Importing media
Open the import dialog
Click the Import button at the top of the Media Library, or drag files directly from your computer into the panel.
Choose your files
Select one or more files. Cardboard supports video (MP4, WebM, MOV, MKV), audio (MP3, WAV, AAC), and images (PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP).
Wait for processing
After import, Cardboard automatically processes your files in the background. This includes generating thumbnails, transcribing speech, analyzing video content, creating waveforms, and building search embeddings — all in parallel.
Browsing and organizing
- Grid view — See thumbnails of all your media at a glance
- List view — See file names, durations, and types in a compact list
- Hover preview — Hover over any video thumbnail to scrub through a preview
- Search bar — Type to filter by file name or use semantic search to find content
Semantic search
Cardboard automatically analyzes your media on import, which means you can search by what is in the content — not just file names.- Visual search
- Speech search
- Music & sound
Search by what you see in the video. Cardboard uses AI video analysis to understand the visual content of every clip.Example searches:
- “city skyline”
- “person holding a phone”
- “outdoor nature shots”
- “close-up of a face”
What gets analyzed
When you import a file, Cardboard runs several AI processes in the background:| Analysis | What it does | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Thumbnails | Generates preview frames | Grid view, hover preview |
| Transcription | Converts speech to text with word-level timestamps | Speech search, captions |
| Video analysis | Identifies scenes, objects, and actions | Visual search, AI editing |
| Waveform | Creates an audio waveform visualization | Timeline display |
| Embeddings | Builds semantic vectors for content | Semantic search |