Search FAQs

Both subtitle search and metadata search support sorting, but their controls and default rankings differ.

Default order: subtitle search combines text relevance with video views and channel subscriber count, so popular videos from larger channels tend to rank higher. Metadata search uses title relevance when you enter text. With filters alone and no title query, metadata results follow the order records were added to the index unless you select another sort.

Subtitle search: open Sort By in the left sidebar and choose:

• Date New-Old / Date Old-New: upload date, newest or oldest first.
• Index New-Old / Index Old-New: when the video was added to Filmot's subtitle index, most recent or earliest first.
• Views High-Low / Views Low-High: recorded view count.
• Likes High-Low / Likes Low-High: recorded like count.
• Channel Rank High-Low / Low-High: Filmot's channel score.
• Duration Long-Short / Duration Short-Long: video length.
• Channel Variety: a mix of channels where possible, using each channel's best text match to reduce domination by one channel. It has no ascending or descending direction.
• BM25 Match: text relevance without the view-count or subscriber boost, best match first. It also has no direction option.

Metadata search: use the arrows in the table headings for Uploaded, Duration, Views, Likes, Dislikes where available, and Last fetch. The down arrow sorts high to low, or newest first for dates; the up arrow reverses the order. AutoSubs and ManualSubs cannot be sorted.

Counts are stored snapshots rather than live YouTube statistics. Last fetch indicates when Filmot last encountered information about the video, not necessarily when its statistics or subtitles were updated.

Index order applies to the results of a search, rather than a separate listing of every video. The date-range fields under Filters always refer to upload date, even when results are sorted by index date.

Filmot has no sort based on the exact number of times a term appears in a video, and no sort by transcript word count.

The closest option is BM25 Match under Sort By in the subtitle-search sidebar. This relevance score considers term frequency, how rare a term is across the index and document length, with an additional boost when query words occur close together. A video where your term appears frequently may rank higher, but the ordering is not an exact occurrence count.

Other available sorts include recorded views, likes, upload date, duration, channel rank, index date and channel variety.

Filmot does not offer an alphabetical sort by video ID. Subtitle search supports upload date, index date, views, likes, channel rank, duration, channel variety and BM25 relevance. Metadata search supports upload date, duration, views, likes, dislikes and Last fetch.

To order records by ID, export the results with the video ID column selected and sort the downloaded file in a spreadsheet or script. Available formats include CSV, Compact CSV, JSONL and ZIP.

The usual export limits apply: up to 60 subtitle-search rows or 100 metadata-search rows without patron benefits; up to 10,000 rows with patron benefits, reduced to 2,500 when full subtitles are included.

Channel rank is Filmot's own ranking of channels based on available channel information. It is not an official YouTube ranking or a direct measure of subscriber count alone.

To sort subtitle-search results by this score, open Sort By and choose Channel Rank High-Low or Channel Rank Low-High. The score and its calculation may evolve as the index changes.

The Last fetch column in Metadata search indicates when Filmot last encountered information about a video. You can sort the column in either direction.

This is not necessarily the video's first indexing date or the time its full metadata, statistics or subtitles were updated. Filmot does not provide a complete per-video collection history or exact timestamps for every field.

In subtitle search, Index New-Old and Index Old-New sort results by when a video was added to the subtitle index. Those options are separate from Last fetch.