Edit Mind
A privacy-focused, open-source project designed to transform your personal video library into a searchable database. Edit Mind helps you transcribe, analyze, and index footage locally, allowing you to find the exact moment you need using natural language search. It utilizes local Machine Learning models and a local vector database, ensuring your heavy video files never leave your infrastructure.
Key Features
- Privacy-First Architecture: Video files remain 100% local on your machine or server.
- Local Indexing: Automatically scans watched folders and processes new video files.
- Semantic Video Search: Find scenes by describing them (e.g., “man running in the rain”) rather than just filenames.
- AI Metadata Extraction: Includes Transcription (Whisper), Face Recognition, Object Detection, and Scene Segmentation.
- Docker Support: Easily deployable via Docker Compose for server or NAS environments.
Use Cases
- Video Editing: Quickly finding B-roll or specific quotes for documentary/YouTube editing.
- Digital Asset Management (DAM): Organizing terabytes of personal or archival footage without monthly cloud fees.
- Content Archiving: Making legacy video libraries searchable and accessible.
- Personal Memory Search: Retrieving specific family moments by description.
Pros & Cons
- Pros:
- Data Privacy: Videos are processed locally; no massive cloud uploads required.
- Cost: Free and open-source (MIT License).
- Flexibility: Runs on consumer hardware or headless servers via Docker.
- Cons:
- Hardware Dependent: Indexing speed and search performance rely heavily on your local CPU/GPU capabilities.
- Setup: Requires more technical know-how (Docker/Python) compared to plug-and-play cloud SaaS.
- API Dependency: Depending on configuration, some versions may still require an API key (e.g., Gemini) for text embedding, even if video files stay local.
How Does It Compare?
Unlike general cloud storage, Edit Mind focuses specifically on understanding video content.
- vs. Twelve Labs:
- Twelve Labs is an enterprise-grade API designed for developers to build video search into their apps. It requires uploading video data to their cloud for processing.
- Edit Mind is a self-hosted application for end-users. It is free and keeps heavy video files on your local storage, avoiding high bandwidth/storage costs associated with cloud APIs.
- vs. Shade (Shade.inc):
- Shade is a polished, commercial product (macOS) focusing on visual file management and cloud proxy workflows for teams. It is a paid SaaS product.
- Edit Mind is an open-source alternative that offers similar semantic search capabilities but requires self-maintenance and lacks the team-collaboration features of Shade.
- vs. Google Video Intelligence / Cloud Vision:
- Google’s solutions are pay-per-minute cloud APIs intended for large-scale enterprise automation.
- Edit Mind brings similar “intelligence” (labeling, transcription) to the desktop level without per-minute billing, making it viable for individual creators with massive libraries.
Final Thoughts
Edit Mind fills a critical gap for video editors, data hoarders, and privacy advocates who own terabytes of footage but lack the tools to search it. While it requires a capable local computer to run effectively, it offers a powerful, free alternative to expensive cloud asset management systems. It is best suited for technical users who prioritize privacy and zero monthly fees over the convenience of a managed cloud service.