Shade.inc is a cloud-first media asset management platform with a virtual filesystem (ShadeFS), collaborative review workflows, and AI search, built for large creative teams in film and TV. FrameQuery is a hybrid desktop tool that indexes your footage with AI for instant search across scenes, faces, objects, and transcripts. Choose Shade for enterprise cloud collaboration; choose FrameQuery for fast, private, affordable search on your own machine.
| Feature | FrameQuery | Shade |
|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Video search & indexing | Cloud media management |
| Deployment | Hybrid desktop app | Cloud-first (ShadeFS) |
| AI search | Scene, face, object, transcript | Face, transcript, scene |
| Pricing model | Usage-based from $19/mo | $20 to $25/seat/mo + storage |
| Approx. cost (solo) | Free to $45/mo | $20 to $25/mo + storage |
| Approx. cost (10 users) | $45 to $190/mo | $200 to $250/mo + storage |
| Format support | 50+ formats | ProRes, RED, ARRI, BRAW |
| Offline capable | ||
| Virtual filesystem | ||
| NLE export | FCPXML, EDL, LosslessCut | Direct NLE integration |
| Review & approval | Pro plan (timecoded comments) | |
| Shared indexes | All plans (Cloud: Pro+) | |
| Object detection | ||
| Free tier | Yes (search only) |
Both platforms offer AI-powered search, but from very different angles. Shade's search is integrated into its cloud MAM, so you can find footage by face, transcript text, and scene content across your team's shared media library. It's designed for collaborative discovery within a managed asset pipeline.
FrameQuery indexes footage across four dimensions: visual scenes, spoken words, detected faces, and identified objects. Frames and audio are extracted on your device and sent for analysis, then discarded once analysis completes. Your search index lives locally, so results come back in milliseconds with no internet needed. Search “sunset over water” or “person holding camera” and get frame-accurate results instantly.
Shade's Growth plan is $20/seat/month (annual) or $25/seat/month (monthly), with 500 GB of active storage included per seat. Additional storage is available at extra cost, and larger productions with tens of terabytes will see that add up. Enterprise pricing is custom. For a team of 10 with significant storage needs, total costs can reach several thousand per year.
FrameQuery uses usage-based pricing: Free for search only, $19/month (Starter, 10 hours), $45/month billed annually (Pro, 50 hours with timecoded comments, cloud-hosted sharing, and access management), or $190/month billed annually (Max, 300 hours). A Studio tier with unlimited hours and bulk archive processing is available via a custom quote. Index sharing via local export, Google Drive, Dropbox, or NAS is free on every plan. A solo editor on the Pro annual plan pays $540/year for full AI search, without per-seat or storage overhead.
Shade is built around ShadeFS, a virtual filesystem that streams media from cloud storage. This gives distributed teams a unified view of their assets without syncing terabytes locally. It's elegant for large productions spread across multiple locations.
FrameQuery takes the opposite approach: your originals never leave your machine. Frames and audio are extracted on your device and sent for analysis, then discarded the moment analysis completes. The resulting search index lives on your machine, and all searches complete locally without any network request. Once indexed, you have full offline capability.
Both tools handle professional formats well. Shade supports ProRes, RED, ARRI, and BRAW through its ingest pipeline. FrameQuery supports 50+ formats natively, including R3D, BRAW, ProRes, CinemaDNG, MXF, and more, without requiring transcoding. FrameQuery also exports to FCPXML, EDL, and LosslessCut markers, letting you take search results directly into Premiere, Resolve, or Final Cut.
This is Shade's core strength. Review and approval workflows, permissions, version tracking, and a shared virtual filesystem make it a full collaborative platform for creative teams. FrameQuery's Pro plan includes timecoded comments, approval workflows, and shared indexes (via local export, Google Drive, Dropbox, or NAS on every plan, with cloud-hosted video previews and access management on Pro+). Cloud-hosted sharing lets you see who's using your index and revoke access at any time. That's enough for small teams, but FrameQuery isn't trying to replace a full MAM system. If you have 20+ people across departments who all need to access and review the same media, Shade is purpose-built for that.
Not directly. Shade.inc is a cloud-first media asset management platform designed for large creative teams who need a virtual filesystem, collaborative review, and centralized storage. FrameQuery is a hybrid desktop tool that uses cloud processing for AI analysis but keeps your search index and recognition data local. If you need enterprise MAM with cloud collaboration, Shade is purpose-built for that. If you need fast, private search across your footage library without enterprise pricing, FrameQuery is the better fit.
FrameQuery starts at $19/month (Starter) and goes up to $190/month for Max (billed annually) with usage-based pricing. A Studio tier with unlimited hours is available via a custom quote for larger archives. Shade’s Growth plan is $20 to $25/seat/month with 500 GB storage per seat included; additional storage is extra. For individuals and small teams focused on search rather than full MAM, FrameQuery is more affordable.
FrameQuery extracts frames and audio on your device and sends only those for analysis. Your originals never leave your machine, and the extracted data is discarded the moment analysis completes. The search index lives locally on your machine, so once indexed, search works entirely offline with no internet needed. Shade's ShadeFS is a virtual filesystem that streams media from the cloud, requiring a constant internet connection. FrameQuery's approach is better for sensitive projects or when you need guaranteed offline access.
Both offer AI-powered search including face recognition and transcript search. FrameQuery adds dedicated object detection and scene-level visual search across your entire library with millisecond local results. Shade's search is tightly integrated with its cloud MAM and review workflows. The best choice depends on whether you prioritize search depth and speed (FrameQuery) or cloud-based team collaboration (Shade).