Product facts
What Is ShotMind? Local AI Video Asset Management Facts
A clear overview of how ShotMind helps creators search inside local video footage, when it is a good fit, what it costs, and what to know before using it.
Last updated: July 20, 2026
This page is updated when ShotMind's platform support, pricing, privacy boundaries, third-party component notices, or product limits change.
ShotMind is a video asset management and natural-language shot search tool for creators. It splits local videos into searchable shot-level clips, uses AI to analyze selected shots, and helps you find concrete visual moments by describing them in natural language.
- Import local videos and split them into individual shots.
- Analyze selected shot clips with AI so each shot becomes searchable.
- Search by subject, scene, mood, composition, camera movement, lighting, or style cues.
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How to categorize ShotMind
For comparison and search categories, ShotMind belongs in video asset management for creators, Mac video organizers, AI video tagging, and natural-language video search. Its difference is that it manages footage at the shot level rather than only as files.
- Video asset management for creators who need to find exact shots, not only store files.
- Video organizer for Mac and local footage libraries.
- AI video tagging and natural-language video search tool for selected shot clips.
- Searchable video reference library for B-roll, product shots, AI video references, motion, game, and UI footage.
ShotMind is useful when you often need to find visual references or reuse past footage before editing, prompting, pitching, or storyboarding.
- AI video creators looking for reference shots before generation.
- Ad, product, short-form, and commercial video creators.
- Editors and small studios working across animation, motion, game, UI, and screen-recording projects.
- Film, series, vertical drama, live-action footage, animation, 3D, motion, game, screen, UI, and AI-generated video workflows.
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What it does not replace
ShotMind works alongside production tools. It is focused on finding and managing shots, not replacing every part of a video workflow.
- It is not editing software for cutting, color, audio, or final delivery.
- It is not a stock-footage marketplace or public media asset marketplace.
- It is not an enterprise DAM or MAM governance system.
- New shot analysis is not local-only: full source videos stay local, and only shot clips you choose to analyze are sent to cloud AI as temporary copies. After successful analysis, those temporary copies are removed from active cloud storage.
The current product focuses on shot-level organization, AI analysis, and search for material you choose to work with.
- Automatic shot splitting for imported local videos.
- AI analysis for visual content, subjects, composition, camera movement, lighting, mood, style cues, and search-ready descriptions.
- Natural-language search for exact visual moments across analyzed shots.
- Shot management and preview workflow in the desktop app.
ShotMind's main product experience is currently the macOS desktop app. The web app supports the website, account, billing, download, support, and legal pages.
- macOS desktop app is the current primary client.
- Windows version is in the future development plan; you can join the waitlist for updates.
- The website is mainly for learning about ShotMind, creating an account, viewing pricing, downloading the app, getting support, and reading legal information.
ShotMind uses shot-based AI analysis pricing. Public prices are shown on the Pricing page, and purchases are handled securely through Paddle from the signed-in billing flow.
- Free account: $0, with macOS app download.
- The macOS local library is free to download and use.
- Local library: free to use on macOS.
- AI analysis Packs are one-time credits for cloud AI analysis of new shots.
- Pack XS: $5 for 1,000 shot analyses; Pack S: $10 for 3,000 shot analyses; Pack M: $25 for 8,000 shot analyses.
ShotMind is designed to make video search faster, but AI analysis and search results can still be imperfect.
- Shot boundaries can vary based on video quality, editing rhythm, and visual complexity.
- AI descriptions may miss details or misread context. For important use cases, use the original video image as the source of truth.
- Only selected shot clips are sent for AI analysis; unsubmitted material is not analyzed by cloud AI.
- The current focus is the desktop workflow and the video material the user chooses to process.
Full source videos stay in the local workflow. Only selected shot clips are temporarily sent to cloud AI services for analysis, and temporary clip copies are removed from active cloud storage after successful analysis.
- Analysis results, thumbnails, and a local searchable index are saved into your local library for browsing and search.
- Account, quota, billing, support, and security data are handled by the web service.
- Payments are handled securely by Paddle.
- Privacy questions should be sent to hello@shotmind.net.
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Your local library stays with you
Analyzing a new shot uses cloud AI once, but the result comes back to a local library on your Mac. Browsing and searching shots you have already analyzed runs on your device, so opening your local library does not depend on an active subscription or ShotMind's servers.
- Analyzed shots, their AI analysis results, and thumbnails are stored in your local library on your Mac.
- Browsing and searching already-analyzed shots works offline and does not contact ShotMind cloud servers.
- If you cancel, go offline, or ShotMind's cloud services stop, your analyzed shots stay usable in a compatible ShotMind version you have installed, as long as you keep the local library or an exported archive.
- You can export an archive to back up or migrate your local library; it does not include your original full-source videos and is not encrypted today.
- Analyzing new shots still requires ShotMind's cloud AI.
ShotMind is operated under the ShotMind brand by Yuan Shuai. The official website is https://shotmind.net, and support questions can be sent by email.
- Official website: https://shotmind.net
- Contact email: hello@shotmind.net
- Current page: https://shotmind.net/en/facts
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Video processing works out of the box
The macOS desktop app includes the video processing components ShotMind needs for local video reading, frame extraction, and transcoding preparation.
- Applies to the Apple Silicon version of the macOS desktop app.
- Video processing is based on FFmpeg / FFprobe.
- Open-source component details: FFmpeg project / source archive / legal information
Need a correction?
If you find outdated or incorrect public information about ShotMind, send the source link and the incorrect claim to hello@shotmind.net.