Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
Reformatted to fit your screen.

idea: add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random

meta: news, help, about, links, report a problem

account: browse anonymously, or get an account and write.

user:
pass:
register,


       

Online Searchable Closed Captioning Database

Online database that allows a text search of closed captioning pulled from television
  (+3, -1)
(+3, -1)
  [vote for,
against]

Amazon and Google let us search within printed books now. I've found a couple places online that provide a search within the closed captioning of their own online videos. But it would be nice to do a text search on television closed captioning, returning a list of program name/network, etc., with search terms highlighted within a context snippet (a la Google results). It could potentially provide links to relevant online episode guides, network homepage, etc. It would be nice if it also provided a CC transcript, though that presents obvious copyright issues.

The database could be populated either directly by television networks that chose to participate, and/or by a distributed network of volunteers. An app could be provided so that anyone with a TV tuner in their computer could glean CC data and automatically submit it to the database (again, potential copyright/licensing issues here). Redundant data from multiple users could be used for validation, and to filter data vandalism.

Martoon, Aug 02 2009

Google Tunes Into TV http://www.google.c...pressrel/video.html
Describes the initial beta version of Google Video, which has since been converted to a video search engine, and not what is described here any longer. [krelnik, Aug 03 2009]

[link]






       To my understanding, amazon and google don't let users search within printed books that their publishers don't want them to search in.   

       If a network doesn't want to do this, it doesn't matter whether a volunteer types in the data - it's still the network's, and if they don't want their content out, they can prevent that. (Actually, I don't know. Is compiling a search index and serving up samples "fair use"? Google says they think yes, but if they were really completely right, why stop indexing when copyright holders say "no"?)   

       This is, of course, completely idiotic on part of the networks and will ultimately change - but I don't think that this idea isn't happening has to do with nobody thinking of it.   

       There are lots of nightmarishly pop-up infested sites that purport to do something like this, in a badly maintained, badly organized, fan-supported, bit-torrent-connected, harmless-but-illegal way.
jutta, Aug 02 2009
  

       I believe Google baked this about 4 1/2 years ago, but ran smack into the copyright issues that jutta points out above. See link.
krelnik, Aug 03 2009
  
      
[annotate]
  


 

back: main index

business  computer  culture  fashion  food  halfbakery  home  other  product  public  science  sport  vehicle