Find and Name Characters

Find Characters identifies people in video and builds a cast that Solar Sailer can recognize in later footage. You review uncertain matches, name new people, and correct mistakes in the Characters panel.

Before you run it

Save the project first. Find Characters needs an imported video whose source file is available, plus a Google Gemini or Anthropic API key under Edit > Preferences… > API Keys.

Your original video stays on your drive. Solar Sailer sends cropped images of faces to Google Gemini, or to Anthropic when it uses that provider as a fallback. The request uses your API account, and that provider's terms and retention rules apply. See the privacy policy for the full list of data sent by AI features.

The cast is shared across Solar Sailer projects and stored outside each project. Once you name someone, future projects can recognize them. Run results for individual files stay with the saved project. Renaming, merging, or deleting a character changes the shared cast, not only the project you have open.

Run Find Characters

1. Open the Process menu and click Find Characters…. You can also right-click files in the media bin.
2. Check the video files you want to analyze. Face-camera files appear first and start checked. Files covered by an earlier run start unchecked and show Already analyzed. Check one if you want to run it again.
3. Choose how much footage to inspect. Sample every (seconds) accepts 1 to 30 seconds and starts at 5. A smaller interval checks more frames but takes longer. Only analyze timeline content skips source footage that no timeline clip uses, with two seconds of padding around each used section.
4. Click Find Characters.

For canceling a run or handling a failure, see Run an AI Tool.

You don't need to run Face Tracking first. You can run the tools in either order, and Solar Sailer links their results. A batch run runs Face Tracking first.

Leave Advanced at its defaults unless the same person keeps being split apart or different people keep being grouped together. These controls trade fewer missed matches for a greater chance of a wrong match.

Find Characters samples the footage, so it can miss someone who appears only between samples or whose face is small, blurred, covered, or turned away. Finding no faces is normal in screen recordings, slides, and similar footage.

Review and name people

1. Open View > Characters.
2. Select Run Results and find the file you ran.
3. For a suggested match, click Yes, it's [name] when the guess is right. Click Someone else… to choose another person from your cast or add a new one.
4. For an unnamed person, click Name this person…. Choose an existing character when it is someone already in your cast. Otherwise, enter a name and click Add person.
5. Click Ignore for a passer-by, reflection, poster, or other face you don't want in the cast. You can restore an ignored person later from Ignored as noise.

Naming a person adds their face photos to the cast. Approved characters can also learn useful new photos when later runs recognize them. That usually improves recognition across different angles and lighting.

Correct the cast

Open the Characters tab and select a person.

• Use Rename… when the identity is right but the name is wrong.
• Use Merge… when one person has two character entries. Choose the duplicate as the source. Its photos move to the character you keep, the duplicate is removed, and existing references resolve to the merged character.
• Use Delete only when the entire character should go. It removes the character and all their photos from the shared cast and cannot be undone.
• Use Approve on a draft once you are sure who it is. Drafts don't learn photos automatically and can't receive a merge.

tip

If the AI split one person into two characters, merge the duplicate into the entry with the name you want to keep.

Correct the photos

A character's photos teach future runs whom to match. Use the controls on a photo according to the mistake you are fixing:

• Keep protects a good reference photo from automatic removal.
• That's not [name] moves a wrong face to Not this person. Future runs use it to reject similar wrong matches. Restore it if you made a mistake.
• Remove photo forgets that photo without teaching a rejection. You can undo the removal briefly.

A character must keep at least one photo, so you can't remove or reject the last one. Deleting an item from Not this person is permanent and may let future runs match that face again.

Run it again

Rerunning a file checks it against the current shared cast. It can add better photos to approved characters and update recognition data used alongside Face Tracking.

A rerun replaces the file's previous Run Results groups and clears the naming and ignore decisions attached to those old groups. Characters and photos already added to the shared cast remain there. Review the new results again after the run.

Named character data helps future Find Characters runs recognize people automatically. When Face Tracking has also covered the footage, tools such as Delete Non-looking can present those tracked people by name.