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How to Search Dailies by Scene, Actor, Prop, Location, or Visual Detail

Stop scrubbing through dailies to find specific moments. Learn how to search dailies by scene number, actor appearance, prop visibility, location, or any visual detail — across ARRI RAW, RED R3D, and ProRes libraries.

How do you search dailies by scene, actor, prop, location, or visual detail?

Search dailies by any combination of scene, actor, prop, location, or visual detail using Cutsio's Visual Intelligence engine — which indexes every frame of your ARRI RAW, RED R3D, and ProRes dailies with computer vision, metadata parsing, and natural language search. Type "close-up of the detective asking about the letter in the restaurant scene" and the system returns the exact frame, regardless of which camera format or shoot day it came from.

The traditional dailies search workflow relies on three unreliable sources: the DIT's camera report, the script supervisor's notes, and the editor's memory. Camera reports describe intent, not reality. Script notes get lost or misinterpreted. Memory fades as the production wears on. By week three of a 40-day feature, nobody remembers which take had the prop visible or which scene had the actor wearing the blue coat.

Cutsio eliminates all three dependencies by indexing the actual visual content of every frame. Scene numbers are parsed from file metadata or folder structure. Actor appearances are detected by face recognition. Props and locations are identified by object detection. Lighting, composition, and camera motion are analyzed by scene classification models. The result is a dailies library that answers any search query a director, editor, or producer can think of.

Search your video library faster with How to Search Your Entire Video Library by Meaning.

How do you search dailies by scene number?

Search dailies by scene number by using the scene metadata that Cutsio reads from the original file names, folder structure, or embedded camera metadata.

On a professional set, the DIT organizes camera cards into folders by scene and take: Scene_24/Take_03/. Cutsio reads this folder structure during upload and indexes each clip with its scene number. The editorial team can then search:

• "Show me everything from Scene 24."
• "Find the masters from Scene 24."
• "Which takes from Scene 24 have both actors visible?"

If the scene metadata is embedded in the ARRI RAW or RED R3D file headers — which is increasingly common with modern cameras and DIT software — Cutsio reads it directly from the file. Scene-based search works without any manual data entry.

For productions that do not use scene-based folder structures, the assistant editor can add scene metadata to clips within Cutsio after upload. The scene tag then becomes searchable alongside visual content.

How do you search dailies by actor or performer?

Search dailies by actor using Cutsio's face detection and recognition capabilities, which identify principal performers across scenes, shoot days, and camera formats.

When the dailies are ingested, Visual Intelligence can detect faces in every frame and group similar faces when enabled. The editorial team can search:

• "Show me all the close-ups of the lead actress from the entire production."
• "Find the scenes where both actors are visible in a two-shot."
• "Which takes from Day 7 have the supporting actor in the background?"

For productions with a consistent principal cast, face-based search works across the entire dailies library — ARRI RAW A-cam footage, RED R3D B-cam coverage, and ProRes drone flyovers are all analyzed by the same face detection models.

What if the actor is not yet tagged in the system?

If an actor has not been named, Cutsio still detects their face and groups all clips containing that face together. The editor can then label the face with the actor's name, making all past and future clips searchable by that name.

How do you search dailies by prop or object?

Search dailies by prop or object using Visual Search's object detection models, which identify thousands of common objects — weapons, vehicles, furniture, food, electronics, props — in every frame of the dailies review stream.

Prop search is one of the most time-saving features for assistant editors. Common queries:

• "Find the takes where the gun is visible on the table."
• "Show me all the clips featuring the red sports car."
• "Which scenes have the silver briefcase in frame?"
• "Find the establishing shots with the restaurant sign visible."
• "Are there any takes where the coffee cup is in the foreground?"

Each of these queries would require the assistant editor to scrub through hours of footage or rely on the script supervisor's continuity notes. Visual Search returns the matching frames instantly.

For custom props that the object detection models may not recognize by default — a specific prop built for the production — the editorial team can search by visual similarity: "Find other frames that look like this prop." The system returns visually similar frames across the entire library.

How do you search dailies by location or scene type?

Search dailies by location or scene type using Visual Search's scene classification models, which identify interior, exterior, and specific location types — kitchen, bedroom, office, restaurant, forest, desert, city street, nightclub.

Location-based search works independently of the script supervisor's notes. The system identifies the visual characteristics of each scene:

• "Show me all the exterior scenes from the entire production."
• "Find the nightclub scenes with neon lighting."
• "Which takes have the kitchen visible in the background?"
• "Show me the desert exteriors from Day 3."
• "Find the scenes shot inside the car — tight interior."

