We all know that using search to find information is helpful in enterprise, training, or educational settings, but sometimes these applications require more than just text retrieval. Increasingly, users need to locate images and even video files, and "full-text search" doesn't quite fit the bill. One example in a typical corporate setting might be a mid-level manager tracking down video clips of company executives highlighting the key areas of the company's recent earning.The manager could use these video clips in a budget presentation to emphasize the point that senior management highlighted her project as one of the corporation's key growth drivers.

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The tools required to allow video indexing, search, and retrieval have been around for several years but have only recently gained traction in the enterprise, primarily due to the fact that many organizations had policies prohibiting video playback across the local area network. With the mainstreaming of video-on-demand and streaming video content, however, enterprise customers are giving video search a second look.

A Sporting Chance

One example that offers lessons for enterprises that are considering video search tools comes in the form of the video indexing, search, and retrieval systems used by professional sports organizations. Just as professional sports teams live and die by the smallest margins of training, camaraderie, and determination, so do executive teams thrive on an equal level of preparation and teamwork. For many years, sports organizations have employed video for a variety of functions, including better educating and informing team members and staff. But until the emergence of video search tools, they were not able to maximize their investment in video.

In the realm of professional basketball, highlight reels have taken on increasing importance as a way for players and others in the organization to view and learn from particular feats. One professional basketball team, the Orlando Magic, uses a video search capability provided by Pictron, Inc., to get the most mileage out of game stats and highlights.

The problem with highlight reels has always been the sheer amount of content, both in terms of the video itself and the metadata (the content about the films and games). While coaches use a game tape system that relies primarily on the game broadcast, a team's highlight reel includes the key highlights of a given game filmed from multiple camera angles. Given the fact that the typical game is shot by eight cameras simultaneously, and a typical season's reel consists of many games, the quantity of material becomes daunting for staff and players who often don't have the time to watch an entire highlight reel.

Yet for all the concerted effort to create these reels, even in editing games down to the bare minimum of most-important moments, few teams have employed the films and metadata to create a meaningful, searchable video archive.

The Magic of Search

The Orlando Magic wanted an efficient way to create highlight reels that best utilized the intensive initial video-creation work. They wanted a system that was inherently designed to increase the ability to locate specific content—be it players who wanted to review specific shots or staff members who missed important games and needed to catch up. The Magic settled on Pictron's Media Gateway solution, which would allow them to digitize highlight reels, as well as add metadata and search for plays, players, or other important information.

"I've been with the Orlando Magic broadcast team for more than 15 years," says Rick Price, production/operations manager for Orlando Magic Broadcasting. "Until we started using the Pictron system, we were never able to create a full library of an entire season's highlight reel. We tried a homegrown system but even that didn't allow us to get every shot and every key play."

The Pictron process is fairly straightforward. All of the steps noted in the workflow could be performed during the actual game if each camera were connected to a live digitizer. However, the broadcast group chooses to capture after the fact from a single "video meld" tape that contains each of the camera shots so that they can have easy access all eight camera angles.

The produced highlight reel is loaded into a professional video playback device, such as a BetaSP or DigiBeta tape deck, which is in turn linked to the Pictron Media Gateway capture station. Using SMPTE timecode as a key unique identifier for every frame of the video, the highlight reel is digitized into a proxy digital media format (a lower resolution format than the actual highlight reel, such as Windows Media). The digitizing process can be automated so that the video team is left with the option of logging (or marking key points on the video) during the digitizing or immediately afterwards, depending on the video team's availability.

Once key points are marked, additional metadata such as player, time of game, type of shot, and additional statistics are added to each key point—resulting in footage that is much easier to search.

"We use a fairly limited amount of metadata, such as player's name and type of action— jumpshot, breakaway, dunk, and others," says Price. "The system is capable of automated indexing, such as scene change detection, speech recognition, and facial or logo recognition, among other things, but we really asked Pictron to ‘dumb down' the system and remove the metadata automation since we have fairly unique and limited needs that we can enter more quickly manually."

