What Is AI Video Search and Why Do Editors Need It?

In the world of video editing, time is of the essence. Editors are often tasked with finding specific clips, moments, or shots within massive libraries of footage—a process that can be painstakingly slow. Enter AI video search, a game-changing technology designed to make this process faster and less frustrating.

What Is AI Video Search?

AI video search refers to the use of artificial intelligence to locate specific content within video files. Unlike traditional search methods that rely on manually entered metadata (e.g., tags, file names), AI video search uses cutting-edge models to analyze the actual content of video files. Once analyzed, the footage can be searched – kind of like googling but for your footage. 

Visual search

Identifies objects, people, and scenes within footage, enabling highly specific searches. For example, you can enter “red car in a forest” and you’ll get all matching scenes from your footage of a red car in a forest.

Speech search

Automatically transcribes spoken dialogue within videos (or sound files), allowing editors to search for keywords or phrases. For example, searching for “economy” will show you all the places in all your footage where the word “economy” was mentioned.

Visual Similarity Matching

Finds visually similar frames or clips, even without specific keywords. This mode takes an image and finds similar frames in your footage. So for example, let’s say you have a scene of a cityscape at night. By using visual similarity matching, you can find other clips or frames in your bin that are visually similar to the cityscape.

These are just three common modes of AI video search, but the field is new and rapidly expanding so there are sure to be more ways that AI can be used to search in your footage.

Why Do Editors Need AI Video Search?

So what? You might be wondering how this technology translates into tangible benefits for your editing workflow. The answer lies in its ability to save time, improve accuracy, and streamline the creative process, allowing editors to focus on storytelling rather than tedious manual scrubbing.

Here are some key reasons why video editors benefit from integrating AI video search into their workflows:

Massive Time Savings

AI video search tools can drastically reduce the time spent searching through footage, allowing editors to locate specific shots or moments in seconds instead of hours.

Enhanced Workflow Efficiency

By streamlining organisational tasks and automating tedious processes, AI video search allows editors to focus on creativity and storytelling.

Intuitive and accessible

As with many new tools, it might take some time to get used to, but AI video search is no more difficult than googling for something. The simplicity makes it accessible and easy to integrate into existing workflows.

Uncover overlooked footage

Several users of Jumper have told stories of how the search led to serendipitous discoveries of previously overlooked or forgotten footage. That client that came back 5 months later and asked for a specific shot of the CEO smiling? You can find it in seconds.

Seamless Integration of AI Video Search in Editing Software

AI video search is increasingly being integrated directly into popular NLEs like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Avid Media Composer. We understand that editors might feel hesitant about adopting “yet another tool.” That’s why our ambition is to respect existing workflows and ensure that AI video search integrates as seamlessly as possible. We want to supercharge your creative process — not disrupt it.