For productions shooting on location with multiple setups per day, location search helps the editor find specific scenes without knowing the scene number or shoot day.

How do you search dailies by visual detail — lighting, composition, camera motion?

Search dailies by visual detail using Visual Search's understanding of lighting conditions, shot composition, and camera motion — the most subjective and hardest-to-categorize elements of dailies.

The system can identify:

| Visual Detail | Examples |

| :--- | :--- |

| Lighting | Golden hour, night, backlit, silhouette, soft light, hard light, neon, candlelight, window light |

| Composition | Close-up, medium shot, wide shot, two-shot, over-the-shoulder, low angle, high angle, Dutch angle |

| Camera motion | Dolly, handheld, steady cam, drone, pan, tilt, whip pan, tracking shot, push in, pull out |

Combining these with other search dimensions creates powerful queries:

• "Wide master shot of the restaurant at golden hour with both actors visible."
• "Low-angle handheld shot of the car chase at night with neon reflections."
• "Close-up of the lead actress in silhouette with window light from the right."
• "Over-the-shoulder shot of the detective questioning the witness — dolly push in."

These queries describe the visual language of cinema, not metadata fields. They are the most natural way for directors and editors to think about footage.

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title="Cutsio Visual Intelligence — search video by what the camera saw"

poster="https://image.mux.com/IRBqKFllfQTZRgUpvF00DnjqMROLtyclqpWYRLQez6KQ/thumbnail.jpg">

How does Visual Search combine multiple search dimensions?

The power of Visual Search is not in any single search dimension — scene, actor, prop, location, or visual detail — but in combining all of them into a single query.

A director looking for a specific moment from week two of a feature shoot can combine every dimension they remember:

"Show me the close-up of the lead actress — the one where she is wearing the blue dress, sitting at the restaurant table, with golden hour light coming through the window behind her, and she delivers the line about the letter."

This query combines:

• Actor: Lead actress (face detection)
• Prop/wardrobe: Blue dress (visual similarity)
• Location: Restaurant interior (scene classification)
• Lighting: Golden hour, window light (visual detail analysis)
• Composition: Close-up (shot classification)

Cutsio returns the matching clips and frames, ranked by relevance. The director finds the right take without knowing the scene number, the shoot day, or the file name.

How does Agentic Chat make dailies search accessible to the entire crew?

Agentic Chat in Cutsio is a conversational AI interface that lets any crew member search dailies using plain English — no search syntax, no training, no understanding of how the footage is organized.

Crew members simply ask:

• "Which scenes from the first week have the detective interviewing the witness?"
• "Show me all the takes where the briefcase is opened."
• "Find the establishing shots of the city skyline at dusk."
• "Are there any clips with visible camera shadow or crew reflection?"
• "Which takes have the boom mic dipping into the top of frame?"

Agentic Chat combines Visual Search, metadata search, and Collection context to return precise results. It answers the question in natural language and shows the matching clips.

How do you save and share dailies search results?

Cutsio lets you save any search result as a Collection, which can be shared as a single secure link with the director, editor, or producer.

The workflow:

1. Run a search: "close-up of lead actress in blue dress, restaurant scene, golden hour."
2. Click "Save as Collection" and name it "Scene 24 — Lead Actress Selects."
3. Share the Collection link with the director.
4. The director opens the link and sees only the matching clips — no need to scrub through unrelated footage.

Saved searches become reusable organizational tools. The "Scene 24 — Lead Actress Selects" Collection can be updated as new dailies are added, re-shared for the next review session, and exported as a selects EDL for the conform.

FAQ

Can I search dailies from multiple productions at once?

Yes. You can search across all dailies in your Cutsio library, or restrict the search to specific Collections or productions.

Does visual search work with black-and-white or stylized footage?

Yes. Visual Search models are trained on diverse visual data and can identify objects, scenes, and compositions in black-and-white, stylized, or color-graded footage.

Is face recognition available for all actors in the footage?

Face recognition groups detected faces by similarity. The system can identify clips containing the same person across different scenes and shoot days. Labeling the face with a name makes all future clips searchable by that name.

Can I search by wardrobe or costume color?

Yes. Visual Search understands color and can return clips matching color descriptions — "blue dress," "red jacket," "character wearing a hat."

How long does it take for new dailies to become searchable?

New dailies become searchable as soon as the Visual Intelligence indexing completes. For standard uploads, this is typically within minutes of the upload finishing.