Search and Score

After the entire highlight reel has been digitized and logged, the video files and metadata are uploaded to a server that is accessible to any member of the video team, as well as the whole Orlando Magic organization. "Any user on the local area network can log in to the Pictron server and search for clips by name or type of action," says Price. "They can also add individual shots to a collection in their personal library, to be sent on to the broadcast group as a list of shots to be edited together."

The list is exported from the Pictron Media Gateway Server in the form of an Edit Decision List (EDL), a kind of instruction set for a video editing system such as an Avid or Apple's Final Cut Pro system. The EDL file is then opened in the video editing workstation, which prompts the user to insert one or several original videotapes. Once the tape is inserted, the video editing system uses the EDL to digitize footage from the original highlight reel into a video file format specific to the video editing system, where graphics and other information are then added to create the final highlight reel.

Looking forward, Price sees several areas where the power of the Pictron system will benefit the organization as a whole. One area of interest is creating highlight reels of all non-game content, which would be especially helpful for the Corporate Partnerships team that handles sponsorships.Video clips of on-floor events bearing a sponsor's name, which take place during commercial breaks and are normally only seen by fans in the arena, could be aggregated to present to the sponsor.

The Orlando Magic is also considering using the Pictron Media Gateway capture station to digitize directly into the video file format that would be used by the editing system. Price says the broadcasting team recently added three Final Cut Pro systems, and hopes to add an XSAN—a storage area network hard-disk system—that would hold all the highresolution and proxy footage, allowing specific collections to be rapidly edited without requiring access to the original highlight reel.

The Orlando Magic provides an excellent example of how professional sports teams are using video indexing, search, and retrieval to boost team performance and spur the entire organization to perform more efficiently, as well as generate a heightened sense of camaraderie and esprit de corps. So the next time you search for a video clip in your organization's video search engine (and hopefully find a clip of your CEO touting an effort you've been personally involved with) remember that effective teamwork is equally at home in the boardroom and on the court.

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Case Study Details

• ORGANIZATION: Orlando Magic www.orlandomagicbroadcastservices.com
• SOLUTION PROVIDER OF CHOICE: Pictron, Inc. www.pictron.com

Captions:

The Pictron Video Gateway is a Windows application. This module captures live video, creates encoded video streams, and performs real-time video indexing for automatic scene change detection to create a visual storyboard.

The Pictron Media Gateway web application allows users to search video clips based on keywords or database info. It shows clips of interest in the search results.

About the Author

TIM SIGLIN, co-founder of Transitions, Inc., is a contributing editor to Information Today's StreamingMedia.com. He has 18 years of film and video experience and heads a digital media business consultancy in Kingsport, Tennessee.

X1 has introduced what it says is the first enterprise search content connector for the Symantec Enterprise Vault. The integration allows joint customers to find, preview and take action on all e-mail locally in a single interface, whether it resides in a Symantec Enterprise Vault archive, PST file, public folder or Outlook.

The X1 Content Connector for Symantec Enterprise Vault helps customers realize the full value of their archiving system and enhance productivity by providing a unified view of all e-mail, wherever it is located. Through a single interface, users have the ability to find, preview and take action on their Inbox, Sent Items and Attachments, regardless of where messages and attachments reside, whether it be an Exchange Server, PST files, Outlook, public folders or Symantec Enterprise Vault archives.

Users do not need knowledge of where e-mail or attachments reside in order to search, preview and take action. Further, the companies say, X1 preserves the integrity of the company's security model, allowing search but preventing deletion or moving from the Symantec Enterprise Vault archive.

The X1 Content Connector for Symantec Enterprise Vault also enables:

• post-search actions such as open, forward, reply and print;
• automatic detection of Symantec Enterprise Vault archives and addition to the X1 index;
• export of selections to PST;
• leveraging the X1 Enterprise Platform for comprehensive information search across all enterprise and desktop content.

