Overview

FrameQuery is a video archive search and review tool for teams that need to find moments in footage and carry them into post-production. It is best suited to production and post-production groups working across large or varied archives. Its strongest distinction is local, offline search after indexing; the key trade-off is that AI analysis sends selected frames and extracted audio to cloud services.

Key features

Search and indexing

Indexing analyzes scene context, objects, faces, voices and speech, with speaker-separated transcripts. That gives users more ways to find footage than metadata alone, but searchable face, voice and AI tags depend on indexed video. The Free plan therefore offers a useful way to search metadata, not a no-cost route to full AI search. Once indexing is complete, searches run locally and offline without a per-query fee.

Media and production workflows

Support for more than 50 formats, including R3D, BRAW, ProRes, H.264, H.265, MKV and MXF, makes FrameQuery relevant to mixed production archives. It can ingest local folders, S3, SMB, Dropbox and Google Drive; sharing or backup can use Drive, Dropbox or NAS. Results export to Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Avid and other NLE workflows through FCPXML, Premiere XML, EDL and LosslessCut formats. This breadth suits teams that need search to feed an existing edit rather than replace it.

Review and privacy

The web review page combines frame-accurate comments, drawing annotations, approval workflows and side-by-side version comparison. Face and voice recognition run on-device, require explicit consent, and keep biometric embeddings out of shared indexes. That is a meaningful privacy boundary, but it does not make indexing fully local: selected frames and extracted audio go to cloud services for visual analysis and transcription. Production connections use HTTPS, face and voice templates are encrypted on-device, and FrameQuery says it does not use footage to train its own AI models.

API status

The API is not available yet and live requests are disabled, so teams should not choose FrameQuery for an immediate programmatic integration. Its planned API limits are 20 GB per upload, 12 hours per video job and 100 clips per batch request. Those limits may matter to future workflows, but they do not make the API usable today.

Pricing

The Free plan is free and includes metadata search plus local, Drive and NAS sharing and backup, but no monthly indexing hours. Face, voice and AI-tag search require indexed video, so this tier is best for metadata-based discovery or evaluation rather than building an AI-indexed archive.

Starter costs 19.00 USD per month, billed monthly only. It includes 10 hours of video per month, full AI analysis, local index and search, and Drive or NAS sharing. It is the most straightforward paid option for an individual or small workflow that needs indexed search but not cloud-hosted sharing or collaboration features.

Pro costs 45.00 USD per month, billed $540/yr, with two months saved. It raises the allowance to 50 hours monthly and adds cloud-hosted sharing, 100 GB of cloud proxy storage, collaboration and review. Max costs 190.00 USD per month, billed $2280/yr, also with two months saved; it provides 300 hours monthly and 600 GB of proxy storage with the same collaboration and review capabilities. Pro fits a regular team workflow; Max is for substantially higher monthly indexing volume and storage needs.

Studio has custom pricing and includes 300+ hours, unlimited video hours, one-time archive processing, dedicated onboarding and priority support. The Developer API also has custom pricing, billed per request on a usage basis, for REST API access, programmatic indexing and webhook notifications; it remains unavailable for now. The published tiers make monthly indexing hours and sharing needs central to the choice: moving beyond Starter buys more capacity and hosted collaboration, while the Free tier has no indexing allowance.

Platforms

FrameQuery lists macOS, Windows and web support. API is also named as a platform, but the API is not yet available, so that should not be treated as a current integration option.

Who it's for

FrameQuery is aimed at production and post-production teams, marketing groups, documentary filmmakers, corporate video teams, and news and broadcast users. It is a stronger fit for organizations that need archive search, editing handoff and structured review together than for anyone seeking entirely local AI analysis or a live API.

Pros and cons

Pros: Local offline search after indexing avoids per-query charges and keeps repeated discovery practical.
Pros: Broad format support, multiple storage sources and exports for major editing workflows make it useful across production pipelines.
Pros: Frame-accurate comments, annotations, approvals and version comparison bring review into the same workflow.
Cons: Cloud services process selected frames and extracted audio during analysis, which may not suit every media-handling policy.
Cons: Free includes no monthly indexing hours, while full face, voice and AI-tag search require indexed video.
Cons: The API is not live, limiting teams that need programmatic indexing now.

Alternatives

For a lighter-weight creative workflow, DISKO has a free 2 GB tier with screenwriting and shot-list tools and review links, while its Pro plan is 12.00 USD per month at a founders rate locked for an unspecified term here.

Deepgrip is a paid option with a 399.00 USD per month Starter plan billed $4,788/year, offering 200 indexed hours, 450 searches, five seats and a $0.01 charge per search over the limit; consider it when those stated monthly allowances and seats suit the operation.

ViSearch offers a free tier with up to 20 minutes of video processing and a paid Basic plan at 0.09 USD per once, billed $0.09/min; it is an alternative for readers comparing usage-priced processing.

MomentSearch is a free alternative. Cinestar has a free MIT open-source core for Linux and macOS, with local AI services requiring Ollama. SentrySearch is another free option for Linux, macOS, self-hosted and Windows environments.

Twelve Labs has a free plan with 600 minutes of video, 90-day index access, 10 hours per index, 100 videos per index and five concurrent indexing tasks; choose it when those defined API and web allowances fit better than FrameQuery's local search and editing workflow. Valossa Assistant is a paid web alternative with a 14.90 EUR per month Starter plan.

Browse AI Video Search Tools or Video Annotation Software for more options in those categories.

Verdict

FrameQuery is a strong choice for production teams that want indexed footage search, editing exports and collaborative review in one workflow, especially when offline searching after indexing is valuable. Choose it with a clear understanding that analysis involves cloud processing; look elsewhere if that is unacceptable or if a working API is essential.

	dfine.io Review	FrameQuery
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Paid from	€59/mo	$19/mo
Platforms	macOS, Web	api, macOS, Web, Windows
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Frame-accurate marking	Yes	Yes
Review workflow	Yes	Yes
Drawing annotations		Yes
Paid from		19 /mo

dfine.io Review vs FrameQuery

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