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Search in 1Archive spans your entire catalog simultaneously. Whether a file lives on a drive sitting under your desk or one that hasn’t been connected in six months, 1Archive can find it. Because the catalog persists independently of physical drive connections, you don’t need to plug in every drive before searching. If the drive was ever scanned, its files are findable. When you only care about part of the catalog, you can narrow a search to certain Sources, a single Collection, or a window of dates. There are three search modes, each suited to a different kind of query. You switch between them using the mode selector next to the search bar. AI Image Search lets you describe what you’re looking for in plain language or with an example concept, and 1Archive returns visually and semantically similar images and video frames, even if those files have no relevant filename or metadata. This works because every image and video frame in a scanned source can be analyzed with AI image indexing during the scan process. The AI analyzes what each image actually depicts, its subject matter, mood, colors, and composition, rather than its filename or tags. When you type a search query, 1Archive matches your description to this visual analysis to surface the most relevant files. What this means in practice:
  • Searching golden hour portrait outdoors finds close-up photos taken in warm evening light, even if the files are named DSC_4821.jpg.
  • Searching aerial city at night surfaces drone footage and cityscapes without any manual tagging.
  • The results are ranked by visual and conceptual similarity, not alphabetical order or exact keyword matches.
AI Image Search only works on sources where AI image indexing was enabled during the scan. If a source was scanned without this option, its files will not appear in AI Image Search results. You can rescan a source to enable it.
Transcript Search looks inside the spoken audio of your video files. When a source is scanned with transcript generation enabled, 1Archive transcribes the audio track of each video. Transcript Search then queries those transcriptions and returns clips where your search term appears in the dialogue or narration. Results surface the specific video file and, when available, jump to the timecode where the spoken phrase occurs, so you don’t have to scrub through an entire interview to find the one line you need.
Transcript Search is especially powerful for interview footage, documentary shoots, and any project where spoken content needs to be retrieved quickly.
File Name Search is a straightforward keyword match against the names of files and folders in your catalog. It returns any file whose name contains the characters you typed, regardless of file type or source. This mode is useful when you already know the filename or naming convention you used (for example, searching BTS_2024 to find all behind-the-scenes files from a particular year, or _FINAL to locate deliverable versions).

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Filtering Results

The Filters panel next to the search bar narrows a search in three ways:

Filter by Source

Limit results to one or more specific drives. Useful when you know which drive a file is on, or when you want to scope a search to a single project’s media.

Filter by Collection

Search inside one Collection, including every folder in it and files that belong to other organizations. Anyone who can open the Collection can search it.

Filter by Date

Restrict results to files created within a window, from Today out to a custom range. Leave one end of a custom range open to search everything before or after a date.
A search looks in Sources or in a Collection, not both at once. Filters depend on the mode: AI Image Search uses all three, Transcript uses Sources only, and File Name uses none. Collection search covers photos and video frames only. See Search Your Media Library for the full rules.
The Date filter matches the file’s creation date as read from the drive during the scan, not the date the file was added to 1Archive or to a Collection.