Search and Identify a YouTube or Vimeo Tune
April 12, 2015
Need to identify a song used in a YouTube video? “Name That tune on Any YouTube Video with MooMa.sh” explains that now you can perform this search and retrieval task. Navigate to http://www.mooma.sh/. Paste a YouTube, Vimeo, or Dailymotion link into the search box and Moo1. That’s the service’s name for search, not mine. There is a video explaining how the service works and a Freshman Comp 101 write up that explains how. I use Samba Pump, for which I paid a fee. MooMa.sh reported:
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2015
Digital Imaging: An IDC Estimate Misses the Mark
February 6, 2015
Digital imaging is getting bigger. I came across this interesting factoid in LensVid:
Predicting the future of the camera market proved challenging in the past – IDC (the American market research, analysis and advisory firm) failed to predict what will happen to the mirrorless camera market. In 2012 they concluded that in 2014 we will see no less than 13 million mirrorless cameras sold worldwide. Only 3 million mirrorless cameras were actually sold…
For the full run down on digital photography in 2014, navigate to “LensVid Exclusive: What Happened to the Photography Industry in 2014?”
Next time someone tosses mid tier consulting firm predictions your way, perhaps you should let them pass on by.
Stephen E Arnold, February 6, 2015
Google: More Ad Pain Coming
December 10, 2014
I am not sure if the information in “Facebook Video Is Driving YouTube Off Facebook” is spot on. Counts of user behavior without the actual log files are subject to interpretation. But the main point is darned suggestive. Facebook video may be cutting into uploads to YouTube.com. Now the Googlers are trying to make YouTube into a bigger money spinner. If Facebook pushes into video, advertisers are going to want to put their messages in front of Facebook viewers of hot videos. Bad news for Google.
The passage from the article I noted was:
It is evidence of a dramatic shift in power: Until recently Facebook was not even considered a destination for video. Page owners simply shared their YouTube videos on Facebook, and that was that.
My view is that Google struggles to convert social into a service that can compete with Facebook. If Facebook figures out how to play nice with China, the GOOG has a yellow alert flashing. Is the answer in “How Google Works”?
Stephen E Arnold, December 10, 2014
UK Paintings Catalog: When Every Does Not Mean Every
December 2, 2014
I love headlines like “Every Painting in the UK at Your Fingertips.” The idea is that “images and details of every painting (in tempera or acrylic) in public ownership through the United Kingdom.” Well, obviously the “every” is not every painting. There is an 86 volume set which presumably presents the images and metadata. The digital images are available at Your Paintings. There is a search box and a number of other options. I ran a query for Patrick Heron, an artist whose work I find interesting. There are some of his pictures in the Tate, and he was born . Here’s what I found:
Pretty thin. The Patrick Heron entry for the St Ives School offers a bit more information.
I am not sure if the BBC index is incomplete. It appears that posting information or links to other UK online sources is not part of the project. Also, the presentation of different search boxes on the BBC site does not make accessing the Your Paintings information easier.
The enthusiasm of the newspaper is admirable. I expect/hope that the service will improve its usability and completeness in the months ahead. The BBC is, as one of my British acquaintences with an Oxford education used to say, performant.”
Stephen E Arnold, December 2, 20141
Sir Thomas Bayes Does Art. Versatile Guy.
September 17, 2014
Navigate to FindMeLike. Click on “Try this demo.” You will have access to a Bayesian-centric visual search tool. The idea is that you click on an image you like. The system then locates similar images.
The click narrows the result set. Each poster is available for sale. But I could not figure out how to move to the shopping cart.
How well does a Bayesian-centric system work? Try and use the comments section of this blog to share you opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, September 17, 2014
Machine Vision Solved (Almost)
September 11, 2014
I read “The Revolutionary Technique That Quietly Changed Machine Vision Forever.” The main idea is that having software figure out what an image “is” has become a slam dunk. Well, most of the time.
The write up from the tech cheerleaders at Technology Review says, “Machines are now almost as good as human at object recognition.”
A couple of niggling points. There is that phrase “almost as good”. Then there is the phrase “object recognition.”
Read the write up and then answer these questions:
- Is the method ready to analyze imagery fed by a drone to a warfighter during a live fire engagement?
- Is the system able to classify a weapon in a manner meaningful to field commander?
- Can the system discern a cancerous tissue from a non cancerous tissue with an image output from a medical imaging system?
- Does the method recognize objects in a image like the one shown below?
Image by Stephen E Arnold, 2013
If you pass this query to Google’s image recognition system, you get street scenes, not a person watching activities through an area cordoned off by government workers.
Google thinks the surveillance image is just like the scenes shown above. Note Google does not include observers or the all important police tape.