HandySoft has released OfficeEngine, an application designed to enable knowledge workers to create, assign, sub-delegate, track and execute mission-critical work in real time.

HandySoft explains that OfficeEngine models and displays work as it happens, turning what was once a series of disjointed peer-to-peer e-mails into a single, centralized dashboard, illustrating the journey of all work items from creation, to assignment, to sub-delegation, to completion--including all individuals involved, all collaboration, all attachments and all related status information.

The company adds that OfficeEngine captures and interprets the business context of each task assigned. It then searches internal and external information sources--desktop files, content management systems, knowledge management systems, learning management systems, resource scheduling systems, employee performance management systems and the Web--and proactively displays documents, presentations and content that is most likely to assist the knowledge worker in completing his or her task. HandySoft adds that Watson search technology from Intellext is a key component of what it describes as OfficeEngine's business context capability.

The application can be deployed very quickly, HandySoft claims, with minimal IT investment and user training. The solution operates as a standalone application from within a variety of standard portals or embedded directly in Microsoft Outlook, allowing it to be fully operational in the time it takes to roll out a commercial e-mail application.

Exalead, a provider of search software for business and the web, has been granted a patent for its unified search navigation and query refinement process that lets people "search by serendipity" by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Exalead's approach to search allows users to freely navigate among related categories and related terms in a transparent fashion. For every search query, Exalead returns a list of related categories and related terms so that users can broaden or refine a search by location, author, or format, or exclude irrelevant terms and topics.

Exalead, a provider of search software for business and the web, has also announced its exalead one:search technology is being used in Worldsat's DDream set-top box that lets consumers access and view content from personal computers on their televisions. Exalead's technology recognizes a wide range of multimedia file formats, from video to audio and images. The exalead one:search technology will also offer auto completion to find information in the next versions.

(www.exalead.com; www.worldsatbox.com; www.ddream.eu)

Mercado has released Version 4.0 of its namesake software, which, the company says, combines site search and navigation technologies with merchandising and actionable reporting to provide merchandising managers tools to increase return on retail sites.

Mercado adds that Version 4.0 automates merchandising tasks that are inherently metrics-driven to facilitate and validate decision-making. The company explains that by using integrated metrics from back-end ERP systems, Web analytics data gleaned from Coremetrics, Fireclick and Omniture, as well as customer review and ranking information from vendors such as Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews, Mercado 4.0 enables business users to understand what it calls the "holistic search to sell" view of site activity, enabling them to take nimble actions on traditionally read-only information. Mercado believes that by testing, measuring and deploying the most effective campaigns and merchandising strategies, merchandising managers can achieve higher conversion rates, revenues and profits.

LinkedIn, a business network, has launched LinkedIn Answers, an answers service that leverages the user's professional network to receive business-related advice. LinkedIn Answers was designed to allow members to ask their business-related questions, and receive answers from their personal networks and the hundreds of thousands of experts in the LinkedIn network as a whole. The service gives the site's nine million users a way to get industry specific answers to business questions and to build upon their professional reputation by responding to questions relevant to their expertise.

Questions and answers are tied to professional profiles and the relationships between askers and experts. Questions can be targeted to specific members of one's network, as well as opening it up to the entire LinkedIn network of more than nine million professionals from around the world, representing 130 industries. The service is free and currently allows users to ask ten questions a month.

Experts receive expertise credentials for every best answer they provide--this becomes part of their LinkedIn profile, informing other users that they are a proven expert on that topic. For those consistently able to provide expert answers, LinkedIn will promote their expertise to other users, providing an opportunity for consultants, contractors, and other service providers to build social capital and market their services to professionals whose questions they answer.

