Other interesting features are that we can use keywords based on search results for those keywords, with the aim of searching the files with greater precision. It will also allow us to search for related files very similar to the one found, in case it is related and you are interested in having a more global vision of what you have.
In case you are a photography professional, thanks to the OCR technology using AI, Qsirch not only recognizes text in images for searching, but also detects and captures text in images for later use. This tool also integrates the QuMagie Core AI engine, with the aim of identifying objects in photos for image search, for example, we can perform searches related to food, plants, animals, buildings, etc. Of course, we can also search by the color of the photo, if we remember that a photo had a lot of green, we can apply this filter and we will get all the photos that are green. If the photograph in question has GPS metadata, we can also perform searches based on this information. Finally, we could also search by people, to apply this filter and have all the photos of said people appear.
If you usually use photos to take notes, thanks to Qsirch you can recognize and capture text from photos to increase data availability. This powerful tool allows us to detect business cards, identification, passports, license plates, handwritten text such as medical records or work notes, paper publications, packages, printed documents, presentations and much more.
Hardware acceleration and availability
Depending on the NAS server we use, we will have hardware acceleration for faster recognition with OCR, thanks to this acceleration we will have clearly superior performance, reaching up to 2.6 times faster with OpenVINO and 1.2 times faster if your NAS incorporates a NPU.
Qsirch is available for both QNAP NAS and searches from the operating system itself, as well as through the Qsirch Mobile application for Android and iOS:
We also have the possibility of using an extension for Chrome and Firefox browsers, to facilitate the search for files on the NAS:
Finally, we also have the version of Qsirch PC Edition, which will not only allow us to search for files on the NAS server, but also on the local PC, to take advantage of all the power of this tool on our computer with the Windows operating system. It is recommended to have a version of Windows 10 version 2004 or later for correct operation.
Price
Qsirch has two clearly differentiated versions, a version called “Lite” that is completely free, and another “Premium” version that is paid under subscription. We can purchase this license directly from the QNAP manufacturer’s license store. The difference between both versions is:
- Lite:
- Full text search in documents.
- Include and exclude filters.
- Advanced image search, we can search by color, object, map or OCR text in images.
- Premium:
- All the features of the “Lite” version.
- Search for people with images.
- Ability to organize search results with Qfiling.
- It’s free until December 31, 2023.
Now that you know the main features of this powerful search tool on the NAS server, we are going to explain how to install it and perform some searches.
Installation and commissioning
Qsirch is compatible with any NAS server from the QNAP manufacturer, you only need to have the latest versions of QTS or QuTS hero installed. The first thing we must do is go to the App Center section and proceed to install the program.
If we search for “Qsirch” directly in the “magnifying glass” at the top right, it will appear and we click on “Install.”
It is necessary to install a dependent application which is Multimedia Console, if we click on “Accept” the two programs will be installed simultaneously.
QNAP allows us to choose which storage set to install the applications on, it is recommended that we always install all applications on SSD or NVMe storage in order to have the best possible performance. In this case, we are going to install it in storage set 1, which corresponds to both the system applications, virtual machines, Docker as well as the rest of the applications that we have on the computer.
As soon as we open Qsirch we can see the privacy clause, we have the possibility of joining its user experience program or not. Once the option has been chosen, click on “Accept”. In the next menu it will ask us if we want to create different indexes so that the searches are perfect. It is advisable to install the QNAP AI Core application if we also want to create an index of objects. We have selected the three options, and the detection of the Spanish language in the section to create text index with OCR technology.
In the Qsirch assistant it will show us all the search options that we will be able to carry out with this very powerful program, and we will be able to carry out very advanced searches, we can also customize filters to improve the effectiveness of the searches, see previews , create an advanced image index and much more.
When we finish the wizard, QNAP will inform us that we have the possibility of trying text detection using OCR with AI.
