Find soundbites and b-roll in your footage without logging bins

Where the time goes

A typical project arrives as camera cards, a folder of interviews and a producer's note that says “use the bit where she talks about her dad.” Before you can cut, someone has to know what is in the footage. On a big job that is an assistant editor's week. On a small one it is you, scrubbing.

The two things editors hunt for are different searches. Soundbites are about what was said. B-roll is about what was shown. A useful tool has to handle both.

The usual approaches

• Logging and markers inside the NLE. Precise and fully under your control, but it only covers what was logged, and it is tied to one project file.
• Transcript panels in the NLE or a cloud transcription service. Good for dialogue, silent on b-roll, and cloud options mean uploading client footage that may be under NDA.
• A cloud media asset manager. Built for teams and review workflows, with per-seat pricing and upload time measured by your bandwidth. Worth it for a facility, heavy for a solo editor.
• Memory and thumbnails. Works until the second week of a long project.

Search dialogue and pictures from one box

MediaFind indexes both tracks of every clip on your computer. Speech is transcribed with word-level timestamps and speaker labels. Frames are indexed for scenes and objects, on-screen text, color and mood, and actions. So one search box handles “the part where she talks about her dad” and “wide shot of a harbor at dusk.”

When a description isn't enough, reverse image search takes a still or a frame grab and finds visually similar shots. Related clips surfaces footage that belongs with what you're looking at, which is useful for finding the other angle of a take. With Pro, face search jumps to every appearance of a person, and logo detection finds where a brand shows up, which helps with clearance checks.

What to expect from visual search

Describing a shot works best for things a camera can see: a place, an object, an action, the time of day, a dominant color. It works less well for abstract ideas like “a hopeful moment,” which usually live in the dialogue or the edit rather than a single frame. Combine the two: search the interview for the idea, then search the b-roll for what illustrates it.

Treat results as a ranked shortlist, not a final answer. Play the top few, keep what fits, and refine the description if nothing does. A more specific query, such as “close-up of hands on a pottery wheel,” usually beats a longer one.

A selects workflow

For the export details, see exporting selects to Premiere and Resolve. For shot hunting, see finding b-roll by description.

1. Add the project's footage folders. While the app is open, MediaFind re-checks them about once a minute and indexes new files once they finish copying, so the day's cards join the index after you offload them.
2. Search for each beat of the edit, play results in place, and keep the ones you like.
3. With Pro, export the chosen results as an FCPXML or EDL timeline with frame-accurate in and out points, snapped to each file's frame rate, and open it in Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut Pro.
4. Or assemble a rough cut in Create, MediaFind's built-in timeline editor, and send that timeline to your NLE the same way.

Client footage stays on your drives

Unreleased footage is often covered by contract. MediaFind never uploads media: transcription, visual indexing and search run on your machine with no account and no API key. If you move a project to a new drive, relink it instead of re-indexing, and you can export the library as a portable ZIP to pick it up on another computer while the originals stay where they are.

Frequently asked questions

Can I search footage by what is on screen, not just what is said?

Yes. MediaFind indexes video frames for scenes, objects, on-screen text, color and actions, so you can describe a shot in plain words or search with a sample image.

Which editors can open the exported selects?

With Pro, results or a Create timeline export as FCPXML or EDL, which open in Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro with frame-accurate in and out points.

Does it handle camera formats like MOV and MKV?

It indexes MP4, MOV, M4V, MKV and WebM video. Formats outside that list need converting first, and the built-in video tools can convert common files.

Is client footage uploaded during indexing?

No. Indexing, search and export all happen on your computer, and a built-in privacy check confirms the core path makes no external connections.