How to find shots of a person in a video

What the feature does

The Find Face scan analyzes every frame of your video and compares faces against a reference image you provide. When it finds a match, it creates a timeline segment covering that shot. At the end of the scan you have a selection of only the clips where that person appears - ready to preview and export.

Everything runs locally on your Mac using Apple's Vision framework. Your footage never leaves your machine.

Before you start

• Find Face is a Pro feature. Start a free 7-day trial or subscribe from the pricing page if you haven't already.
• Have a clear reference photo of the person ready - a front-facing image works best, but a frame grab from the video itself is fine.
• Open your video in the app with ⌘O.

Step-by-step

1. Open the Find panel. In the toolbar click the magnifying glass icon, or use the menu Edit → Find Face.
2. Choose your reference image. Click Choose Photo and pick the image from your Mac. Alternatively, pause the video on a frame where the person is clearly visible and click Use Current Frame - the app crops the face automatically.
3. Set the confidence threshold. The slider controls how strict the match must be. Start in the middle; if you get too many false positives, move it right. If the person is missed in some shots, move it left.
4. Click Scan. A progress indicator appears on the timeline. For a 10-minute clip at 1080p this typically takes under a minute on an M-series Mac.
5. Review the results. Each found shot appears as a segment on the timeline. Click a segment to jump to it and verify the match. Delete any false positives by selecting the segment and pressing Delete.
6. Export. Press ⌘E to export all segments as one merged file, or choose Export Segments as Separate Files to get each shot as its own clip.

Tips for better results

• Use a well-lit reference image. Avoid sunglasses, hats, or heavy shadow in the reference photo.
• Multiple references help. Run the scan a second time with a different reference image (different angle or lighting) if you know the person appears in varied conditions in the footage.
• Zoom in after a scan. The preview supports zoom so you can inspect small faces in wide shots more easily.
• Combine with shot detection. Run Detect Shot first to find shot boundaries, then run Find Face. The segments will align cleanly with real cuts in the footage.

Common use cases

• Cutting a highlight reel of a specific athlete from game footage
• Finding all interview clips of one speaker across a long conference recording
• Pulling every shot of a family member from a home video archive
• Assembling a character's scenes from a multi-camera shoot