(www.linkedin.com)

Teragram, a provider of multilingual natural language processing technologies, has announced that its proprietary categorization, entity extraction, and taxonomy management software is used to automatically organize international b-to-b media company Reed Business' (RB) hundreds of online media properties. In addition, RB has integrated Teragram's technologies into its b-to-b search engine offering, Zibb. Zibb scours b-to-b sites from throughout the web and within RB media to find relevant, specific information. Readers of RB online media, such as Variety.com, Electronic Business and Library Journal can find information by category using Teragram's technology. With Zibb, Teragram's software has extended RB site visitors' ability to find relevant, b-to-b specific answers they're looking for, not only from RB sources, but also from throughout the web.

Reed Business Information, publishers of Daily Variety, Video Business, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News and other the media- and entertainment-related news properties, has launched a new website, www.contentagenda.com, a B-to-B brand focused on the intersection of content, technology, and business within the digital entertainment industry. A global news source and blogspace, ContentAgenda covers everything from emerging platforms, to digital rights management, to the role of trade and regulatory agencies in shaping the global media market, to Hollywood's transition from an optical disc-based economy, to one based on electronic delivery.

This free site invites visitors to submit comments on stories, blogs and other content that appears on the site. The ContentAgenda community is comprised of executives from the media and entertainment, hardware, technology, government and policy-making, financial and retail communities. The launch site offers three main channels: Discs & Downloads; Policy & Intellectual Property (I.P.); and Content & Commerce. News aggregation is powered by Lexis-Nexis.

(www.reedbusiness.com; www.teragram.com; www.zibb.com)  

Aitheras, an enterprise consultancy, has joined forces with ZyLab to provide full life cycle solutions for archiving, finding, managing, and sharing scanned and stored information.

Aitheras explains that it provides document management services, including scanning, data warehousing and image compression, out of its facility in Pittsburgh, Pa. Once this data is scanned and/or stored, the ZyImage Information Access Platform (IAP) provides a foundation for the archiving and long-term management of vital information, from digitized paper documents, to electronic files, e-mail and attachments, to multimedia.

Many of Aitheras' clients are biotechnology and pharmaceutical businesses that are heavily regulated by the FDA. Aitheras can now add a new service for these and future clients due to this strategic partnership. ZyLab has a strong presence in the public sector across federal, state and local organizations and now has the ability to offer turnkey solutions from scanning and storing the information to locating it via ZyImage within seconds.

Information Today Inc. (ITI), KMWorld's parent company, has announced the publication of The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher, Second Edition by Randolph Hock.

In this revised and expanded edition of his successful 2004 book, Hock presents an easy-to-use guide for researchers, librarians, teachers, students, writers and professionals in any field who rely on the Web as an information source. Hock provides tips and techniques for searching the Internet effectively and encourages readers to explore a range of useful and often overlooked Web information resources.

The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook, Second Edition covers a wide range of topics and resources relevant to Web searching, including copyright and fair use, Web source citation, keeping up-to-date and how to find information using metasearch engines, shortcuts, mashups, desktop search programs, groups, podcasts, blogs, alerting services and more. The book features detailed guidance on using leading search engines Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, and Ask.com, along with more than 60 explanatory figures and tables, a glossary, URL list and an index. Hock provides regular updates to the book and links to more than 250 recommended sites online at "The Extreme Searcher's Web Page."

The book's chapters are:

1. Basics for the Serious Searcher
2. General Web Directories and Portals
3. Specialized Directories
4. Search Engines: The Basics
5. Search Engines: The Specifics
6. Groups, Newsgroups Forums and Their Relatives
7. An Internet Reference Shelf
8. Sights and Sounds: Finding Images, Audio and Video
9. News Resources
10. Finding Products Online
11. Becoming Part of the Internet: Publishing.

ISYS Search Software, a global supplier of enterprise search solutions for business and government, has announced that Midas, Inc. has selected ISYS:web to enable search across the Midas Portal, the company's corporate extranet. Midas utilizes ISYS' On-The-Fly Categorization feature, which automatically generates categories according to variables such as file path and metadata information. This enables users to drill down and pinpoint information instantly.

