Reverse video search means starting from a frame and finding the video it belongs to. For clips from the web, you screenshot a frame and run a reverse image search. For your own footage, FrameQuery matches a reference image against every frame in your indexed library.
The web method takes about a minute. FrameQuery searches your own footage offline.
Covered
in this guide.
Web engines for clips online. FrameQuery for footage on your drives.
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, such as 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.
Web engines cannot see your drives. FrameQuery indexes your local library once, then you can reverse search it by image, description, face, or dialogue, 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, such as 'aerial coastline at sunset', and match footage that was never tagged. Uses visual search.
Start from any clip you already have and pull every visually similar moment across all indexed videos.
This is visual search over an indexed library. Read how video indexing works.
| 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. Runs offline. |
Methods, free tools, screenshots, and why a search can come back empty.
Describe the shot and match footage that was never tagged.
Learn moreQuery recipes for finding shots by how they look.
Learn moreHow FrameQuery indexes footage by dialogue, scenes, objects, and people.
Learn moreSearch your video library by dialogue, face, object, or scene description.
Learn more
Index your footage once and reverse search it by image, description, face, or dialogue, offline.
Free search forever. Indexing from $19/month.