The write up states:
In other words, it is not going to be long before machines significantly outperform humans in image recognition tasks. The best machine vision algorithms still struggle with objects that are small or thin such as a small ant on a stem of a flower or a person holding a quill in their hand. They also have trouble with images that have been distorted with filters, an increasingly common phenomenon with modern digital cameras.
This stuff works in science fiction stories, however. Lab progress is not real world application progress.
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2014
Instagram Search from Picturegr.am
September 3, 2014
If you are interested in searching Instagram images, navigate to www.picturegr.am.
The site says:
Picturegr.am is a new Instagram search engine and web viewer. Featuring millions of pictures, users, likes and comments, Picturegr.am is your go-to source when you want to browse Instagram on computer or desktop. Picturegr.am works on both PC and Mac.
A user can query Picturegr.am by hashtags or user name. Instagram users assign hashtags and their handles. As a result, a query for “visualization” returns images and terms; for example, on September 2, 2014:
A more popular hashtag like “chicagobears” returns images more in line with non specialist content; for example:
Interesting but filtering and limits on access to user content may trouble some.
Stephen E Arnold, September 3, 2014
Tribler: A File Finder That Legal Eagles Will Want to Check
September 3, 2014
Short honk: We learned about Tribler, a rich media file finder. There is an interesting body of content; for example rich media. The site says:
Tribler can find files for you. No need for websites. Tribler can do 100 Mbps, sadly we cannot fix slow Internet or poor swarms. Lots of “pro” features: magnet links, streaming, sub-second search, channels and our upcoming anonymous mode.
Note the word “anonymous.” Tribler can play videos. The site says, “You can watch even before the download is finished.”
For more information, navigate to www.tribler.org.
Stephen E Arnold, September 3, 2014
Yahoo Flickr Images: Does Search Work?
August 31, 2014
I think you know the answer if you are a regular reader of Beyond Search.
Nope.
Finding images is a tedious and time consuming business. I know what the marketing collateral and public relations noise suggests. One can search by photographer, color, yada, yada.
The reality is that finding an image requires looking at images. Some find this fun, particularly if the client is paying by the hour for graphic expertise. For me, image search underscores how primitive information retrieval tools are.
Feel free to disagree.
To test Yahoo Flickr search, navigate to “Welcome to the Internet Archive to the the Commons.” Check out the sample entry to the millions of public domain images.
Darned meaty.
To search the “Commons”, one has to navigate to the Commons page and scroll down to the search box highlighted in yellow in this screenshot:
Enter a query like this one “18th century elocution.”
Here’s what the system displayed:
I then tried this query “london omnibus 1870”.
Here’s what the system displayed:
No omnibuses.
Like many image retrieval systems, the user has to fiddle with queries until images are spotted by manual inspection.
The archive is useful. Finding images in Yahoo Flickr remains a problem for me. I thought Xooglers knew quite a bit about search. You know: Finding information when the user enters a key word or two.
Stephen E Arnold, August 31, 2014
Video Ads: Print Publisher Reveals the Unviewable Truth
May 5, 2014
I read “The Great Unwatched.” Clever title. (Keep in mind the link may go dead and you will have to hunt for a hard copy. Good luck with that, gentle reader.) The main point is that video ads do not draw eyeballs. Er, this is a revelation I suppose. What I find interesting is that in my poking into video on the Web something became obvious years ago; to wit, put up a lot of videos and the videos don’t get much action. Sure, there may be a breakaway video that draws lots of eyeballs, but those viral wonders are tough to predict.
Now, what about ads? People want to turn them off or ignore them. There is a reason that regular TV commercials blast sound. Couch potatoes and walking media consumers want what they want, not what advertisers want them to want.
The New York Times reports, as real journalists do, the following:
By many estimates, more than half of online video ads are not seen, either because they are buried low on web pages or run in tiny, easily ignored video players on those pages, or run simultaneously with other ads. Vindico, an ad management platform company, deemed 57 percent of two billion video ads surveyed over two months to be “unviewable.”
There you have it. Most people don’t watch video ads.
I thought that Google’s gyrations were a pretty strong hint that video ads were an issue. The companies pumping money into ad videos may not be overwhelmed with customer demands for their products. The Web site data we examined showed that video was fun to talk about, often fun to produce, and probably fascinating for a handful of people. But getting the videos watched was a problem. If videos are not watched, what’s this mean for video ads? My understanding is that video ads are a sales disappointment.
There are some interesting implications. First, Google and others looking for video to deliver the next influx of easy money may have to rethink their assumptions. Second, fun stuff like making videos may have the value of a ride on a roller coaster. Once the ride is over, more fun requires another ride. There is limited satisfaction from the carnival attraction. Third, marketers may find themselves looking for a way to generate leads and makes sales that actually work. In short, video dreams disappear like the image on a display screen when the power cuts off.
Making an ad video is way more entertaining than watching a video ad. Just don’t tell anyone who does not “get” the joy of non linear editing.
Stephen E Arnold, May 5, 2014
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