America Online has announced a new integrated video search covering AOL premium content, internet video clips and streaming services.
The online video search database will draw on more than 15,000 licensed and originally produced clips from the AOL video-on-demand archive, 1.5 million online clips indexed through the Singingfish search engine previously acquired by AOL, together with streaming video sites offering RSS syndication feeds.
The Singingfish search engine includes speech recognition processing to allow searching of speech in videos, in addition to title, description, and production credit metadata.
Animated thumbnails all users to preview search results, and recommendations can be provided based on similar searches by other users.
AOL is also previewing a video player that integrates search, providing a unified platform for video programming across the AOL network of online brands.
AOL has announced that it plans to feature optimized video content feeds from HBO and Warner Bros among other sources. In conjunction with content partners, there are also proposals to ingest and present clips from broadcast television content.
“On-demand video is rapidly emerging as a mainstream behaviour on the Web, and we want AOL to be the first place users go for online video,” said Kevin Conroy, the chief operating officer of AOL Media Networks. “We’re combining best-in-class video search technology with extensive video programming to offer consumers the best video experience anywhere on the Web.”
AOL provided live coverage of the recent Live 8 concerts, featuring feeds from London, Philadelphia and other capitals around the world, reaching a record 175,000 simultaneous streams and a total of 5 million unique users.
AOL has been losing subscribers to its proprietary walled garden content, and is opening up its content to compete with online portals such as Yahoo and Microsoft’s MSN, offering a public beta of a new free online service.