Unlocking the potential of your media library with AI and real-time access

Most media archives sit idle. Buried under folders, endless downloads and hours of manual searching, while creative opportunities slip away. 

What if your media library could understand itself and make every asset instantly searchable?

That’s exactly what happens when Moments Lab’s AI meets LucidLink’s real-time file access. Together, they transform archives from static storage into living, searchable creative libraries.

In a recent LucidLink Unlocked, Fred Petitpoint, CTO and Co-founder of Moments Lab, joined LucidLink’s Imogen Kimberly and Richard Yu to explore how intelligent media understanding and instant access are reshaping workflows for creators, editors and producers.

Read on for the highlights or watch the full session here.

From storage to story: making media truly searchable

Traditional metadata is often inconsistent, limited to simple keywords and manually applied. AI changes that entirely.

Moments Lab’s technology analyzes media visually, audibly and textually to create a deep, machine-understandable model of every file. Metadata becomes structured, meaningful and immediately searchable.

“It’s basically a mix of what we call shots, audio segments and sequences,” says Fred Petitpoint, CTO and Co-founder of Moments Lab.

Let’s break that down:

• Shots: using a content-aware algorithm, the AI splits a video into shots based on light changes, motion and camera angles. It detects faces, objects, logos and even on-screen text. “Is it Tom Cruise at the red carpet? What’s he doing — with captioning?” Fred asked.

• Audio segments: through a process called diarization, the AI identifies who is speaking and when, linking those speech patterns back to the visuals.

• Sequences: related shots and audio segments are grouped together into coherent scenes or “moments.” Instead of isolated frames, you get complete story segments like “Tom Cruise playing guitar” or “a live concert performance.”

This multimodal understanding lets you search media the way humans think. Want every wide shot of a product reveal, or all CEO interviews from 2018–2022? Just type it, AI will find it.

How AI understands your media

Large video archives are complex: an hour of footage can contain hundreds of distinct moments. Moments Lab’s AI maps this scale automatically.

• A typical news segment or documentary uses ~600 shots to tell a story.

• On social platforms like TikTok, that number can triple, as rapid visual changes hold audience attention.

AI layers face and object recognition, speech-to-text transcription, logo detection and semantic clustering to understand context, not just content. Insights are converted into vector embeddings, enabling searches by concept, not just filename.

Editors, producers and marketers can ask questions of their media and get immediate, actionable results.

Instant access meets instant insight

All of that AI intelligence means little if it’s trapped behind download bars or duplicate proxies. That’s where LucidLink changes the game.

Traditional media workflows involve pulling proxies, duplicating files or waiting for transfers. But with LucidLink’s real-time collaboration, your full-resolution media is available instantly, wherever your team is.

In practice, that means:

• No waiting for files to sync or copy

• No wasted local storage

• Seamless access across teams and locations

Whether you’re in an Adobe editing panel, a newsroom or a remote studio, you can browse, search and edit media directly from the cloud. Combined with Moments Lab’s AI tagging, you unlock instant insights and seamless access to your full media library.

Metadata now fuels real-time discovery, automation and storytelling. The moment you find the right clip, you can start editing, reusing or publishing it, without any delays.

Capturing the moment: why speed wins

In modern media, speed shapes every decision.

Many broadcasters and digital publishers even buy extra time rights after events, like a football match, to publish within the first 30 minutes. Why? First to publish, first to capture the audience.

AI-driven search + real-time access makes this race winnable:

• Locate a shot, sequence or highlight in seconds

• Immediately start cutting or posting

• Respond quickly to cultural moments, trends or viral topics

“Finding that moment in less than two seconds works very well,” Fred said. “When you have a LucidLink filespace, it’s already there.”

Rediscovering hidden value in your archive

Behind every production team is a mountain of unused content: interviews, b-roll, product shots, event footage and more. AI can turn that dormant material into a creative goldmine.

With Moments Lab and LucidLink, you can:

• Identify people, logos or brands instantly for rights management and clearance

• Repurpose old clips to tell new stories

• Verify usage rights in seconds before publishing

• Maintain creative consistency across campaigns or time periods

Imagine typing a search query like:

“All CEO interviews from 2018–2022 where the company logo is visible.”

Within moments, every relevant clip appears — ready to use, license or remix. What once took hours of manual review now happens in seconds.

This rediscovery of content saves time and money while extending the lifetime value of media assets, transforming archives into active creative engines.

From ROI to creative impact

Technology amplifies creativity while streamlining workflows.

“The way you access your content impacts the way you tell your story,” Fred said.

Easy access expands creative freedom. Locked content narrows it. Editors often reuse the same visuals not by choice but by necessity. 

Fred illustrated this with the “baguette index”: every French newsroom covering inflation uses the same shot of a hand taking a baguette. Similarly, oil price stories often reuse the same oil derrick shot.

“Engines are measured in horsepower, but they bring so much more than horses in front of your carriage. It’s the same thing here,” Fred explained.

AI and real-time access free teams to focus on storytelling, transforming the way stories are told.

Rethinking the creative workflow

Imagine a world where you start with the story you want to tell, and instantly find all the shots and sequences to support it.

This flips the traditional production process:

• Old model: start with whatever assets you can find, then force a story around them.

• New model: start with your narrative, and instantly locate media to bring it to life.

The result: faster workflows, richer storytelling and more creative freedom. AI and real-time access enhance human creativity, giving teams new ways to explore and innovate. — something we’re seeing as post houses integrate AI into modern workflows.

Your next viral moment might already exist

Every organization produces more content than it uses. Every editor has files they’ve forgotten. Every archive hides moments waiting to be rediscovered.

AI and LucidLink turn that dormant footage into a living, breathing creative resource, searchable, accessible and ready for new stories. The next great campaign, viral video or award-winning documentary might already be sitting in your drive, waiting to be found.

See how Moments Lab and LucidLink can transform your archive into a real-time creative library and unlock the hidden potential of your media. Watch the full session here.