neither in Get Info nor in the column view. Incredible!
    – anaotha
    Jul 7, 2022 at 14:46

4 Answers 4

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Yes, you can do that. This tip comes from an Apple engineer and it works on list view too. Here we go:

  1. create two directories and call them directory Pictures or Movies and put your pictures and movies on those directories.
  2. if you look at the view options of the Pictures directory you see two new options: dimensions and resolution.
  3. the Movies directory will show you four new options: dimensions, durations, title and codecs.

Enjoy!

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  • 7
    The folder name (e.g. Movies) needs to have a capital letter at the start. Afterwards you can change the name, once you have selected duration.
    – Paul
    Apr 21, 2017 at 12:37
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    This iOS design is really unintuitive!
    – MonsieurBeilto
    Sep 17, 2018 at 20:39
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    @MonsieurBeilto - MacOS is filled with hidden stuff. For some reason, Apple hates to inform users.
    – Duck
    Sep 19, 2018 at 14:20
  • For anyone who is curious, I tried to save a search of "kind: movie" and title the search as "Movies" on the sidebar and it didn't allow that duration column to be added. But otherwise the above worked well after I right-clicked the columns to add duration. So I guess I'll copy by search and hold the "option" key to duplicate all the videos into a new Video folder. You could also open a terminal window in that folder and write all the video durations to a text file with the following mdls *.mp4 | grep Duration > durations.txt
    – Dean
    Jun 29, 2022 at 19:10
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    BTW: You can rename a folder to "Movies", add the "Duration" column and rename in back to whatever it was before. The "Duration" column will stay visible.
    – D. Mika
    Aug 6, 2022 at 15:44
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You can get Finder to display video file durations by hitting Command+J and checking "Show item info". Some drawbacks though:

  • It is not available in the list mode for some reason
  • If you don't see the duration in Get Info, Finder probably does not know how to parse it. MP4 files should work though.
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Rename the folder the videos are in to "Movies" then right click the sort by tab bar and "duration" will appear, after you check this go back and rename the folder to its original name and the duration column remain.

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    Mar 20, 2023 at 15:10
-1

In finder show the items in the list view > Right click the sorting categories title[where it says Name, Date Modified, and etc] and choose duration.

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