Clipto
Fully local, natural language search over terabytes of media
846 followers
Fully local, natural language search over terabytes of media
846 followers
Like Google Photos, but fully local. Turn the terabytes of video, audio, meetings, and files you work with into searchable memories, without uploading anything to the cloud. Clipto automatically tags people, dialogue, and scenes, so you can instantly find any moment buried in your media just by describing what you're looking for. It's fast too: on a MacBook Pro M5, Clipto indexed 2TB of videos in just 24 hours.
Love the local-first philosophy! Does the single license cover multiple Macs, or do I need a separate seat for my studio desktop and my travel MacBook?
Clipto
@jocky Thanks! Today, most users run Clipto across their personal devices without friction.
We’re still refining some of the licensing and account management details as the product grows, especially for creators and teams who work across multiple machines.
Our goal is to make legitimate personal use feel simple, not burdensome.
Out of curiosity, when you switch between your studio desktop and travel MacBook, are you typically working with the same media library or different projects on each machine?
@henry_kang Usually the same projects. Seamless access across devices is definitely important.
Clipto
@jocky That’s really helpful context.
What we’re hearing from more and more users is that search is only half the problem. Once people start building large media libraries, they want their memory and context to travel with them as well.
Today, each Clipto library is local to the machine, but seamless access across devices is definitely something we’re actively exploring.
When you’re switching devices, which is more important for you, accessing the same media assets, or are you expecting things like saved searches, people labels, and project context to carry over?
Sounds cool! What does it mean that it indexed 2TB of videos? Did the service understand what’s in the videos and break them down second by second? So I could write something like “find the video where I’m on the beach in Puerto Vallarta” and it would find it?
Clipto
@natalia_iankovych Yes, that’s exactly the kind of experience we’re aiming for.
When we say Clipto indexed 2TB of video, we don’t mean it simply cataloged file names. It analyzes multiple signals from the media, including visual content, dialogue, people, scenes, objects, and other contextual information to build a searchable understanding of your library.
So if you have videos from a trip to Puerto Vallarta, a query like:
“Find the videos where I’m on the beach in Puerto Vallarta”
could absolutely be the kind of search Clipto is designed to handle.
We don’t literally process every frame second-by-second, because that would become prohibitively expensive at scale. Instead, we use a combination of content analysis and smart frame selection to capture the most informative moments while keeping the index practical for large libraries.
Are you mostly thinking about personal memories and travel videos, or professional media archives?
@henry_kang I was thinking about personal use cases, but something like this could also be used in my tourism startup. I’ll keep it in mind for the future, your service is interesting.
Clipto
@natalia_iankovych thanks for letting me know! Best luck with your startup!
Kollab
Does it support a simple drag-and-drop workflow for mass importing terabytes of media? My current desktop storage is an absolute disaster.
Clipto
@yan_labs_ Yes.Just select all your folders and drag them straight into Clipto — no reorganizing needed beforehand. Clipto will analyze your video and audio files and automatically tag them across multiple dimensions: people, dialogue, scenes, objects, and more. So when you're looking for something later, just describe what you remember about the content, and Clipto will find it instantly.
A couple of quick notes:
Clipto reads your files where they already live — it won't move, reorganize, or delete anything. Your files stay exactly where they are.
Indexing speed depends on your Mac's specs. On an M5 MacBook Pro, ~2TB takes about a day. Higher-end chips (M1 Pro/Max/Ultra and above with 24GB+ RAM) will give you the best experience.
Pandada AI
As a creator signing strict NDAs for commercial projects, cloud tools are out of the question. Is there really no cloud rendering or uploading involved at all?
Clipto
@panwangqun Yes, Clipto is built around local-first processing. Your media analysis and search run on your device, so your footage doesn’t need to be uploaded to the cloud or rendered on our servers. For NDA-sensitive projects, you can even keep the workflow fully offline and use Clipto without an internet connection. Hope Clipto can help with that：）
DeckSpeed
Is there a maximum file size or duration limit for a single clip? I frequently work with 3-hour long uncompressed theater recordings and want to make sure the local database won't crash during indexing
Clipto
@hanzhizhang0405 There isn’t a fixed file size or duration limit for a single clip.For long recordings like a 3-hour theater capture, Clipto can index them, but the processing time will depend on your machine and the length of the video.
One useful note: under the same device conditions, Clipto’s content understanding speed is usually more related to video duration than file size. File size can matter in some cases, like when transcoding is involved, but it’s usually not the main factor.
Surgeflow
If I have duplicate files or very similar takes of the same scene, how does Clipto display them in the search results? Does it group them together?
Clipto
@zephyrlink_i Great question.
Exact duplicate files are automatically deduplicated during indexing, so we don’t process or store the same file multiple times.
For similar takes, alternate angles, or near-duplicate shots, we currently keep them as separate results and rank them based on relevance to the search query.
In practice, that’s often what creators want. When you’re editing, multiple takes of the same scene can have subtle differences in framing, timing, performance, or camera movement, so seeing several strong matches side-by-side helps you quickly compare and choose the best shot.
That said, grouping similar results is something we’re actively exploring, especially for large productions with hundreds of takes. We think there’s a balance between reducing clutter and preserving creative choice.
YourAIScroll
Is there a way to add manual tags or notes on top of the AI descriptions to customize the search for a specific client project?
Clipto
@zhengyang_hou Clipto uses auto-tagging by default.
The AI analyzes every media file you drag and drop — and automatically generates tags based on the content of your files. This makes it easy to search by tag right away.