Detected content — search your footage by what's in the shot
ClipCatalog watches your clips and detects scenes, objects, and actions — automatically. Type what you remember and matching clips surface instantly, without manual labeling or cloud uploads. If you combine multiple tags, you can switch All/Any matching (AND/OR).
Try ClipCatalog free — up to 500 videos
No account required. Your footage stays on your computer.
Stop inventing naming conventions and folder structures. Detected content is generated automatically during processing — you search, not sort.
If you remember "mountain" or "interview", just type it. ClipCatalog narrows results fast so you spend less time scrubbing through clips.
Video files are huge and personal. ClipCatalog processes everything on your computer so your footage is never uploaded to a cloud service just to become searchable.
How detected content works
ClipCatalog's on-device AI model (RAM++) analyzes frames from your clips and detects content labels — things like beach, car, interview, snow, dog, or city skyline. Think of it like a smart skim across your clip: great for "what's this clip about?" and "does this clip contain X?".
Add any video folder — internal drive, external SSD, or a project dump. No reorganizing needed.
ClipCatalog indexes your clips and detects content using your GPU (with automatic CPU fallback). Nothing leaves your machine.
Type what you remember and matching clips appear. Combine detected content with other filters to go from thousands of clips to a handful.
The kinds of searches that work
Instead of claiming "thousands of detectable labels", here are real-world searches creators actually do — and find results for:
You can also combine searches — for example, search for "beach" and then narrow to vertical-only clips for Shorts or Reels, or filter by a specific date range or folder. Explore all search filters →
Real-world workflows
You remember "drone beach wide shot" but not the file name. With detected content, you try a couple of natural searches and narrow down fast — instead of scrubbing through dozens of clips looking for it.
Small teams often reuse b-roll. When you can search by what's on screen (not just by folder name), your archive becomes reusable instead of a one-time dump you dread opening.
Years of footage across phones, cameras, and hard drives. Search by scene or person to find birthday moments, vacation highlights, and that one clip you remember without opening folder after folder.
Before: folders named A-cam, B-roll, Export_v7_FINAL. After: a searchable library where you type what you remember and find it.
What to expect from detected content
Some things are easy to detect; some things are subtle, tiny in frame, or only appear for a split second. The win is getting to "the right neighborhood" of clips quickly — then you pick the best take.
If you've been burned by auto-labeling that spams irrelevant results, ClipCatalog keeps detected content focused on what's useful for search. The goal is less clutter and more results for the words you'd actually type.
On Windows, ClipCatalog uses your GPU (via DirectML) to speed up content detection. If GPU acceleration isn't available or helpful, it automatically falls back to CPU — fast when it can be, resilient when it can't. Learn about GPU acceleration →
You don't have to reorganize your drives to benefit. Your existing folder chaos can stay as-is while your library becomes searchable and editor-friendly. Works with external drives too →
Frequently asked questions
No — detected content is generated automatically while your library is processed. You just search using the words you’d naturally type.
No. Processing happens entirely on your computer. Your footage is never uploaded to a cloud service.
Once the app has downloaded its AI models on first launch, content detection and searching happen locally without an internet connection. License validation needs internet from time to time.
Processing can use significant CPU/GPU resources while indexing, so your machine may feel slower during that time. It's a one-time step — once your library is indexed, searches are instant. A capable GPU speeds up processing, and you can pause or limit processing threads if needed.
Try a close synonym — people remember things differently. You can also try a broader scene word. Real searching is iterative, not one perfect query.
Yes. You can layer detected content with date ranges, folders, transcript words, face filters, and technical metadata to narrow down large libraries fast.
Traditional metadata covers technical details (resolution, codec, date). Detected content adds a content layer — what’s actually in the shot — so you can search by meaning, not just numbers.
ClipCatalog runs on Windows 10/11. A capable GPU speeds up processing via DirectML, but the app falls back to CPU automatically. You don’t need special hardware to get started.
Even more powerful together
Detected content is powerful on its own, but the real advantage is combining it with other search dimensions in ClipCatalog to go from thousands of clips to exactly what you need.
Find clips by what was said — perfect for interviews, sound bites, and voiceover takes.
Find every appearance of a person across years of footage.
Search clips across archive drives — even when they're unplugged.
Layer detected content with date, folder, resolution, frame rate, duration, and more.
Best for
- YouTubers & vloggers hunting for b-roll across dozens of shoot days.
- Filmmakers & editors working with TB-scale project archives.
- Family & travel archivists organizing years of personal footage.
- Small teams that reuse footage across client projects.
Try it with one folder
The best way to see if detected content works for your footage: process a single project folder or a single shoot day, then try to retrieve 5–10 "I know I shot this somewhere" moments using detected content alone.
Understanding detected content
Whether you call it content detection, scene recognition, or visual search for footage — the idea is the same: let software recognize what's on screen so you can find clips by content instead of file names.
Manual labeling means watching clips, writing descriptions, maintaining spreadsheets, and inventing folder naming conventions that everyone on the team has to follow. With automatic content detection, you point ClipCatalog at a folder and content labels appear during processing — no naming discipline required, no per-clip effort.
Content detection works best with clearly visible subjects in well-lit footage. It can struggle with dark or blurry scenes, small objects in the background, and things that appear for only a split second. The model works from sampled frames, so very brief moments may not get tagged. Knowing this helps you search smarter — try broader terms or combine a couple of simpler words to narrow down.
A single detected content search can return hundreds of results. The real power is combining: search "beach," narrow to vertical clips for Shorts or Reels, filter to a specific date range, then add a transcript word to find the exact clip where someone says key words you remember. Each filter layer cuts the results down fast. Explore all search filters →
ClipCatalog supports content label localization in 10 languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic. Your system language is detected automatically, and labels are translated behind the scenes — so you search in your native language even though the AI model generates labels internally in English.
Try ClipCatalog free — up to 500 videos
No account required. Your footage stays on your computer.