Hitachi Unveiled New Video Search Technology by Subtitles Recognition

Search engine like Google or Yahoo is important for internet users to get the first hand of related articles through web browsing. As long as the user keys in the right keyword, the search engine will able to capture and list down all the relevent articles in front of your desktop screen. However, video clips searching may not be so advanced as there isn’t easy to search through the video files. In view of this, Central Research Laboratory attached to Hitachi has unveiled a new technology that is able to search and recognize subtitles’ characters and helps to zoom down to the desired screen shots effectively.

The Japanese company has conducted experiment using MPEG-2 format video clips. Out of the search results for eight hours video clips, the keyword was mapped and found in 329 subtitles, yielding 93 percent in overall accuracy. The mechanism involves an intelligent algorithm that able to perform complicated graphics extraction and mapping calculation so that graphics and text can be differentiated first before further keyword mapping being performed.

Hitachi will showcase the new searching technology during upcoming IEICE (Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers) Conference on March 18. No firm plan on when it will be implemented on end product yet. Anyway, it could be a great selling feature in Consumer Electronics market by eliminating hassle of fast forward video clips in order to get to the right view.