Find the Original Video Behind Any Repost
To find the original video, match frames from the repost against the web and sort the matching pages by upload date. The oldest dated copy is usually the original or the closest copy to it. Deep Search does the matching and the dating for up to 20 frames at once.
Example clip · 6 seconds · 10 frames, 9 kept
How the earliest upload is dated
| Platform | Where the date comes from | Reliability |
|---|---|---|
| TikTok | The video ID encodes the post time | Exact to the second |
| X (Twitter) | The post ID encodes the post time | Exact to the millisecond |
| YouTube | Official YouTube Data API publish date | Exact |
| Other sites | Not dated | Listed, compare manually |
We don’t guess dates from page text. A page without a verifiable date is still listed, and you can open it to check.
Original vs earliest copy
Clips are cropped, mirrored, sped up and re-captioned as they spread. Frame matching still finds most of these copies because the scene itself is unchanged. The earliest dated match is the best lead to the creator, but private accounts, deleted posts and pages outside the index cannot be seen by any search tool.
Look for clues in the oldest match: an account that posts similar footage, a longer version of the clip, or a description that names the place and date. Those are stronger signals than the upload date alone.
Steps
- Upload the repost or drop a screenshot of it.
- Select frames from different moments, especially ones with text, faces or landmarks.
- Run Deep Search and open the match marked “Earliest dated upload”.
- Confirm on the account: other posts, the full-length video, the caption.
How reposts change a clip
A clip rarely travels unchanged. Reposters crop it to a vertical frame, add borders or captions, mirror it to dodge duplicate filters, speed it up, or cut it into a compilation. Each edit changes how well a single frame matches.
Cropping and captions usually leave the middle of the picture intact, so full or partial matches still come back. Mirroring flips every frame and can hide a copy from image search; if you suspect it, flip a screenshot and search that as well. Compilations show only a few seconds of your clip, so they match fewer of your frames and sit lower in the list.
Working back to the first upload
- Start from the page that matches the most frames: it usually hosts the full clip rather than a cut.
- Open the earliest dated match and read its caption. Many reposts credit the account they took it from.
- Follow that credit to the account and look for a longer version or other clips filmed in the same place.
- Stop when an account posts the clip with no credit and has related footage. That is the strongest lead you can get from public pages.
Questions
How many frames should I search? Ten to twenty frames from across the clip give the most reliable results. Quick Search uses 3 frames; Deep Search uses up to 20.
Can it find a cropped or mirrored copy? Often, yes. Cropped copies show up as partial matches. Heavily mirrored, filtered or re-edited clips match less reliably, so search frames that are least changed.
What does it cost? One Quick Search a day is included after Google sign-in. Deep Search is $9.99 for 15 searches or $24.99 for 50. Credits do not expire.
Can it find a video that has been deleted? Not the deleted post itself. Copies that other people posted elsewhere can still be found, and one of them may credit the original account.
What should I do once I find the original? Credit the creator by name and link when you share the clip, and ask them before reusing it. If someone is reposting your own video without permission, platforms and search engines accept DMCA requests; see our DMCA page for how notices work.