Transcript search — find video clips by what was said
ClipCatalog turns speech in your videos into searchable text — locally, on your Windows PC. Type a spoken word and jump straight to the moment it was said. Perfect for interviews, sound bites, voiceover takes, and any footage where dialogue matters.
Try ClipCatalog free — up to 500 videos
No account required. Your footage stays on your computer.
Search for names and keywords across your entire library — no timeline scrubbing. Find the line you need in seconds instead of rewatching hours of footage.
Results link directly to the clip that contains the matching words. Preview to confirm, then send it to your editor — no more guessing which file has the take you need.
Download captions as plain text or SRT subtitle files. Use them in your editing software, upload to YouTube, or archive alongside your footage for future reference.
Export as plain text, SRT subtitles, or copy to clipboard.
How transcript search works
ClipCatalog extracts audio from each video, runs it through a local Whisper speech-to-text engine, and stores time-aligned transcript words in your encrypted library. After that, every spoken word is searchable — instantly.
Add any video folder — internal drive, external SSD, or a project dump. ClipCatalog scans and detects all supported video files automatically.
ClipCatalog extracts audio and runs Whisper transcription on your machine. GPU acceleration via Vulkan is available if your hardware supports it — otherwise it falls back to CPU automatically.
Type any word and ClipCatalog surfaces matching clips. Combine transcript words with detected content, face filters, date ranges, and more to zero in on exactly what you need.
Transcript filters — words, language, and speech coverage
ClipCatalog gives you three transcript-aware filters that go beyond simple keyword search:
Search for a spoken word to find clips where it was said.
Filter by detected language — useful when your library contains footage in multiple languages and you want to narrow to just one.
Set a min/max speech percentage to find "mostly talking" clips (interviews, narration) or "mostly silent" clips (ambient, scenic b-roll).
Transcript search examples
Transcript search shines when you remember a word someone said but not where the file lives. Here are the kinds of word searches creators actually do:
You can combine transcript searches with other filters — for example, search for a word, then narrow to a specific date range, a particular folder, or clips with a certain person's face. Explore all search filters →
Transcript search workflows for video editors
You have 20 hours of interview footage across multiple shoot days. Instead of rewatching everything, search for the topic or keywords you need — childhood, first job, turning point — and jump straight to the moments that matter for your story assembly.
Your client wants a 15-second clip of the CEO talking about a launch for LinkedIn. Instead of scrubbing through the full talk, search for a couple of key spoken words and grab the clip directly.
You recorded a 2-hour stream and need to find the best moments to clip. Search for key words or reactions you remember, preview the matches, and export the clips — no manual scrubbing through the full recording.
Need SRT files for accessibility or platform requirements? ClipCatalog transcribes as part of indexing, so you can export subtitle files directly — no separate transcription step or third-party service needed.
Automatic footage type categorization
Once ClipCatalog has processed speech, detected content, and faces for your clips, it automatically categorizes each video into footage types: dialog, voiceover, and scenic.
Clips with people speaking on camera — interviews, talking heads, conversations. Great for finding interview selects or A-roll.
Speech without a visible speaker — narration, commentary over b-roll, tutorial audio. Useful for separating narration tracks from visual content.
Footage with little or no speech — landscapes, b-roll, establishing shots, ambient clips. Filter for these when you need visuals without dialogue.
You can filter and sort by footage type shares to quickly find the right kind of clip for your edit. This works alongside transcript search — for example, search for a word and filter to dialog-only clips. Explore all search filters →
What to expect from transcript search
Transcription works best with clear, well-recorded audio — interviews in a quiet room, narration, voiceovers. These are exactly the kinds of clips where finding a specific line saves the most time.
Heavy background noise, overlapping speakers, and thick accents can reduce accuracy. ClipCatalog includes quality guardrails to suppress low-confidence transcripts, so you don't get garbage results clogging your searches.
