Search FAQs

Wrap the phrase in double quotes, for example "gravitational waves". Filmot then looks for those words as an exact, ordered phrase or quoted phrase, instead of matching each word separately. Without quotes, gravitational waves only requires both words to appear somewhere in the transcript. More examples: "general relativity", "polymerase chain reaction" and "standard model of particle physics". To accept alternatives, combine phrases with |, for example "dark matter" | "dark energy".

If the words only need to be close to each other, use a proximity search such as "vaccine efficacy"~5. Put a quoted phrase directly followed by ~ and a number: it finds the words in any order, with up to that many words in between.

Yes. A phrase can match across adjacent subtitle lines within the same indexed caption track. It does not have to fit inside a single subtitle line or caption segment, because Filmot indexes each track as continuous text rather than as isolated cues.

For example, if one caption ends with “a different” and the next begins with “point of view,” searching "a different point of view" can still find the phrase. The line break between captions does not require a special operator or a wildcard.

The words must still satisfy your query. Extra words, different spellings or transcription errors can prevent an exact quoted phrase from matching. If the wording is uncertain, try a shorter phrase or a proximity expression such as "different point view"~5, which allows a few words in between and ignores order.

This matching works within one caption track. It does not stitch together text from different videos or combine the wording of an English track with a separate translated track. Open the result and read or play the surrounding captions to confirm the complete sentence.

Filmot can help you look for an unknown song when you remember some of the lyrics and those words appear in indexed YouTube captions. It does not identify music from a recording, melody or humming, and there is no audio-upload or sound-matching search. Finding a song through Filmot is a text search for captioned lyrics, not acoustic fingerprinting.

Start with a distinctive line in double quotes, then try Search Automatic Subtitles and Search Manual Subtitles separately. If you are unsure of the exact wording, search a shorter fragment or join plausible alternatives with |. Music, background noise and singing can make automatic captions inaccurate, so the indexed text may differ from the lyrics you hear.

A lyric video that shows the words on screen may still have no searchable caption track, and a music video may have captions disabled or may simply not have been collected yet. If you know an artist, band or possible song title, try Metadata search as well.

Listen to each candidate to confirm the song. A result could be a cover, a reaction, a discussion or someone quoting the same line. An absence of matches does not prove that the song has never been uploaded to YouTube.

Filmot supports keyword, Boolean, phrase and proximity operators in subtitle search and title expressions. Click the ? icon beside the search box to open the Search Syntax Cheat Sheet.

• Spaces: require all terms, though they need not be adjacent. Example: CRISPR gene editing. Do not type AND; it is treated as an ordinary search word.
• OR, written as |: match alternatives, such as "dark matter" | "dark energy".
• Double quotes: match an exact ordered phrase, such as "gravitational waves".
• Parentheses: group conditions, such as "stem cells" (therapy | treatment) or (CRISPR | "gene editing") ("sickle cell" | "cystic fibrosis").
• "w1 w2"~N: match words near each other in any order, such as "vaccine efficacy"~5.
• NEAR/N: match nearby terms, phrases or groups, such as "black hole" NEAR/10 "event horizon".
• NOTNEAR/N: match the first term without the second nearby, such as radiation NOTNEAR/100 microwave. The maximum distance is 500.
• * inside a quoted phrase: stand for exactly one word, such as "basic * spectroscopy".
• -word: exclude every video containing that word, such as quantum -computing. A query containing only excluded terms is invalid.
• Caption placeholders: search #FUCK# for censored words, or sound labels such as #Laughter#, #Music# and #Applause#.

The same operators work in the Video Title field under subtitle-search filters and in the title box on Metadata search.

Filmot supports non-Latin scripts. For Japanese, Chinese, Thai and other text indexed without spaces between words, put the word or expression in double quotation marks.

These scripts are indexed character by character. Without quotes, each character becomes a separate search term, so a video can match when the characters appear anywhere in its transcript, in a different order or far apart. With quotes, Filmot requires the exact sequence of characters.

For example, search "日本語" rather than 日本語, or "ภาษาไทย" rather than ภาษาไทย. To accept several expressions, quote each one and join them with OR: "東京" | "大阪".

Some channels only provide manually uploaded subtitles. If automatic subtitle search returns no results, try Search Manual Subtitles and inspect the video's AutoSubs and ManualSubs columns in Metadata search. In manual search, setting Attempt Match to Video Language to No can reveal tracks excluded because Filmot cannot determine which language matches the audio.