Audio search on Web gets more participants, more features

Blinkx and AOL offer audio search, FUSA plans service

Many companies are developing services for searching the Web for video or audio with specific content (see Commentary, p. TBD). After some initial testing (SRU, June 2005, p.9), AOL has officially announced its video search service. The AOL service uses metadata and other text for searching, and indicates that it uses speech-to-text processing to “help deliver greater metadata” and to allow searches of keywords within the body of the video. In addition to searching by title, description, artists or actors, the new AOL Video Search product allows users to search through speech in videos to find matches.

Blinx previously announced a video search service, www.blinkx.tv, on the Web using speech recognition when closed captioning or metadata is not enough (SRU, January 2005, p. 2). Recently, it announced additional content and features, including searching for podcasts by content.

FUSA Capital Corporation (OTCBB:FSAC) is an emerging provider of Internet-based video and audio search engine solutions for consumers and publishers. FUSA’s first product, searchforvideo will be available in Beta version soon, the company announced in June. FUSA’s video and audio search engine technology provides the tools to discover, scrape, index, and generate metadata in RSS (Really Simple Syndication) format for the syndication of video and audio content to any Internet-enabled device including PCs, cell phones, and TV set-top boxes.

Audio/Video search is a work in progress, with free video on the Web of limited quality and quantity. It also remains an unanswered question whether metadata (text information identifying the audio or video clip) or closed captioning will be sufficient for most users; or whether speech recognition adds sufficient additional value to justify its additional overhead. Video search can, however, serve as a portal for Video-On-Demand, a form of pay-per-view accessible over the Web.

Perhaps the availability of a good A-V search service will encourage the deployment of attractive free A/V options—the “build it and they will come” approach. Podcasts seem to be one source of audio that will be reviewed and designed for mobile listening. Even in this case, specialized Web sites for finding and rating podcasts will be a competitive resource. As the following articles indicate, however, the video search services are attempting to create their own video databases.

Blinkx

Blinkx founder Suranga Chandratillake doesn’t see many limitations: “The volume of rich media content online continues to explode, but traditional search engines such as Google and Yahoo were developed for text-based keyword searches, not for audio or video content. The prevalence of broadband and multimedia is driving demand for next generation search capabilities, and Blinkx is the only technology that can offer this to Web users.”

On June 29, Blinkx added Podcast and Video Blog channels, making these two sources fully searchable. The web site will find user-generated rich media both by cataloging the Internet and letting users upload their own content. Blinkx’s podcast spider crawls the Web in search of rich media content and automatically indexes hundreds of hours of podcasts every hour.

Blinkx combines speech recognition with “Context Clustering Technology” (CCT) to analyze and understand the spoken words of an audio/ video file. The underlying audio search technology is from Autonomy, which has added its text analysis capabilities to a core speech recognition technology from SoftSound, which received a substantial investment from Autonomy in May 2000. UK-based SoftSound was founded in 1995 and is backed by over ten years of research from Cambridge University.

Blinkx also announced a number of content partnerships. The company will index and offer Forbes.com video segments on blinkx.tv. The Forbes.com video network offers a diversified video menu covering an array of topics including business and finance, economic events, lifestyle, and breaking news. The network presents these subjects through interviews with top executives, spot news, special reports, and coverage from the field.

Blinx also announced partnerships with Videodetective.com and Singingfool.com. Under these agreements, blinkx will make content from both VideoDetective.com and SingingFool.com fully searchable.

 VideoDetective.com’s 2.8 million users preview over 4 million movie clips and trailers each month, while SingingFool.com delivers nearly 3 million music videos to its 2.1 million users every month. Singingfool.com provides access to 7,000 digitized music videos from most major and independent labels. VideoDetective.com provides access to 15,000 digitized movie previews from most major and independent studios. All videos on both sites are sent directly to the companies by the record producers or movie studios for promotional purposes.

Under a content agreement with BusinessWeek Online, Blinkx will index BusinessWeek's content, making it searchable at www.blinkx.tv. Content from BusinessWeek TV, including reports on the state of the economy, insight from captains of industry, and detail on the best business schools will also be made searchable on the blinkx.tv site. In addition, users will be able to find new podcasts by Steve Wildstrom, BusinessWeek’s technology expert.

Other recent additions include The New York Times Company, which announced that NYTimes.com and About.com will provide video content for indexing by blinkx’s video search engine. The new additions make more than 25 premier content providers that have made their video clips fully searchable on demand from blinkx.tv.

AOL

On July 5, America Online, Inc. announced new online video initiatives building on its video search service. The new video search product is available through the AOL service, AOLSearch.com, and on AOL.com, including the new Web portal available in beta. The new AOL Video Search product allows users to search through audio in videos to find matches.

AOL Video Search database draws from the AOL Video on-demand archive of more than 15,000 licensed and originally produced video assets, including from broadcast television; more than 1.5 million video assets available on the Internet indexed through Singingfish, a video and audio search engine; and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds from top video streaming sites. This combined approach lets people search from one place for high-quality, current online video spanning popular music videos, movie features, television clips, news coverage, sports highlights, and independently produced videos.

 AOL is also previewing an enhanced version of the AOL Video Player that integrates search and programming and supports major file formats to deliver playback for most videos with a single, consistent experience. In addition to its integration with AOL's new Video Search, this Video Player will also provide a unified platform for video programming across the AOL Network of Web brands, including the AOL.com portal and the AOL Instant Messenger and Netscape services. AOL has also announced that it plans to feature optimized video content feeds from HBO, Warner Bros. Online, New York Times Digital, About.com, Movielink, Broadway.com, CollegeHumor.com, and Jokaroo.com.

As part of its on-demand video offerings, the new AOL.com Web portal will soon launch a Video Hub that will serve as a central location for music, news, sports, and entertainment video programming. This new initiative will be integrated with both the new AOL Video Search and Video Player.