On Windows, transcription can use your GPU via Vulkan for faster processing. ClipCatalog even includes a built-in benchmark to compare CPU vs. GPU speeds on your hardware and auto-select the best backend. Learn about GPU acceleration →
Your audio never leaves your computer. The Whisper engine runs entirely on your machine, so sensitive interview content, client footage, and personal recordings stay private. Learn about local-first privacy →
Frequently asked questions
No — ClipCatalog runs speech-to-text entirely on your computer using a local Whisper engine. Your audio and video files are never uploaded to a cloud service.
Not yet. ClipCatalog searches transcript words (single spoken words), not exact phrases or in-order quotes.
ClipCatalog uses Whisper, a well-regarded speech recognition model. Accuracy is generally good for clear speech in supported languages but can vary with heavy accents, background noise, or overlapping speakers. The app includes quality guardrails to suppress low-confidence results.
Whisper supports many languages. ClipCatalog detects the spoken language automatically and you can filter your library by transcription language. The app UI and detected content are localized in 10 languages.
Yes — transcripts can be exported as plain text or SRT subtitle files, ready for use in your editor or for publishing captions on platforms like YouTube.
Once the AI models are downloaded on first launch, transcription and search happen locally without an internet connection. License validation needs internet from time to time.
Transcription runs during the one-time processing step, not every time you search. After indexing, searches feel instant. If you have a capable GPU, processing is faster with Vulkan-accelerated transcription.
Yes. You can layer transcript words with detected content, face filters, date ranges, folders, camera metadata, and more — all in a single query. Each filter narrows results further.
Combine transcript search with other filters
Transcript search 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 the moment you need. Across words, tags, and faces, you can switch All/Any matching (AND/OR).
Combine what was said with what's on screen — search by dialogue and scene content at the same time.
Find clips where a specific person speaks about a specific topic — filter by face and transcript together.
Search transcripts across archive drives — even ones that are currently unplugged.
Layer transcript words with date, folder, resolution, frame rate, speech coverage, and more.
Best for
- Documentary filmmakers pulling quotes from hours of interview footage.
- YouTubers & vloggers clipping highlights from long-form recordings.
- Podcast editors searching for specific topics across episodes.
- Corporate video teams finding sound bites for social media or internal comms.
Try it with one folder
The best way to see if transcript search works for your footage: pick a folder with interview or dialogue-heavy clips, let ClipCatalog process it, then try to find 3–5 specific things someone said. You'll feel the difference immediately.
Understanding transcript search for video
Whether you call it speech-to-text search, dialogue search, or "Ctrl+F for video" — the idea is the same: let software convert spoken words to text so you can search your footage by what was said, not just by file names or folder structure.
Cloud transcription services charge per minute of audio. With ClipCatalog, the Whisper model runs on your hardware — no per-video costs, no upload wait times, no ongoing subscriptions. Processing speed depends on your machine: a capable GPU makes it fast, while CPU-only will be slower for large libraries. Either way, it's a one-time cost — once your archive is indexed, searches are instant and you never pay again.
Editors often remember a few words or a topic from a shoot but have no idea which file it's in. Without transcript search, the only option is scrubbing through clips one by one — or re-watching entire interviews. With searchable transcripts, you type what you remember and the matching clips surface in seconds, saving hours of manual review.
A single word search might return dozens of clips. The real power of ClipCatalog's transcript search is combining it with other filters: search "budget" and narrow to clips from a specific date range, a particular folder, or clips tagged with "interview" by the AI visual tagger. Each additional filter cuts the results down so you're not sifting through false positives. Explore all search filters →
ClipCatalog tracks how much of each clip contains speech (speech coverage). This lets you do things like "show me clips that are mostly talking" (interview selects) or "show me clips with very little speech" (scenic b-roll). It's a surprisingly useful way to separate dialogue-heavy footage from ambient or music-driven content.
Try ClipCatalog free — up to 500 videos
No account required. Your footage stays on your computer.