(www.midas.com; www.isys-search.com)

Access Innovations, Inc., (AI) content management provider and publishers of the Data Harmony suite of taxonomy software tools, has announced that it is working with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a publisher of technical research, to improve the group's online research services. AI has updated IEEE's in-house thesaurus, which could improve searching of IEEE's repository of published research and other editorial materials, and also created a new taxonomy to structure the content. The new taxonomy provides another basis for guided navigation of the content pool, in addition to Inspec-controlled terms presently used. AI's Data Harmony taxonomy creation and management software features an advanced content indexing and text structuring system, which in turn enables IEEE to offer a search engine designed to generate relevant results.

(www.accessinn.com; www.dataharmony.com)

LexisNexis has launched a new Web site to highlight its Total Practice Solutions for law firms. The company explains the site offers attorneys targeted solutions for their practice in the areas of client development, research, practice management and litigation services.

The new Web site serves the U.S. legal market and will likely strengthen the company's shift from research provider to provider of a full range of products and services that help law firms succeed in all areas of their practice, an approach LexisNexis dubs Total Practice Solutions.

The company says the new site offers legal professionals a more intuitive path to finding LexisNexis solutions. Once visitors to the site identify their law firm type, they can easily see the LexisNexis solutions available to them. They can also view Research Solutions by top practice areas and jurisdictions. In addition, customer testimonials, case studies and white papers are accessible to site visitors.

Attensa, Inc., a developer of Enterprise RSS software, and The Real Time Matrix Corp., a provider of precision search and real-time matching and filtering technology, have announced they are working together to help business users create precisely focused search channels that automatically and continuously deliver exactly the content they are searching for without duplication. The partnership brings together Attensa's search capability which scans internet search engines to continuously deliver information as soon as it is published with Real Time Matrix's aggregation, matching and correlation techniques to deliver information that has been filtered to precisely match the searcher's criteria with public and premium content. The persistent precision search technology filters public internet and blog search engines and can be extended to include specialized internal and premium content available within the enterprise.

(www.attensa.com; www.realtimematrix.com)

PR Newswire, a provider of commercial news distribution, and Technorati, a source for citizen media, have announced that readers of press releases can track online conversations in the blogosphere directly from press releases on www.prnewswire.com.

All individual press releases distributed through PR Newswire will include a 'Technorati' button, linking readers to a search result page hosted by Technorati that will display a list of blogs discussing and linking to the news release, and relevant excerpts from those blogs. Once on the search result page, the reader can set up an automatic watch list on Technorati to notify them when any new blog posts are published. The Technorati link is available when viewing press releases from PR Newswire's public website. All PR Newswire releases will carry the Technorati link at no additional cost. Technorati is a free service, requiring registration by users.

Visitors to any press release on PR Newswire's public website can also access RSS feeds of press releases categorized by industry and subject, and post press releases to both del.icio.us and digg, two social networks.

(www.technorati.com; www.prnewswire.com; www.unitedbusinessmedia.com)

Vivisimo, a provider of enterprise search software, has announced its selection by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to enhance searching on www.nlm.nih.gov. The NLM, a biomedical library, will leverage Vivisimo's enhanced search functionality to provide access to information on linked web pages. Vivisimo will also enable search functionality for the NLM's consumer health websites, MedlinePlus (http://medlineplus.gov) and MedlinePlus en español (http://medlineplus.gov/spanish), aggregators of medical and health information from government agencies and other authoritative organizations. Visitors of the sites will be able to search for health topics such as 'arthritis' or 'back pain,' and access the data from the respective site's pages. Furthermore, users can hone in on specific questions like "what causes Chickenpox?" or "what are the symptoms of Lupus?" and receive answers.

(www.vivisimo.com; http://medlineplus.gov)