Hulu Hops Onto Caption Search Technology
Posted: February 24, 2010
Image courtesy of Hulu
By Dave Fidlin
With the Internet maturing and online video become the norm - not a novelty item - enhancements are being created for streaming content. Caption searching, one of those enhancements, was added recently to the popular site Hulu. But a smattering of smaller companies had already been offering a similar service before Hulu added the feature to its site in late December.
Hulu Labs, the online video portal’s development arm, is running the feature in beta while engineers continue to work on perfecting the technology.
In a statement, Eugene Wei, Hulu’s vice president of product, says the feature will enable users to search for captions of thousands of videos across hundreds of shows. For now, Wei says users can access the feature through Hulu Labs’ website. Eventually, a feature tab will be included on all Hulu shows that have captions.
Wei points out how captions search might be beneficial to a viewer of an online video. Wei says he was watching an episode of “House” recently, and a joke between main character Dr. Foreman and Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin took place. Wei says he was in a quandary when he wanted to watch the episode a second time.
“I couldn’t remember which episode it was in, let alone which moment within the episode,” Wei says in the statement. “With the new caption search, I just type in ‘Mike Tomlin,’ and voila.”
Jason Blackwell, practice director with ABI Research, says features like Hulu’s caption search will be an asset to users with online content growing exponentially each year.
“It’s going to be important for all service providers,” Blackwell says. “I think (Hulu’s caption search) is an important step in what will become the future.”
Blackwell says ABI will soon begin to study features like caption search and examine specifically how it can be beneficial not only to online video, but other specialized services, such as pay TV and other cable and satellite services with a user interface.
While Hulu’s caption search is breaking new ground for the company, it is not a pioneer in the technology. Numerous smaller companies have offered similar services, some as long as five years.
One of those companies, Realtime Transcription Inc., offers a service called Transendia. Tanya Ward English, technology director for Realtime Transcription, says Transendia offers a video search based on the full text of a transcript, in addition to glossary tags for non-spoken information within a video.
Image courtesy of RealTime Transcription
Ward English says Transendia caters to a higher-end market. Many of the company’s clients do not want videos hosted on such public sites as YouTube. Instead, she says, those clients opt to use a customized player with full search and playing options from Transendia.
“One of the most useful and unique things about our technology, I think, is something upon which we have a patent pending,” Ward English says. “That’s the ability go pin-point search video or audio files directly from a text search engine like Google or Bing.”
Ward English, a self-described advocate for people with hearing loss, says caption search technology is especially beneficial for online users who have such a condition.
Blinkx, another smaller, specialized company, was launched in 2005 and went public two years later. Suranga Chandratillake, CEO and founder of Blinkx, says his company offers an advanced video search engine feature that gives online video users an opportunity to not only search for captions within a program, but to look for titles and episode names of particular programs.
“We can extract a lot of information from what’s going on inside a video,” Chandratillake says. “Our video search engine doesn’t just work on our own site. It can also get results from other sites like YouTube, or any other site with video out there.”
Chandratillake says Blinkx has been a popular service with advertisers, and revenue has doubled in the past three years.
More companies are sure to join Hulu, Realtime Transcription, Blinkx and others as the quest continues to make caption search technology an integral part of online video.
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I’ve personally used Real Time Transcriptions and have been very happy with the way they handled the project. It was transcribed live online and was fully searchable, which I always preach (SEO) to my clients.
Great job!
Check their demo page:
http://www.realtimetranscription.com/featured/
I’ve worked with Realtime Transcription on a number of different projects and the results have been top-notch. Quick turnarounds and verbatim transcripts since they use real people, not some clunky software that can be prone to error. For my purposes, we needed to make sure every word was transcribed accurately. Can’t recommend them enough.
You can see demos of their product at http://www.realtimetranscription.com/featured/
Very impressive! I think it is wonderful that this is another tool to help people with hearing loss as well.
My apology, perhaps I commented in an incorrect format, so here goes, again. Thanks!
Congratulations,with Hulu Hops. I have every confidence in Tanya Ward English, she is very special to me and I know just how very intelligent and enthusiastic she is. You can mark my words, I have known she is special since the first day I held her in my arms and even later when she called me, “Aunt Darlene.” Believe me, you have a sure bet with Tanya on your side, you best listen up or read up with her captioning, as she knows what she is talking about.
Congratulations,with Hulu Hops. I have every confidence in Tanya Ward English, she is very special to me and I know just how very intelligent and enthusiastic she is. You can mark my words, I have known she is special since the first day I held her in my arms and even later when she called me, “Aunt Darlene.” Believe me, you have a sure bet with Tanya on your side, you best listen up or read up with her captioning, as she knows what she is talking about.