ai-medialens

# AI-MediaLens - Media analysis for AI agents via OpenRouter

Fills the gap of what Cline can't read: video, audio, and PDF files. Sends files directly to the OpenRouter API, which routes them to multimodal models (and parses PDFs for any model).

Works as an MCP server for Cline, a standalone CLI, and an importable Python module - all from one file.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/Alihkhawaher/ai-medialens.git
cd ai-medialens
pip install mcp          # only needed for MCP mode
python openrouter_media.py setup    # configure API key + register in Cline

setup interactively:

1. Saves your OpenRouter key to .env

2. Registers the ai-medialens MCP server into Cline's global config

Related MCP server: openmedia-mcp

Supported inputs (auto-detected by extension)

Usage

CLI

# Full file
python openrouter_media.py video.mp4 -p "Transcribe all spoken Arabic word-for-word"

# Only seconds 5-20 (trimmed locally; ffmpeg auto-downloaded on first use)
python openrouter_media.py video.mp4 -p "What happens here?" --start 5 --end 20

# Different model / explicit key
python openrouter_media.py doc.pdf -p "Summarize" -m z-ai/glm-5.3-flash -k sk-or-v1-...

# Scanned PDF -> real OCR (billed per page by OpenRouter)
python openrouter_media.py scan.pdf -p "Extract all text" --pdf-engine mistral-ocr

# Speech-to-text (works on video files too - audio track extracted locally)
python openrouter_media.py lecture.mp4 --stt --language ar

# SRT subtitles with timestamps
python openrouter_media.py lecture.mp4 --stt --srt > lecture.srt

# Find models that accept video input, with prices
python openrouter_media.py --list-models video

# Preview request shape without sending (no API cost)
python openrouter_media.py video.mp4 -p "test" --dry-run

MCP (from Cline)

Cline calls the tools natively:

use_mcp_tool: server=ai-medialens, tool=analyze_media
arguments: { "path": "...", "prompt": "...", "start": "5", "end": "20" }

use_mcp_tool: server=ai-medialens, tool=transcribe_audio
arguments: { "path": "...", "language": "ar", "srt": false }

As a Python module

from openrouter_media import analyze
text = analyze("video.mp4", "Transcribe all speech.")
resp = analyze("doc.pdf", "Summarize.", raw=True)

API key resolution order

1. -k/--key flag

2. OR_KEY environment variable

3. OPENROUTER_API_KEY environment variable

4. .env file next to the script (see .env.example)

ffmpeg & time-range trimming

--start/--end trim the media locally before upload (OpenRouter has no native range parameter). ffmpeg is resolved in this order:

1. Bundled bin\ffmpeg.exe (if you placed one there)

2. Cached copy at %LOCALAPPDATA%\ai-medialens\bin\ffmpeg.exe

3. ffmpeg on PATH

4. Auto-download (~80 MB static build, one time, Windows)

Note: trimming uses -c copy (fast, but cuts at keyframes; exact cuts would require re-encoding).

Models

Default: qwen/qwen3.7-flash ($0.03/M in, $0.13/M out) — currently the cheapest OpenRouter model with full video input support.

Other good video-capable options (verify current prices via --list-models video):

Any OpenRouter model slug works via -m / model= — including newer releases as they appear.

PDF parsing engines

PDFs are parsed either locally or server-side by OpenRouter:

local is recommended: it never hits OpenRouter's parser rate limits and handles both digital and scanned PDFs at zero extra cost.

Speech-to-text (STT)

Uses OpenRouter's dedicated /audio/transcriptions endpoint (Whisper-class models). Default model: openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo. Other options: openai/gpt-4o-transcribe, openai/gpt-4o-mini-transcribe, microsoft/mai-transcribe-1.5, openai/whisper-large-v3.

Pipeline hardening (lessons from a production YouTube→subtitles system):

• Any audio/video input → ffmpeg converts to Opus 32kbps/16kHz/mono (8× smaller than WAV, accepted by all providers); video tracks stripped

• Long media auto-split into 6-minute chunks (OpenRouter has a ~60s upstream timeout per request)

• Each chunk re-muxed to add the missing Ogg EOS page (ffmpeg's segment muxer omits it; OpenRouter's parser rejects streams without it)

• --srt returns timestamped SRT subtitles via verbose_json segments, correctly offset across chunks

• Note: whisper-large-v3 produces garbled output on sped-up audio; mai-transcribe-1.5 tolerates it

Notes

• Large files are base64-encoded in-memory - very large videos may hit provider upload limits.

• Secrets are safe: .env is gitignored and never committed.