Let's dissect this into 2 parts - "Video" and "Search Engine".
Starting with "Search Engine" first. We are so used to using search engines today that we do not really bother with how a search engine really works. And perhaps you shouldn't... why should you as long as the results are good. We normally start questioning (or complain) when the results are not what we expect it to be.
So a good search engine should do a couple of things. It should (let's get a bit technical) have:
- A good Indexing engine
- Phrase matching
- Smart Search result Summary
- Keyword highlighting
- Stemming/Lemmas (Word form variations are searched and ranked lower)
- Complex expression support; nested groups, partial matching, NOT, OR and AND
- Multiple Format indexing
- Unicode and non English language support
It all the above these parameters are measurable, you will be able to figure out if one engine is better than another.
So the format that we want to search is "Video". Today, typical search engines can only search "Title" and "Metadata". Even if both "title" and "metadata" are well defined and representative of the video itself, what is missing is the content. Imagine you have a thousand page document and you can only search the document title and it's summary. That's the current state of affairs for video search.
So of course the next question is what do you want to search from a "Video"? That's like opening Paradox's Box. Unlike a piece of document, video is multi-dimensional and contains a lot more information. For example, speech, words, people, objects, movement, colours, etc.
Currently, many of these search technologies still do not exist or are barely in their infancy. What is available now, is just scratching the tip of the iceberg. Therefore, the real definition of what is a video search engine is currently evolving.
At VideoSpace, we would like to define our version of VIdeo Search Engine. Where our VIdeo Search Engine is able to search six key areas:
- Speech Recognition
- Words (or Text)
- Motion Detection
- Facial Detection
- Emotion Detection
- Offensive Content Detection
Numbers reports say the same thing. By 2017, videos will account for more than 70% of all internet traffic. Imagine you have the ability to search videos in future.
The VideoSpace Video Search Engine is taking the leap now.