Find your first useful shot

Start with a small collection of footage you know well. The goal is to find one useful shot, check it against the original, and prepare it for your editing workflow. Starting with familiar material also makes it easier to judge whether a result matches your request.

Before you begin

Install ShotAI using the current website download, open the application, and sign in. Keep your source files in a stable location and make sure their drive is connected. AI understanding and semantic search use online services and your account allowance; review what is processed locally and in the cloud before using sensitive material.

1. Make a collection

Create a collection and give it a recognizable project name, such as “Autumn campaign.” Collections organize videos and provide a useful search boundary. Use a project that contains the footage you want to find, rather than beginning with unrelated archives.

2. Import the footage

Choose Import Video or Import Folder, select the source material, choose the target collection, and start importing. You can also use the supported drag-and-drop import flow.

Importing adds the videos and detects shots. A video appearing in the library does not yet mean that its shots are ready for semantic search.

3. Run AI understanding

Open the collection, select the shots to process, and choose AI understanding. Wait for the understanding and indexing work to finish. Check the completion state and the number of searchable shots before moving on. Processing time varies with the material and current task queue.

For a closer explanation of these stages, see Import and understand footage.

4. Describe one visible moment

Search inside the intended collection. Begin with a concrete subject and action, for example:

Someone writing in a notebook at a desk.

Use a scene you know is present in your own footage. Open a promising result and check the picture, source video, and displayed start and end times. Results refer to detected shots, which may be longer than the few seconds you eventually want to use.

5. Choose an output

Select the useful shots and open the export dialog. Choose Video File for separate clips or Timeline for an editing handoff. Check the output settings before exporting; for timeline work, confirm audio and sequence settings in your editor. See Review and export for the current format boundaries.

What success looks like

You can identify the source of a matching shot, play it back, explain why it meets the request, and inspect the exported result. A high relevance score alone is not that check.

If nothing appears, first confirm the collection and AI completion state. Then simplify the description or use exact filename and tag search. The search guide explains how to narrow or broaden a query without losing the project context.