What Is Video Search? Business and IT Glossary

Video search is the ability to search a video file for "looks like" pictorial content, rather than for tags or other text metadata, using math-intensive image processing algorithms. It may incorporate audio search, either for spoken keywords or for the voice of a particular speaker, as well as the ability to resolve text information within a video image, such as a license plate.

A video timeline also allows users to search for and find specific clips or sections in a video file. Machine learning and deep learning are playing an increased role as computers get better at matching existing images with ones they see. In fact, Google’s Machine Vision, which allows robots and computers to recognize images and scenery, uses deep learning algorithms to do this. Object recognition will be the first part of video search. Later, computers will be able to understand specific movements and behaviors.

Video search is still in its infancy, but some firms are making investments for the future. The need for video search is being driven by the explosion of video as a category of enterprise content, as video becomes a widespread document type. Video content management (what we now refer to as enterprise video) products can tag video files with metadata to make them searchable in a video portal for on-demand replay.