See the individual shots.
Hard cuts, dissolves and fades become searchable moments. Even a long take can be broken into useful segments.
Open-source video intelligence
You shot it.
Now find it.
That one look. That light. That perfect take.
Find the moment in your mountain of footage.
A self-hosted library that understands every shot.
Your hardware. Your footage. Your creative freedom.
Start with a feeling. Find the footage.Try the sample library
Built in the open. Apache 2.0.There’s more in your archive
From your first folder to your entire archive.
Local by defaultApache 2.0People + AI agents
Video intelligence, on your termsStop looking through files.
Stop looking through files.
Start finding moments.
You remember the feeling, the light, the moment. Metachlorian remembers where it lives. Turn folders of footage into a searchable library of individual shots, with the context you need to use them.
A little less searching. A lot more finding.Think of a shot.
Think of a shot.
Then ask for it.
Try the sample library. Search for a coastline, filter for 4K, or find shots cleared for paid social.
6 sample shots
Click a shot to see the evidenceAn illustrative interface with a fixed sample dataset and AI-generated still imagery. Your real library runs on your own hardware.
More than a filenameIt knows what’s
It knows what’s
in the frame.
Every shot becomes a structured record. Meaning, movement, speech and usability come together—so you can search the way you think.
Find the words, too.
Search spoken dialogue and on-screen text alongside what the camera sees. Find the line you remember, down to the moment.
Know why it matched.
See the source and confidence of each signal. Correct a tag once and your correction stays, even after reprocessing.
325 msMedian search time
1.6 millionShots in the reference index
Measured on a 4-vCPU reference machine, without a GPU. Results depend on your hardware and library. Read the evaluation
The right shot. The right rights.A great find.
A great find.
And yours to use.
Find footage with its licence, releases, territories and expiry attached. Tell Metachlorian the intended use and search within the shots recorded as cleared for it.
Explore rights-aware searchAtlantic_coast_014.movCoastal collection / Shot 03
✓- Intended use
- Paid social
- Territory
- Worldwide
- Licence
- Owned footage
- Expiry
- No expiry recorded
Cleared for this use
Based on the rights recorded in your library.
From archive to editFind your footage.
Find your footage.
Keep your flow.
Metachlorian is the knowing half of your workflow. It finds and organises the shots; your editor brings them to life.
Point it at your footage.
Connect a local folder, a shared library or an S3 bucket. Index your existing archive without starting over.
Search. Select. Collect.
Describe what you need, inspect the evidence, and build a collection of the moments that belong together.
Take it into your edit.
Send a package to Cutawan or export timelines in OpenTimelineIO, FCPXML or CMX 3600 EDL.
Works with your next stepCutawanOpenTimelineIOFCPXMLCMX 3600 EDL
A library your agents can understandGive your AI
Give your AI
eyes on the archive.
Connect an agent through MCP or the REST API. It can find shots, inspect transcripts and check recorded rights using the same library you do.
Read-only by default. Explicit scopes for writes and exports. Every action audited.
Connect your agentYou
Find three slow coastal shots for a paid social edit. At least eight seconds each.
search_shotslibrary:read
Metachlorian
Illustrative MCP workflowShots with in/out points, match explanations, and rights verdicts—ready for your agent to inspect.
Your archive stays your archiveLocal by default.
Local by default.
Open by design.
Run the core models on your CPU. Add a GPU for speed and richer local captions, or enable an optional provider when you choose. No footage leaves your machine until an administrator enables and confirms a provider.
Your hardwareDesktop, server or NAS
Your judgementHuman corrections take priority
Your choiceApache 2.0 source, optional providers
Make your archive searchableYour next great shot
Your next great shot
is already out there.
Give it a library that knows where to look. Start with Docker on a server or NAS, or run directly from source on your machine.
Server or NAS · Docker required
git clone https://github.com/JeremySNR/Metachlorian
cd Metachlorian
METACHLORIAN_ADMIN_PASSWORD='choose-a-long-password' \
FOOTAGE_DIR=/path/to/footage \
docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml up -dThen open http://<host>:8765
Local machine · Python 3.11, uv, Node.js and FFmpeg
git clone https://github.com/JeremySNR/Metachlorian
cd Metachlorian/core
uv venv -p 3.11
uv pip install -e ".[analysis]"
.venv/bin/metachlorian models fetch
cd ../app && npm ci && npm run build
cd ../core
.venv/bin/metachlorian serve --add ~/FootageOpen http://127.0.0.1:8765
Before you press recordA few things
A few things
worth knowing.
What is Metachlorian?
Metachlorian is an open-source, self-hosted video library that indexes footage at shot level. It combines measured technical signals with AI models for meaning, so people and agents can search for specific moments across an archive.
Do I need a GPU or a cloud subscription?
No. The default models run locally on a CPU. A consumer GPU can accelerate processing and enable richer local vision-language captions. External providers are optional and must be enabled by an administrator.
Does it upload my footage?
By default, analysis runs locally. No footage leaves the machine until an administrator enables and confirms an external provider. Face embeddings stay within the library.
Can I search for dialogue and specific people?
Yes. Hybrid search combines semantic similarity with words in transcripts, on-screen text, and labels. Faces can be recognised locally across shots and files; name someone once to find them again.
How does rights-aware search work?
You record licences, permitted uses, channels, territories, expiry dates and releases per file, with shot-level overrides. Search with an intended use to filter against those records. Metachlorian uses your recorded permissions; it does not determine legal ownership automatically.
Can I use it with my editor or AI agent?
Export selected footage through OpenTimelineIO, FCPXML or CMX 3600 EDL, or hand off a collection to Cutawan. Agents connect through MCP or the REST API, with read-only access by default and explicit scopes for exports and writes.
Is Metachlorian free and open source?
The source code is available under Apache 2.0. Model weights have their own licences, documented in the repository. Your hardware and any optional external provider may have costs.
