Cloud video search means permanently hosting your footage on someone else's servers. Local search keeps your index and your originals on your machine.
Frames and audio are extracted on your device and sent for analysis, nothing else. Your originals never leave your machine, and the extracted data is discarded the moment analysis completes. Your search index is yours locally.
Millisecond results from a local index. No round-trip to a server, no buffering, no latency spikes.
Frames and audio are extracted on your device and sent for analysis. Your full-res originals stay put, and the extracted data is discarded the moment analysis completes.
Search on planes, in remote locations, or anywhere without internet. Your index is always available.
Full multimodal video search
FrameQuery indexes your entire video library with transcription, object detection, face recognition, and scene detection. Search by what people say, what appears on screen, or the mood of a scene. Supports 50+ formats including RED R3D, ProRes, and BRAW.
Desktop media browser
Kyno is a solid desktop media browser for previewing and organising footage. It searches metadata fields (filename, tags, descriptions) but cannot search inside video content. Good for basic browsing, but you will not find a shot by describing what happens in it.
PC-only video cataloguing
Fast Video Cataloger generates thumbnail grids and lets you tag clips manually. It is Windows-only and does not include AI-powered search. Useful for basic cataloguing but you are limited to the metadata you add yourself.
On-premise transcription
Simon Says offers an on-premise deployment for organisations that need transcription without cloud uploads. It handles transcript search well but does not support visual search (objects, faces, scenes). The price point puts it out of reach for most freelancers and small teams.
| Feature | FrameQuery | Kyno | Fast Video Cat. | Simon Says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transcript search | ||||
| Object detection | ||||
| Face recognition | ||||
| Scene detection | ||||
| 50+ formats | ||||
| Works offline | ||||
| macOS + Windows | ||||
| NLE export |
Most video search tools are cloud-only because AI processing is computationally expensive. Running object detection, face recognition, and transcription requires serious hardware that not everyone has on their desk.
FrameQuery takes a hybrid approach: heavy AI processing happens in the cloud during indexing, but the resulting search index lives on your machine. Once indexed, every search is local, instant, and fully offline. You get the accuracy of cloud AI with the speed and privacy of local search.