Search Audio & Video Libraries—Instantly, Privately, On‑Device

Build scalable, privacy-first audio search engines with on-device indexing. Enable instant phonetic search without transcription or cloud latency.
Search Audio & Video Libraries—Instantly, Privately, On‑Device

Overview

Picovoice's Speech-to-Index engine transforms audio/video into searchable indexes—letting users query content by phonetic match, intent, or keyword—all entirely locally.

📁
Build voice search into media platforms
Deliver near-instant retrieval with millisecond indexing & search
🔐
Keep content on-device—no data leaves the system
🎯
Avoid transcription errors—phonetic matching reduces misses
💡
Scale to massive libraries without extra cost
💻
Runs on everything from desktop/web to embedded systems

👤 Who this is for

Role
Benefit for you
Media Platform Engineers
Add search without burden of full transcription
Legal and Compliance Teams
Find evidence in calls or recordings—fast
Educational/Archive Managers
Surface key quotes from lectures or interviews
Podcast & Video Platforms
Enable discovery by spoken content, not just titles
Developers of Field Tools
Build searchable media apps—online or offline

Use Case Scenarios

📚

Search Within Podcast Libraries

Listeners want to find clips with a specific quote or topic—without manually transcribing.

  • Find 'may the force be with you' in recent episodes.
  • Engine returns timestamps & clips instantly—no cloud needed.
📂

Enterprise Call Archives

Compliance teams reviewing thousands of calls need to find mentions like "insider" or "confidential."

  • Find 'confidential' in July calls.
  • confidential: 07:12-07-25
  • Phonetic search surfaces precise audio segments in seconds—locally.
🛠

Lecture & Audio Archive Discovery

Educational repositories want to let users search by phrase within audio/video.

  • Explain 'quantum entanglement'
  • quantum entanglement is a phenomenon...
  • Relevant lecture minutes are matched and highlighted—on-device.
🚀

Key benefits

  • Lightning-fast indexing and search—no delays
  • Full control over content—nothing leaves the device
  • Better accuracy for spoken words—less misinterpretation from Speech-to-Text
  • Infinite scale—search across libraries of any size
  • Ultra-efficient performance—runs on browsers, servers, embedded systems
  • Predictable licensing—no cloud or per-query search fees after indexing

Why Picovoice On-device Voice AI for Audio Search?

Feature
Cloud Voice AI Platform APIs
Picovoice On-device Voice AI Platform
Search Latency
❌ Slower, with cloud latency
✅ Sub-second
Privacy
❌ Requires uploading content
✅ Fully local
Phonetic Accuracy
⚠️ Speech-to-Text misspells may miss terms
✅ Handles names, jargon
Scaling Costs
❌ Billed per transcription/search
✅ Fixed index fee
Platform Flexibility
⚠️ Often limited
✅ Web, server, embedded
🔎

Build an audio search engine with experts

Whether you have a massive library of call center recordings, podcasts, movies, tv shows, or lecture videos, make them searchable in seconds!
Consult an Expert

Frequently asked questions

Is this faster or cheaper than full transcription?

Yes. Unlike traditional cloud speech-to-text APIs, on-device Speech-to-Index generates compact phonetic indexes that allow near-instant search without converting entire audio streams to text. This also cuts costs by eliminating the need for cloud compute or playback processing. It's an efficient alternative for large-scale, searchable audio archives.

Does it miss words due to phonetics?

In many cases, Speech-to-Index performs better than traditional Speech-to-Text engines—especially for slang, proper nouns, and regional accents. Phoneme-based matching helps surface terms that might otherwise be missed due to spelling variations or pronunciation differences.

Can I search large media libraries?

Yes. The system is designed to scale efficiently—whether you're indexing a few hours of audio or entire call archives. Index once and enable fast, local queries across massive media libraries.

Will I need cloud or special hardware?

No. One of the key benefits of Picovoice's Speech-to-Index is that it operates entirely on-device or on standard infrastructure. You can run it directly in web browsers, desktop environments, or on lightweight servers—no GPU, no cloud costs, and no data privacy risks associated with third-party hosting.

How can I get access to Picovoice Speech-to-Index?

Picovoice Speech-to-Index is currently in beta and available exclusively to Enterprise Plan customers. If you're already a Picovoice customer, please contact your Picovoice representative. If you're interested in becoming a customer, get in touch with us to learn more.