Method 1 · Web
No public engine accepts a whole video file as a query, so the practical method is frame-based. It takes about a minute.
Pause the video on a frame with clear, identifiable content — a face, landmark, product, or composition. Avoid frames that are mostly motion blur or plain backgrounds.
Upload the screenshot to Google Lens (lens.google.com), Google Images, TinEye, or Bing Visual Search. Video-hosting pages that contain that frame as a thumbnail or still will surface in the results.
Each engine indexes different corners of the web. If the first frame finds nothing, try two or three more frames from different moments, and run them through a second engine.
Method 2 · Your Library
Web engines cannot see your drives. FrameQuery indexes your local library once, then reverse search works four ways — and runs offline. See the guide to searching footage by look for query recipes.
Drop in a reference frame or photo and get visually similar frames from your library, timestamped.
Describe the shot — 'aerial coastline at sunset' — and match footage that was never tagged. Powered by visual search.
Start from any clip you already have and pull every visually similar moment across all indexed videos.
Under the hood this is visual search over an indexed library — how video indexing works.
The Tools
| Tool | Pricing | Best for | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Lens / Google Images | Free | Finding the source page of a clip | Largest index; strongest on faces, landmarks, and products. Works from any screenshot. |
| TinEye | Free (paid API) | Tracking where an exact image appears | Exact-match engine, good for provenance and first-seen dates. Weaker at near-matches. |
| Bing Visual Search | Free | Second opinion on hard frames | Different index than Google; occasionally finds pages Google misses. |
| FrameQuery | From $19/mo (search free) | Reverse searching your own footage library | Indexes your local files, then finds frames by image, description, face, or dialogue — offline. |
FAQ
Screenshot a distinctive frame from the video, then upload that frame to a reverse image search engine such as Google Lens, Google Images, TinEye, or Bing Visual Search. Pages hosting the video, or stills from it, will appear in the results. There is no engine that accepts a whole video file as a query, so frame screenshots are the practical method.
Yes. Google Lens, Google Images, TinEye, and Bing Visual Search are all free and cover most source-finding needs. Paid options mainly add batch processing or APIs on top of the same idea.
Yes — that is what FrameQuery does. It indexes your local video library, then lets you find any moment by dropping in a reference image, describing the shot, naming a person, or quoting dialogue. Results are timestamped frames from your own files, and search runs offline.
Upload the screenshot to Google Lens or Google Images. If the screenshot comes from a known video, the hosting pages usually rank first. For screenshots of your own footage, an indexed library tool like FrameQuery matches the image against every frame it has analyzed.
Reverse image engines can only match frames that appear somewhere in their web index. Unlisted, private, paywalled, or brand-new videos often have no indexed stills. Try several distinctive frames, crop out watermarks or letterboxing, and run more than one engine before concluding the source is unfindable.