Cinemetrics vs StoryFolder: choose by research question

StoryFolder — 2026-09-13

Part of: How to prepare a university film class with scene-study materials

Last updated: 11 September 2026.

Use Cinemetrics, the University of Chicago's film measurement tool, when your question is about cutting rate and you want to compare against films other people have measured. Use StoryFolder when your question is about what is in the shots (framing, movement, sound, composition) and you want a board of thumbnails with your own fields and a printable handout. Use VideoAnt when the assignment is students discussing a hosted video on its timeline. Use Advene when the annotation model itself is what you're researching.

This page covers the Cinemetrics at cinemetrics.uchicago.edu. Several unrelated analytics and visualisation projects share the name.

Which tool fits your research question?

Five questions sort the choice:

1. Is the thing you're measuring when the cuts happen? That points to Cinemetrics.
2. Do you need to compare with films you haven't measured yourself? That's the Cinemetrics database.
3. Is the thing you're recording what each shot shows? That points to StoryFolder.
4. Is the assignment students replying to one another on a video? That's VideoAnt.
5. Is the research about how annotations relate across a corpus, with views you design yourself? That's Advene.

If both 1 and 3 are true, you may want two tools. The section on combining them explains how.

When is Cinemetrics the right tool?

When shot length is the evidence. Cinemetrics is a Chromium browser extension with two modes. FACT (the Frame Accurate Cinemetrics Tool) plays a video file on your computer, and you mark each cut and then nudge it one or five frames either way. Classic mode is for a user who "is viewing the film on another device or projector", tapping as the cuts go by (Cinemetrics, How to Use).

Both are manual. You press Shot (or the ~ key) at each cut. Yuri Tsivian's tips on the same site put it directly: "Taking shot lengths of a running movie is a manual operation performed in real time." That's the design: a person decides what counts as a cut, and FACT lets them refine the frame.

What it gives you:

• Custom shot labels. Rename the shot-type buttons in the SHOTS pane and log categories alongside timing.
• .cmsx files. Download a measurement and import it again later.
• A public database. Submit a measurement (only the title is required) and it joins a shared database whose pages show "its main statistics, statistics for each button (if advanced mode was used), and a graph of shot changes." That database is the part you can't build on your own: context from other people's measurements.

It runs in Chrome and other Chromium browsers, and the how-to page says it "will not work on other browsers, such as Safari or Firefox." On 11 September 2026 the Chrome Web Store listed version 1.2.1, published by the Forum for Digital Culture at the University of Chicago (Chrome Web Store).

For a cutting-rate lab, it's the right tool. Measuring a scene yourself teaches what a cut is in a way reading a number doesn't.

When is StoryFolder the right tool?

When the evidence is what's in each shot and you want to see it. StoryFolder is a desktop app for Mac and Windows. Import a video file and it detects the shots and lays them out as a board with a thumbnail each. You fix any wrong cuts with Split and Merge, then fill in your own fields (Dropdown, Tag, Checkbox, Rating, Number, Text) for scale, angle, movement, sound or whatever the course needs. The scene-study preparation guide covers setting up the board.

What that board gives a class or a researcher:

• Filters on your own fields. Show only the reaction close-ups, in order, with their frames.
• Duration numbers on every plan. Total shots, average, median, longest and shortest, following the active filter (Shot duration metrics). Cinemetrics users will know the average as ASL. Median is there because one long take distorts the average.
• Charts on Pro. Duration over time and a distribution for each field.
• Handouts and data. A PDF of the board with thumbnails and chosen fields is free. The spreadsheet, one row per shot with timings and fields, is Pro.
• A view-only web page of the board, with no account needed to open it.

The Analyze view over a 27-minute film. The average, 3.5 seconds, is the film's ASL, and the five duration figures read on every plan; the duration-over-time chart below them is a Pro feature.

The limits line up with Cinemetrics' strengths. There's no shared database of other people's films, so every comparison uses boards you built. Detection is automatic, so the first job is checking its cuts, where Cinemetrics has you make each one. Share links are read-only, with no comments. Free boards hold up to 50 shots, and longer ones need Pro.

When is VideoAnt the better fit?

When the assignment is a conversation. VideoAnt, from the University of Minnesota, lets you "add annotations, or comments, to web-hosted videos", marked on the timeline, and "You control who can view and who can annotate." Other users can have "permission to leave a response to another user's annotation", and annotations can be exported and embedded in an LMS (VideoAnt, documentation).

It works on "any publicly accessible video file or YouTube video", so the video has to be online. If your task is students reading one another's notes on the same moment and replying, StoryFolder can't do that: its shared boards are view-only.

When is Advene the better fit?

When the annotation model is part of the research. Advene is a desktop application for Linux, Windows and macOS with typed temporal annotations and "some automatic extraction (shot detection, audio segmentation...)". It has "Multiple built-in views of annotations: timeline, finder, transcription", imports from formats including ELAN, PRAAT, SRT and shotdetect, and exports to SMIL, SVG, HTML, SRT and spreadsheet (Advene features). The 3.15 release, marked unstable in the changelog of 8 January 2025, adds "Corpus management features (i.e. multi-package)" and "configurable Xlsx export of corpus data" (CHANGES.txt).

That's a research instrument for someone designing their own annotation scheme and views across a corpus. For a class that needs a board, a handout and a set of fields by next week, it's more to set up than the task needs.

Can these tools be combined?

By hand, yes. They don't exchange files: StoryFolder doesn't read .cmsx, and nothing syncs between them.

A sequence that works for a research project:

1. Cinemetrics for context. Look up films comparable to yours in the database, and measure your own scene in FACT if you want it to sit alongside theirs.
2. StoryFolder for the close study. Import the same scene, check the cuts, and code what's in each shot. Its duration numbers won't match a hand-measured Cinemetrics count exactly if your cut decisions differ, so report which you used.
3. Elsewhere for the final piece. Write in your word processor, or cut the video essay in your editor.

Which tool should a beginner class use?

Start with a scene of a couple of minutes whichever tool you pick. A scene that size fits in one class session, and in one free StoryFolder board.

FAQ

What is Cinemetrics? A free Chromium browser extension and public database from the University of Chicago for measuring shot lengths in films. Cuts are marked by hand in FACT or Classic mode, and measurements can be submitted to the shared database.

Does Cinemetrics detect cuts automatically? No. You press Shot or the ~ key at each cut, and FACT lets you adjust each one by one or five frames.

Does Cinemetrics work in Safari or Firefox? No. Its how-to page says it works in Chrome and other Chromium browsers only.

Can StoryFolder import Cinemetrics .cmsx files? No. Use the two tools side by side on the same scene, and report which tool's shot count you used.

Does StoryFolder calculate average shot length? Yes. The Analyze view shows average, median, longest and shortest shot duration on every plan, and it follows the active filter.

Which tool lets students comment on a video together? VideoAnt, which supports timeline annotations with responses and view or annotate permissions. StoryFolder's shared boards are view-only.

Does Advene run on Mac? Yes. Advene publishes installers for macOS, Windows and Linux; its 3.15 release is marked unstable in the changelog.

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