// about

An editor's tool, by an editor.

Clip Sweeper is built and maintained by Leland Dutcher — a working video editor who got tired of buying drives instead of cleaning them. This page is the short version of why the app exists, who it's for, and how decisions get made when the roadmap fills up.

Leland Dutcher

Video editor · developer · maker of Clip Sweeper

Why this exists

The first version of Clip Sweeper started as a Saturday-night fix for my own drive problem. I had a 20 TB working volume that was full, twelve in-flight projects on it, and no confidence about which footage was safe to delete from any of them. Premiere's built-in Project Manager only sees one project at a time. Every cleanup tool I tried treated the .prproj as a closed universe, which is exactly the wrong scope when you have shared B-roll, recurring clients, and stock plates moving across a dozen jobs.

So I wrote one that walked the reference chain in every project on the drive at once. That's the one feature I think still sets Clip Sweeper apart, and it's the reason I shipped a separate app instead of a Premiere extension.

Who Clip Sweeper is for

Working editors with full drives and a backlog of finished or near-finished projects.
Doc and agency teams with shared B-roll libraries that get cleaned up the wrong way and break the next job.
Wedding, sports, and corporate editors who shoot a lot, deliver a lot, and would rather repurpose an SSD than buy another one.
Anyone who has ever paid for storage they didn't need because they couldn't tell what was reclaimable.

How decisions get made

Clip Sweeper is a small operation. There is no roadmap committee. The principles below are the filter I actually use when something new lands in the queue.

// 01

Editor first. If a feature would only make sense to a developer, it doesn't ship. The app has to read like an NLE panel, not a settings menu.

// 02

Three gates before deletion, always. Virtual Recycle Bin. Cross-project safety check. Explicit user confirm. The day Clip Sweeper deletes something autonomously is the day I lose the trust I built shipping it.

// 03

Honest about scope. Clip Sweeper does not do what PlumePack does. It is not a project consolidator. It does not transcode. The comparison page exists because pretending otherwise wastes everyone's time.

// 04

App Store, sandboxed, signed. Distributing through Apple's review process is slower than rolling my own DMG, and I prefer it. The boundaries are clear. Your machine doesn't run anything Apple hasn't seen.

// 05

One-time purchase. No subscription. The math on a tool that helps you delete things doesn't work as a recurring fee. You pay once, you keep it, you reclaim what you reclaim.

What's coming

The two requests I get most: Windows and other NLEs (DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Avid). Both are on the v2 roadmap. Neither is shipping today. I'd rather ship the Mac/Premiere pass right than half-ship four platforms.

Beyond that, Transcode & Shrink is in design. The idea is not to compete with PlumePack on lossless trim — they've built a serious engine and I respect it — but to give Clip Sweeper users a sensible way to reduce footprint on the files that survive the audit.

How to reach me

The most reliable way is email: leland@lelanddutcher.com. I read every message and I answer most of them within a day or two. Bug reports, feature requests, "this would be useful for [your specific workflow]" — all welcome.

If you'd rather post: X / Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok.

If you're here trying to figure out whether Clip Sweeper fits your workflow, the homepage walks through it.

See what Clip Sweeper does