How they compare
| Feature | Air | Aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Stream and mount into your NLE | No, Air is browser-only so editors download media before they can cut it. | Yes, Aspect mounts your project as a drive and streams media into your NLE so your editors can work with large files without downloading them. |
| Premiere Pro panel | No, Air has no editor panel because review and editing live in separate tools. | Yes, Aspect puts comments, versions, and assets in a Premiere Pro panel right inside your timeline. |
| AI transcription (160+ languages) | No, Air's AI is tuned to visual tagging rather than spoken-word transcription. | Yes, Aspect transcribes automatically in 160+ languages so you can find the moment someone said a line. |
| Facial recognition | No, Air recognizes what is in an image but does not identify specific people. | Yes, Aspect adds facial recognition so you can find a specific person, not just clips containing someone. |
| Downloads preserve your folder structure | No, Air downloads arrive as unpacked folders that ignore the hierarchy you built. | Yes, Aspect keeps your exact folder structure on every download so disk mirrors the platform. |
| AI visual search and tagging | Yes, Air is strong at visual tagging and recognizing what is in an image or clip. | Yes, Aspect includes visual tagging and plain-language search alongside its deeper media AI. |
What is Air?
Air is a browser-based digital asset management and creative-operations platform. It is built for marketing and creative teams to gather assets from across the organization, organize them into boards, add visual AI tags, and share them out with on-brand links. Air has become popular precisely because getting assets in, sorted, and back out to a client or stakeholder feels effortless. Where it stops is production. Air manages finished and in-progress creative in a browser, but it is not a place editors work off of, and its media intelligence is oriented toward images and light video rather than the full demands of a post pipeline.How Aspect is different
Editors work off the media, not a download of it
This is the core difference. Air is browser-only, so when an editor needs to cut something, the workflow is find it in Air, download it, then work locally, and any changes have to be pushed back up by hand. Aspect mounts your project as a drive and streams bytes on demand into Finder and your NLE with intelligent prefetching, so editors open a project and start cutting off the actual media without pulling terabytes down first. The review library and the edit library are the same thing, instead of two systems you shuttle files between.Downloads keep your real folder structure
Download from Air and you get unpacked folders that do not follow the hierarchy you built in your filespace, so what ends on disk has to be reorganized by hand before anyone can use it. Aspect preserves your exact structure on every download, so the folders on disk mirror what you see in the platform.Built for heavy video, not just creative ops
Air shines at gathering and sharing creative, but a real post workflow needs more than boards and links. Aspect handles the full lifecycle of your large video: streamed editorial, proxies and previews generated for you, version stacking for videos, and delivery, all in one platform rather than a collaboration layer that hands off to other tools once the work gets heavy.AI that goes past visual tags
Air's AI is strong at visual tagging, recognizing what is in an image or clip. Aspect goes deeper into what media teams actually search for: automatic transcription in 160+ languages, facial recognition, prompt-driven auto-metadata, and custom object detection alongside plain-language search. You can find the moment someone said a specific line, not just clips that contain a person.Editors never leave their tools
Because Air is browser-only, review and organization happen in one place and editing happens somewhere else entirely. Aspect keeps both together with a Premiere Pro panel and a mounted drive, so comments, versions, and assets are right there in your timeline instead of a separate tab.Switching from Air?
Your assets and structure come across cleanly, and we will help your team move without disrupting active projects. Book a demo
When to choose Air
- Your team is marketing or creative ops, and the job is gathering, organizing, and sharing mostly images and finished assets rather than editing raw video.
- You want a fast, good-looking browser DAM for stakeholders and clients, and you already have a separate editorial and storage setup you are happy with.
When to choose Aspect
- Editors need to work directly off cloud media in their NLE, not download every asset out of a browser first.
- Heavy video is central to your work, and you want streamed storage, review, versioning, and delivery in one platform instead of Air plus a stack of production tools.
- You need media AI that goes beyond visual tags, with transcription and facial recognition, and downloads that keep your folder structure intact.
FAQ
Yes. Aspect mounts projects and streams bytes on demand into Finder and your NLE with prefetching, so editors work off the media itself. Air is browser-only, so editors download assets before they can edit and push changes back up manually.
Downloading from Air gives you unpacked folders that do not follow the hierarchy in your filespace. Aspect preserves your exact structure on every download, so what ends up on disk mirrors what you see in the platform.
Yes. Beyond visual tagging and plain-language search, Aspect adds automatic transcription in 160+ languages, facial recognition, prompt-driven auto-metadata, and custom object detection, so you can find a spoken line or a specific person, not just clips that contain an object.
Yes. Aspect handles the full lifecycle of large video with streamed editorial, proxies and previews, version stacking, review, and delivery in one platform, where Air focuses on gathering and sharing creative assets in the browser.
Our team handles the migration with you, moving your assets and structure over without interrupting active work.
