Looking for a CatDV alternative?
CatDV is a powerful enterprise media asset manager — a server platform built for broadcast and large post teams. If you’re an individual editor or a small studio and that’s more than you need, Fast Video Cataloger is a one-time, local desktop video catalog: install it, point it at your drives, and find any clip in seconds.
Download the free trial →Why people look for a CatDV alternative
CatDV is enterprise software. It’s a server platform — with worker nodes for transcoding and automation — that you install, configure, and usually need training to run. Pricing is quote-based and aimed at organizations, and its AI features (transcription, face and object tagging) run through third-party cloud services you connect with your own accounts and API keys, billed per use.
That’s the right tool for a broadcast facility or a large media team. But if you’re one editor, or a small studio, who just needs to catalog and search a big video library on your own machine, it can be a lot of platform — and a lot of cost — for the job.
Everything you need to catalog video — without the enterprise overhead
Fast Video Cataloger turns a sprawling video archive into a catalog you can actually search, and it runs entirely on your own machine — no server to stand up, no cloud accounts to wire in.
- Every scene at a glance — each video is indexed into keyframe thumbnails at every scene change, so you scan a whole clip without playing it
- Find a clip by what was said — built-in speech-to-text runs locally; no cloud account, API keys, or per-use charges
- Find a person across your footage — face recognition that runs on your own machine, not a cloud service
- Automatic scene & object tagging — local AI keywords your footage so it’s findable
- Deep manual control — hierarchical and scene-level keywords, custom metadata fields, and XMP
- One desktop app, no server — install it, point it at your drives, and go
- One-time purchase — a public, transparent price; own it outright, with a subscription option if you prefer
- Hand off to your editor — collect clips into a playlist and export an EDL or Final Cut Pro XML timeline for DaVinci Resolve and other NLEs
- Scale to a team when you need it — an optional server adds shared catalogs and user roles
CatDV vs. Fast Video Cataloger
| Feature | CatDV (Quantum) | Fast Video Cataloger |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Enterprise & broadcast teams | Individual editors & small teams |
| Deployment | Server + worker nodes | Single desktop app |
| Setup & admin | Significant — install, configure, often training | Install and point at your drives |
| Pricing | Quote-based (enterprise) | One-time purchase, public price |
| Platform | Windows, Mac (+ server) | Windows |
| Per-scene keyframe thumbnails | Yes | Yes |
| Visual thumbnail scrubbing | Yes | Yes |
| Speech-to-text transcript search | Via cloud services (API keys, per-use) | Built-in & local |
| Face recognition | Via cloud services (account required) | Built-in & local |
| AI scene & object tagging | Via cloud services | Built-in & local |
| Runs fully local / offline | Catalog yes; AI via cloud | Yes — everything local |
| Export to NLE | Yes | Yes — EDL / Final Cut XML |
Built for editors with big local libraries
Footage you can’t find is footage you can’t use. Fast Video Cataloger turns terabytes of clips on your own drives — including external and archived disks — into a library you can query by word, by face, by scene, or by your own tags. It stays on your machine: local, private, no cloud, and no server to maintain.
Try it on your own footage
Download the free trial, point it at a folder of video, and see your archive become searchable in minutes.
Download the free trial →