- SauceMatch
- How it works
How our reverse video search works
What happens to your file, how the frames are chosen, why a Match is proof and a Similar result is not, and what is in the index.
Why Google and TinEye miss adult clips
Google Lens and Google Images filter explicit results, and general reverse image engines index the open web: pages and the pictures on them. The frames of a video are not on a page. What tube sites do publish are preview stills: the thumbnails in their listings and the frames that play when you hover a video. This index is built from those previews, 1,034,300 of them from 160,570 videos, so it can find the video a still came from.
1. Your file, on your device
Your file never leaves your device: the frames are chosen and fingerprinted in your browser, and only the fingerprints are sent. For a video, the page:
- Scans it at the preview positions. Sites cut their previews at even points of the whole video: 16 steps (Pornhub, Tube8, RedTube), 17 (YouPorn), 15 (Eporner), 9 (XVideos, XNXX), 20 or 60 elsewhere. The scan visits the same kinds of points, centre and start of each step, plus an even sweep in between: up to 160 positions, whatever the length.
- Looks at each position. Brightness, contrast and sharpness are measured on a small copy. Black frames, fades and motion blur are dropped; near-duplicates are merged.
- Crops what is not the video. Black bars and the blurred copy that phone apps put around a horizontal video are found across many frames and cut away.
- Keeps the best 48. At least one per stretch of the timeline, then the sharpest and most distinct, with a bonus for the preview positions.
A GIF is decoded frame by frame and treated the same way; a picture is searched as it is. A video your browser cannot play (some MKV, AVI or HEVC files) cannot be searched here: convert it to MP4, or search with a screenshot from it.
2. The search
In your browser, each frame becomes a 512-number fingerprint from a copy-detection network (SSCD), trained to give the same fingerprint to a picture and its edited copies: crops, scaling, colour shifts, text overlays, recompression. The page downloads the network once (your browser keeps it for the next visit). Only the fingerprints are sent to the index, which answers with the nearest stored frames and the videos they come from; the fingerprints are not stored. Frames that appear in more than five videos (logos, intros, placeholders) are ignored.
3. The proof
Fingerprints find lookalikes; they cannot prove identity. The same room filmed on another day, or the same performer in a similar pose, can look close. So every promising candidate is checked geometrically, again in your browser: its stored picture is downloaded, keypoints are found in both frames and paired, and the pairs must agree on one transform (a homography) that maps your frame onto the indexed one. Only then is it a Match, with a confidence from 0 to 100.
The gates were calibrated on held-out tests: re-uploads that were really the same video never scored below 28 agreeing keypoints, while the same set in a different video stayed below the gates. A video that does not pass but stands out from the rest of the index across the scenes of your clip is listed as Similar: a lead worth a look, unverified, never shown as an answer. A picture that several indexed videos share, such as a studio's intro or outro card, is listed separately: it usually says who made the clip, not which video it is, so it does not count towards Similar.
4. A closer look when it is close
When a video comes up as Similar, the page samples your clip again a few seconds either side of the moment that found it and searches those frames (never around a shared intro or outro picture): the index holds only a few stills per video (about 20 at most), and the exact one may sit between two of the first pass. When nothing matches at all, the best frames are also searched mirrored, since reposts are often flipped.
What is in the index
1,034,300 frames from 160,570 videos, collected from public preview images and growing every hour. The search index is rebuilt every 30 minutes.
- xmegadrive.com
- eporner.com
- redtube.com
- xnxx.com
- porntn.com
- tube8.com
- xvideos.com
- pornhub.com
- youporn.com
- thisvid.com
- reddit.com
- pmvhaven.com
- femdomhd.org
The same search runs behind every page of this site, whichever way you start it: a reverse video search with a clip, a reverse image search with a screenshot, or a reverse GIF search.
Anything can be removed on request: see removal requests.