When your video library becomes an endless collection of generic filenames, unlabelled exports, and clips scattered across hard drives, finding anything becomes a game of chance. Whether you’re an independent filmmaker, YouTube content creator, or part of a post-production team, you’ve likely faced the same problem: you can’t remember where that perfect clip is—and it’s not tagged.
We’ve already covered the broader landscape in our guide to the best photo and video organizing software. But in this article, we’re zeroing in on a major, under-addressed pain point for creators: searching video with no tags.
Tagging video files sounds like a good practice in theory. But in reality? Most creators don’t tag—and most tools assume that you do. Peakto is designed for those who live and work in the real world. With Peakto, your ability to search isn’t limited by missing tags, vague titles, or absent metadata. It’s powered by content-aware AI.
Why Searching Video with No Tags Is So Difficult
Let’s start with the obvious: most video files you import or export don’t have usable tags. And even if your camera or editing app did embed some metadata, you’ll often lose that information during export, backup, or cross-platform transfers.
Why Tags Are Often Missing:
- Exporting from editing apps (like Premiere Pro or Final Cut) often strips metadata
- Transferring between Windows, macOS, and cloud drives can erase embedded info
- Clips downloaded from YouTube or other platforms rarely contain usable metadata
- Time constraints: creators don’t tag files manually—there’s simply no time
- Metadata tools like Finder, Explorer, or even MediaInfo don’t offer usable batch search options for untagged files
Even if your content is structured into folders, search results will be limited to file names or basic system properties. You can’t type “sunset drone shot” into macOS Finder or Windows Explorer and expect relevant clips—unless you’ve manually written that in a filename or metadata tag. That’s why so many editors, creators, and social video producers are turning to Peakto.
The Consequences of Missing Tags
When you’re stuck with untagged content, things fall apart:
- Wasted time scrubbing through previews and opening dozens of files to find a single shot
- No way to group content logically without rebuilding your library manually
- Lost footage that you forget exists or can’t locate when needed
- Security risks if sensitive videos are shared with unintended metadata still embedded
Frustration—pure and simple. Tagging was supposed to help us organize. Instead, the dependency on manual tags has created bottlenecks, especially for creators working with hundreds or thousands of video assets.
Meet Peakto: AI That Searches What You Can’t Tag
This is where Peakto redefines video management. Its goal isn’t to make you tag better. It’s to make tagging optional. With Peakto’s content-aware AI, searching video with no tags becomes not only possible—but effortless.
Content-Based Search
Peakto lets you search using natural language—just type what you’re looking for:
- “interview in kitchen”
- “wide shot of mountain”
- “dog running in field”
- “person speaking French indoors”
Even without filenames or metadata, Peakto’s AI analyzes the visual and audio content of each file to bring back accurate results. No tags, no stress.
Audio Transcript Search
Need to find a specific quote but don’t remember where it was said? Peakto generates AI-based transcripts of your video files and lets you search by dialogue—as if you were searching a Google Doc.
This makes it easy to search YouTube videos, interviews, tutorials, and podcasts stored locally, even when there’s no metadata or caption file attached.
Compatible with Your Workflow
Peakto works across:
- Drives (internal, external, NAS)
- Applications (Final Cut, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Lightroom, and more)
- Disconnected storage (Peakto still shows previews and metadata)
- Networked environments (ideal for teams and studios)
You don’t need to move files, rename anything, or reorganize your drives. Just import once, and let Peakto do the rest.
No Tags? No Problem: Other Ways to Group in Peakto
While many tools rely on video tags and traditional metadata fields, Peakto uses advanced AI to group and filter files in new ways:
1. Visual Similarity
2. Face Recognition
3. Duration & Resolution
Peakto extracts technical metadata like video duration, aspect ratio, resolution, and frame rate—even if this data is missing from file headers. You can sort, filter, and even create Smart Albums based on this information.
4. Find Video by Date
Real-World Use Cases
Let’s break down how searching video with no tags makes a real difference across a variety of creative professionals:
The YouTube Creator
The Creative Director at a Studio
You oversee campaigns across multiple teams. Assets are scattered across servers, and every editor has their own naming habits. When a client requests “any footage showing product in use at night,” you don’t need to dig through drives.
With Peakto, a simple search brings back usable, high-impact video across your entire catalog—even if it was never tagged.
The Corporate Videographer
You film dozens of internal events, interviews, and tutorials for a global company. Projects are saved on a central NAS, but no one tags the footage. Peakto lets you find “CEO on stage with slides” or “team building outdoor” just by entering those descriptions—turning hours of browsing into seconds of discovery.
The Freelance Video Editor
Clients send you folders with names like “final_v3” and “clip1234.” You’re on a deadline and need to find all the shots where someone is speaking to the camera indoors. Peakto’s AI visual and audio search lets you locate those clips—even if no one labeled them—and keeps you on schedule.
The Documentary Editor
You’ve imported 300 interviews and B-roll clips from three continents. None are tagged. You need to pull all the footage shot inside airports. Peakto lets you simply search “airport interior” and surfaces the relevant clips—instantly.
Tags vs. AI: What’s Better?
Should you stop tagging completely? Not necessarily. If your workflow includes structured metadata or if your team uses keywords, descriptions, or video titles systematically, that’s still useful. Peakto supports traditional metadata fields and enhances them—but it doesn’t rely on them. That’s the difference.
- Traditional Tagging = rigid, manual, time-consuming
- Peakto AI Search = flexible, content-driven, automatic
So if you’re uploading videos to your YouTube channel and want to add tags, title, and description for SEO, do that. But when managing local footage—raw, untagged, and fragmented—let Peakto’s AI take over.
Don't Tag—Just Search: The New Way of Organizing Video
In a world where media is constantly growing, metadata is often incomplete, and workflows span multiple platforms, searching video with no tags isn’t just a niche use case- it’s the new norm.
With Peakto, you search what’s inside, group by meaning, and create faster without sacrificing organization. Whether you’re prepping clips for upload, reviewing archive footage, or curating your next visual story—Peakto helps you find what others miss.
Ready to skip tagging and start discovering? Try Peakto and experience how smart, tag-free search should work.
