Multimedia Search
New page January 2010
"In August 2009, Americans watched 10 billion videos on YouTube. That same month, Americans conducted 9 billion searches on Google." [Source ] Knowing where and how to search for multimedia today is as important as web search.
Multimedia embraces images, video, and audio on the Web. The major search engines help us search for all of these - and it is often worth our while to do so. It goes well beyond entertainment.
- Videos abound that illustrate how to do things, show products, deliver lectures.
- Searching images can find the perfect page on any topic.
- Audios may be podcasts of radio programs.
Video
Most video search engines will show entertainment and news first and point you to videos that are being watched by the most people. Those are fun, but the search box will be more useful. Start with one or two words to describe your topic and then use the filters that each engine provides to select on duration or quality. You can continue to refine your query by adding more words.
Bing http://www.bing.com/videos/browse
The new Bing Video has videos from Microsoft properties, as well as YouTube, Hulu (in the US), ABC and other networks. Notable features:
- Front page with news, entertainment, editors picks etc.
- Filters for length (duration), screen type, resolution, source of the video.
- Videos show as thumbnails on a grid. Mouseover the thumbnail to get sound and picture immediately.
See these results for arctic exploration
Google video.google.com or video.google.ca
Google Video goes directly to search - there is no front page. There is an Advanced Search to help you select the format and the content. Notable features:
- Advanced Search filters for language, duration, domain, date, filetypes.
- Show Options - duration, time (past day, week, month), relevance, type of video (full length, cartoons, slideshows, closed captioned), source.
- Grid View: Mouseover the thumbnail to get details about the video.
- TV View - if the video is "playable on Google", you can
multiprocess by playing the video while continuing to scan other search
results.
On a search for arctic exploration Google will pick up antarctic as a related term. Stop that by using the + sign - +arctic exploration
Yahoo Video http://video.search.yahoo.com
Use the video search from the main search engine. The Yahoo Video site is geared to viral videos and far too many cat videos. Notable features:
- Advanced Search with filters for format, duration, site / domain.
- View as a grid or list.
- Sort by relevance or recency.
YouTube www.youtube.com
Why not go directly to the largest video service? YouTube has many channels and it will put the most popular videos front and forward, but there aren't the search aids that Google and Bing have.
After you run a search, you may pick from:
- Search options: sort by relevance, date, popularity; upload date; category, duration; features (closed caption, HD)
- Additional search options: "refine your search by location" - place
Images
The mainstream image search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask search for keywords in the alt text used to describe the image along with the filename and other clues such as labelling from nearby text. Ranking of images is influenced by the rank of the web page.
Features at image search engines have greatly improved in the last year with new capabilities to request different types of images, find faces, and look for a colour. The most exciting change has been to do a visual search based on an existing images, available now at Bing and Google.
Bing www.bing.com/images
Bing image search handles beautifully and has many search aids. It begins with being able to scroll through the images continuously - without leaving the frame. Other notable features:
- Several grids for viewing the thumbnails.
- Interactive images. Mouseover image to see name, size, source, and to "find more sizes", and most importantly, "find similar images".
- Left side panel with groupings and options. Check the left side panel.
There may be related searches. In the search for great blue heron, Bing
lists "related animals". There might also be Reference - image
and text from reference sources.
- Use options to narrow by size, layout (square, wide, tall), colour, style (photograph, illustration), people (faces, head and shoulders).
Google Images images.google.com or images.google.ca
Google
supports restrictions to news, faces, photo, clip art, or line drawings;
and can find images that are a specific colour.
- Advanced Search has several useful filters. These include content
type (described above), file format, colour (black and white, full colour),
and domain or site. There is also Usage
Rights by which you can restrict the search to images that are licensed
for reuse.
- Show Options will repeat the advanced search options in the left side
panel. Here you can also select a predominant colour for the images.
- "Find similar images" is available for many images and can
match shapes and general colouring.
- Related searches are sometimes listed.
Yahoo Images images.search.yahoo.com
Yahoo Images also allows for searching for Creative Commons licensed content.
- Advanced search has size, colour, domain or site, and Creative Commons license.
- Search Assist has search suggestions which may let you distinguish between illustration, clip art, pictures etc.
- When you click on an image from the image search results page, a two-part page comes up with a larger view of the image on the top and the source page below.
Audio
Interest in audio is either for music or for podcasts. The latter tends to be spoken word: many radio networks put program content on the web as podcasts.
The mainstream search engines do not do audio search well beyond finding pop artists, and they don't have any specialty tools for finding podcasts.
Music
- Yahoo has a New
Music site and can find music clips in a normal web search for very
popular singers such as Rod Stewart.
- Google opened a new music search for artists and lyrics - Google Discover Music - where you might find a clip that you'd like. Music searches may also be recognized in Google.com (but not, at this writing, Google.ca).
Podcasts
For podcasts we must look elsewhere. Two to try are:
- Podcast.com has
a substantial directory with listings across many categories including
Arts, Education, Travel; and a good list of publishers. Collection is
sizable at over 85,000 podcasts. It is also linked into Facebook and
Twitter.
- Apple iTunes Podcasts - www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/ - The iTunes store has thousands of free podcasts. Search by subject or popularity.
Where to Next?
Some search tools search several search engines at one crack - this is called metasearch or federated search.