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How to Use Advanced Search Operators to Find the Right Clip Faster
Basic keyword search gets you started. Exact phrases, @mentions, exclusions, and boolean operators get you to the specific clip you need in a library of thousands.
Typing a word into a search bar and scrolling through results works when your library is small. With a thousand clips, or ten thousand, you need to tell the search engine exactly what you mean.
FrameQuery supports a set of search operators for writing precise queries.
Exact phrase search
By default, searching for multiple words finds clips that contain all of those words, but not necessarily together or in order. Searching for quarterly revenue will match a clip where someone says "the quarterly report showed strong revenue growth" as well as one where someone mentions "revenue" in one sentence and "quarterly" two minutes later.
Wrapping your search in quotes forces an exact phrase match. "quarterly revenue" only matches clips where those two words appear together in that order.
When to use it: any time you are looking for a specific phrase, title, name, or expression. Use "product launch" rather than product launch when you know the exact words.
@mention search
The @ operator finds clips featuring a specific person. Type @Sarah and FrameQuery returns every clip where Sarah appears on screen (via face recognition) or speaks (via speaker identification).
FrameQuery identifies people across your footage during indexing. Once a person is recognized, their name becomes searchable with the @ prefix.
@ combines with other search terms. @Sarah returns every clip Sarah appears in. @Sarah "product launch" returns only the clips where Sarah is present and the product launch is discussed. @Sarah @James returns clips where both Sarah and James appear.
When to use it: finding a specific person's appearances, finding conversations between specific people, or narrowing a topic search to a particular speaker.
Exclusion operator
The - prefix excludes clips matching a term. Use it when a search returns results that match the terms but are not what you want.
interview -behind-the-scenes finds interviews but removes any clips tagged or described as behind-the-scenes content. "product demo" -rehearsal finds the demos and skips the practice runs. @CEO -town-hall finds CEO appearances outside of the regular town hall meetings.
Exclusions work with any term, including exact phrases and @mentions. -"work in progress" excludes clips containing that exact phrase. -@James excludes clips where James appears.
When to use it: any time your search returns a mix of results and you can identify a pattern in the ones you do not want.
Boolean OR
By default, multiple search terms are combined with AND logic. Every term must match. Sometimes you want either/or matching instead.
CEO OR director finds clips mentioning either title. "Q3 results" OR "third quarter results" catches both phrasings. @Sarah OR @James finds clips featuring either person.
OR must be capitalized. Lowercase or is treated as a regular search word.
When to use it: when the thing you are looking for might be described in different ways, when you want to combine related terms into a single search, or when you are looking for any of several people.
Combining operators
The operators combine into a single query.
Suppose you are looking for Sarah's presentation about Q3 results, not the rehearsal, from the London office.
Breaking it down:
@Sarah- find Sarah"Q3 results"- about this specific topic-rehearsal- not the practice run
Combined: @Sarah "Q3 results" -rehearsal
That query replaces scrolling through every clip Sarah appears in.
Another example. You need b-roll of either the office or the warehouse, but not the construction footage from when the warehouse was being renovated.
office OR warehouse -construction
Or: you need every clip where the CEO or CFO discusses revenue, but not from the internal town hall recordings.
@CEO OR @CFO revenue -town-hall
Field-specific search
Beyond the operators above, FrameQuery lets you narrow your search to specific content modalities. You can search within:
- Transcripts only: Find clips based on what was said, ignoring visual content
- Scenes only: Find clips based on what was shown, ignoring spoken words
- Filenames only: Find clips based on their file or folder names
- Objects only: Find clips containing specific objects detected in the footage
A search for "whiteboard" returns results from both transcripts (someone mentioned a whiteboard) and scenes (a whiteboard was visible). Scene-only search returns the clips where a whiteboard is on screen.
Building effective queries
Start broad, then refine. Run a simple keyword search first to see what comes back. If there are too many results, add operators to narrow. If there are too few, try OR to broaden, or remove a constraint.
Quote multi-word concepts. Exact phrase matching is more precise than individual word matching.
Use exclusions to remove known noise. If a certain category of results is cluttering your search, exclude it.
Save queries you use repeatedly. FrameQuery's saved search feature stores your full query, including all operators, and runs it again in one click.
Download FrameQuery to try advanced search operators with your own footage.