---
title: 'What is semantic video search?'
description: 'Semantic video search finds moments inside video by meaning, not by exact keywords, and returns timestamps.'
url: 'https://videocontextapi.com/glossary/semantic-video-search/'
---

# Semantic video search

> Semantic video search is a way to find moments inside video by their meaning, so a natural-language query such as "someone opens a laptop" returns the matching timestamps even when nobody says those words.

## Keyword search compared to semantic search

Keyword search on video uses titles, tags, and sometimes the transcript. It finds a word only when somebody says it or types it.

Semantic search uses **embeddings** of the visual content, the speech, and the on-screen text. The query and the video go into the same vector space, so the search matches meaning.

## What a result looks like

A semantic video search result is a moment, not a file: a video ID, a start time, an end time, and a confidence score.

See the [Video Search API](/video-search-api/).

Related terms: https://videocontextapi.com/glossary/video-embeddings/, https://videocontextapi.com/glossary/temporal-grounding/, https://videocontextapi.com/glossary/video-understanding/