Post-Production
AI Video Search for Post‑Production Teams
AI video search for post-production is the practice of using natural language descriptions to find specific shots across footage archives in milliseconds, eliminating manual scrubbing and keyword tagging.
What is ShotAI for post-production?
ShotAI is semantic search for video, built for post-production. It indexes every shot in your footage library automatically — detecting cuts, analyzing visual content, and understanding context without any manual tagging. Search in natural language, get results in ~300ms, keep everything local. Your footage never leaves your drives.
What problems do editors face finding footage?
Finding the right footage should take seconds. In reality, it is one of the biggest time sinks in any editing workflow.
Hours Lost Scrubbing Through Footage
Editors spend up to 40% of their time simply locating the right shot. Scrubbing through timelines frame by frame is tedious, error-prone, and creatively draining — especially when a project spans hundreds of clips across multiple drives.
Keyword Tags That Fail When You Need Them
Traditional metadata tagging relies on someone manually entering descriptions at ingest. Tags are inconsistent between operators, rarely cover the nuances you actually search for later, and become stale the moment creative direction shifts mid-project.
Footage Buried Deep in Archives
Past projects hold gold — b-roll, alternate takes, stock selects — but finding them means navigating folder hierarchies, opening old project files, or relying on an editor who "remembers where it was." Most of this footage is effectively lost.
Tight Deadlines With No Room for Searching
When delivery dates are non-negotiable, every minute spent searching is a minute stolen from color, sound design, or creative review. The pressure to "just use what you can find fast" leads to compromised edits and unused premium footage.
How does ShotAI solve footage search for post-production?
Purpose-built AI search that understands video the way editors think about it.
Describe a Shot in Natural Language
Type what you see in your mind — "slow-motion rain hitting a car windshield at night" or "wide establishing shot of Hong Kong skyline at dusk" — and ShotAI returns matching clips ranked by relevance in approximately 300 milliseconds.
Shot-Level Indexing
ShotAI analyzes footage at the shot level, detecting every cut and scene boundary automatically. Each individual shot is semantically indexed, so you search with the same granularity you edit with — not just file-level metadata.
No Manual Tagging Required
Forget about building tag taxonomies, training ingest operators, or maintaining metadata databases. ShotAI understands visual content, motion, composition, and context natively through multimodal AI — no human annotation needed.
Works With All Professional Codecs
ProRes 422/4444, DNxHR, H.265/HEVC, BRAW, R3D, ARRIRAW — ShotAI handles the formats professional post-production pipelines actually use. No transcoding or proxy generation required before indexing.
Local-First Architecture
Your 4K RAW rushes stay on your local drives or SAN. ShotAI indexes and searches locally without uploading footage to any cloud service. This means no bandwidth costs, no waiting for uploads, and full control over proprietary client material.
How does ShotAI fit your post-production pipeline?
ShotAI integrates at the point where raw footage meets creative decisions — between ingest and your NLE timeline.
Import
Point ShotAI at your footage directories, external drives, or network-attached storage. It watches for new files automatically.
Auto-Index
ShotAI processes each file — detecting shot boundaries, analyzing visual content, identifying actions, objects, settings, and emotional tone at the shot level.
Search
Describe what you need in plain language. Combine visual, temporal, and contextual cues in a single query. Results appear in approximately 300 milliseconds.
Preview
Scrub through matched shots directly in ShotAI with frame-accurate preview. Compare multiple results side by side to find the perfect take.
Export to Timeline
Send selected shots directly to your NLE timeline, or copy timecodes and file paths for manual import. Your existing workflow stays intact.
What are the key benefits of AI video search?
~300ms
Average search response time across indexed libraries
90%+
Recall rate on semantic visual queries
Shot-level
Granularity — every cut boundary detected and indexed independently
- Eliminates manual scrubbing — find any shot by describing it
- Works offline and on-premises — no internet dependency for search
- Indexes in the background — start searching before the full library is processed
- Scales from single-editor projects to shared team libraries on NAS/SAN
- Preserves existing folder structures — no reorganization required
- Handles mixed-format libraries without transcoding
ShotAI Team
Product & Engineering at Seeknetic
Frequently asked questions about AI video search for post-production
Does ShotAI work with ProRes and RAW footage?
Yes. ShotAI natively supports ProRes 422, ProRes 4444, DNxHR, H.265/HEVC, BRAW (Blackmagic RAW), R3D (RED), ARRIRAW, and all other common professional acquisition and intermediate codecs. No transcoding or proxy generation is needed before indexing.
Do I need to upload my footage to the cloud?
No. ShotAI uses a local-first architecture. All indexing and searching happens on your machine or local network. Your footage never leaves your drives. This is essential for post-production teams working with confidential client material, high-resolution RAW files, or facilities without high-bandwidth internet.
How long does indexing take?
Indexing speed depends on your hardware and footage resolution, but ShotAI is designed to process footage efficiently in the background. A typical one-hour ProRes 422 HQ file indexes in a few minutes on modern hardware. Once indexed, search results return in approximately 300 milliseconds regardless of library size.
Can ShotAI integrate with my NLE (Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve)?
ShotAI is designed to fit into existing post-production pipelines. You can export selected shots with timecode references and file paths compatible with Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, and Avid Media Composer. Direct timeline integration features are on the roadmap.