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The Media Library is the left panel of the editor. It holds all the files you have imported into your project — videos, images, and audio. You can browse, preview, and drag media onto the timeline to start editing.

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Importing media

1

Open the import dialog

Click the “Add” button at the top of the Media Library, or drag files directly from your computer into the panel.
2

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).
3

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.

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Browsing and organizing

  • Grid view — See thumbnails of all your media at a glance
  • Hover preview — Hover over any video thumbnail to scrub through a preview
Cardboard automatically analyzes your media on import, which means you can search by what is in the content — not just file names.
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”
You can also search from the AI Chat panel — try “Find all shots where someone is talking to camera” or “Show me the clips with outdoor scenery.”

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What gets analyzed

When you import a file, Cardboard runs several AI processes in the background: All of this happens automatically and in parallel. You can start editing immediately while processing completes in the background.

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What’s next?

Timeline Editing

Learn how to arrange clips on the timeline.

Your First Video in 5 Minutes

Follow the quickstart guide to make your first edit.