It will also inform us about the Qsirch license that we have available, the Lite version is completely free but we have the Premium version free until December 31, 2023, so we can take advantage of its features for several months. If we click on “Go premium” a pop-up window will appear to buy the free license, we will have to log in with our QNAP account, once we have done so, it will inform us that the license is already activated on our NAS.
Now we are ready to perform searches, but first the program must index each and every one of the files we have on the NAS. This can take several hours, it all depends on the number of files you have on your NAS server.
At the top right you can see that there is a background task with indexing in progress.
Once it has finished indexing the recently modified files, it will begin advanced indexing which can take up to several hours, so be patient until Qsirch is completely ready.
Once the indexing has finished, we can start searching throughout our NAS server, and also in a fairly advanced way thanks to the filters we have available.
How Qsirch works
In the main menu of Qsirch we can search for any type of file, but also for specific files such as images, videos, music, documents, PDF, email, Office documents in general, and more specifically Word documents , Excel and PowerPoint.
Before performing any search, we must ensure that the indexing has been completed, otherwise it will not show us all the matching results because they are missing important information.
If we proceed to search by file name, or that you are looking for something specific, we will get all the matches. For example, if we put “NAS” or “server” it will take all the photos related to it, even if the file name does not have this word. The same thing happens with “Ferrari”, it is able to detect cars of this brand without any problem, the truth is that it only shows these cars and not others from other brands such as Lamborghini.
If we click on the «File distribution» We can see the types of files we have, as well as the modification date, which are the 10 files with the highest storage usage, the total files as well as the total file size we have.
In the Map Search section, Qsirch is able to detect the metadata of the photos and locate the different photos in different places in the world, and also in Spain. As you can see, we have visited all these places and taken photos in them. Although we must also indicate that not all the photos appear in all places, for example, we have been to cities like Burgos, León or Barcelona, but it does not show them to us.
If you are going to use the people search with images, you should know that it is one of the options in the “Premium” version of this tool. For this to work, it is completely necessary that we have QNAP AI Core installed.
If we install this program, we can upload a photo of ourselves, select our face and it will automatically search for the rest of the photos that have that same face. Before you can do this, you need to configure the Multimedia Console to index all of your photos and analyze the faces, otherwise it won’t work. Even if your NAS server does not have a dedicated GPU, TPU, NPU, Hailo-8 that supports facial recognition, you will still be able to use it, although this indexing will take much longer. The process is as simple as uploading a photograph of ourselves, it will automatically recognize the faces there are, we click on the face we want it to search for and in a few seconds we will have the entire list of photographs with our face.
Something that has pleasantly surprised us is that it is capable of detecting our face even if the resolution of the photo is not too high. In addition, it is also capable of recognizing us when we have glasses on and even when the photograph does not have good light. The truth is that it is impressive how well this feature works.
On the official QNAP Spain channel you have a complete video of how this powerful tool works, we recommend you take a look at it to learn more about this powerful tool.
Remember that we have the premium version of Qsirch completely free until December 31, 2023, so you can take advantage of this opportunity to test all the features and find out if it is really useful for you.
Conclusions
Qsirch has pleasantly surprised us when it comes to performing very advanced searches, it will not only look at the name of the files but also at the content of said files, whether they are images, documents or any other aspect, such as the metadata of the photographs themselves to locate them on a map thanks to GPS positioning. This tool will allow us to search in an advanced way on our NAS, and not only that, but it will also suggest other files related to the one we are looking for, just in case we are also interested.
The main virtue of this powerful tool is its simplicity. When we use Google, we simply want to search for something and it will immediately return results. This is precisely what Qsirch does, after a long indexing of each and every one of the NAS files, it will be prepared to perform really fast searches, and it only takes a couple of seconds to return everything it has found, perfect to be fast when we perform dozens of searches.
Another very notable aspect is that it will provide us with a global view of the files we have on the NAS, and, in addition, it also allows us to search for people through facial recognition based on AI, as long as you have the software (QNAP AI Core) installed, and also that your NAS server has this functionality to accelerate image processing with AI.
