Orcah Studio vs Google Cloud Video Intelligence
Building blocks by the minute, or a finished app.
Google's Video Intelligence API is infrastructure: excellent primitives for engineering orgs. But primitives aren't a product. Every feature bills separately, per minute, and your footage has to be sent to Google's servers to be analyzed.
100 hours of footage, analyzed once
Side by side
| Feature | Google Cloud Video Intelligence | Orcah Studio |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Google Cloud Video IntelligenceA set of pay-per-minute analysis APIs: labels, objects, text, faces, transcription. | Orcah StudioA Desktop app for editors that finds moments in your footage. |
| 100 hours, analyzed | Google Cloud Video IntelligenceAbout $0.65 per minute across the features that matter for search, or $3,240 after the free monthly quota. Each extra hour is about $39. | Orcah Studio$249 once. Unlimited footage. |
| Where footage lives | Google Cloud Video IntelligenceSent to Google for analysis, either from a Cloud Storage bucket or inline in the request. Never analyzed on your machine. | Orcah StudioStays on your computer. Nothing uploaded, ever. |
| Faces | Google Cloud Video IntelligenceFace, person and celebrity detection, each billed separately at $0.10 per minute. | Orcah StudioFaces auto-grouped per person, labeled on-device. |
| Camera + GPS metadata | Google Cloud Video IntelligenceNot in the API's feature list: no lens, ISO, shutter or GPS fields. | Orcah StudioFull MXF acquisition record and GoPro GPS, searchable. |
| Timeline export | Google Cloud Video IntelligenceRaw annotations for your engineers to build on. | Orcah StudioOne click into Resolve, Final Cut or Premiere Pro. |
| Skill required | Google Cloud Video IntelligenceA GCP account, buckets, API wiring, and per-minute budgeting. | Orcah StudioPoint it at a folder. |
| Who it's for | Google Cloud Video IntelligenceMedia platforms and compliance teams processing at scale. | Orcah StudioSolo editors and small teams cutting their own footage. |
The cost math
Google prices each feature separately, per minute of video. For a search-ready index of your footage you need six of them. Shot detection is free when it runs alongside label detection.
| Label detection | $0.10 |
|---|---|
| Object tracking | $0.15 |
| Text detection | $0.15 |
| Face detection | $0.10 |
| Person detection | $0.10 |
| Speech transcription | $0.048 |
| Shot detectionNormally $0.05, free with label detection | $0.00 |
| Per minute of footage | $0.648 |
100 hours is 6,000 minutes. Each feature includes 1,000 free minutes per month, which leaves 5,000 billable minutes per feature: 5,000 × $0.648 = $3,240. Without the free quota it would be $3,888. Every additional hour costs about $39.
That excludes celebrity, logo and explicit-content detection, plus the Cloud Storage costs of holding your footage. Orcah Studio is $249 in the public beta, footage volume irrelevant.
When Google wins
Google has the engineers and GPU capacity to run video understanding at platform scale. Moderation pipelines, compliance systems, and custom AutoML models are their territory — Orcah Studio doesn't compete there.
This page is for working editors who want a finished app, not an API, priced as one.