Startup Touts Humanoid Technology in Video Content Search Tool

08.06.2008

You can search video sites like YouTube using text identifiers of what you're looking for. So why can't you search for video using video? And what if you could use your own video to search for videos that infringe on your copyright?

A Silicon Valley company says it has the technology that's already detected more than 2,000 potentially infringing videos for a national broadcast network it did not name. Anvato, based in Mountain View, Calif., says its newly released ContentID product uses "Perceptual Signature technology that emulates humans by identifying scenes, objects and movements inside the video."

That way, copyright holders can find potential offenders and seek redress, without using any watermarking technologies.

Or, the technology could be used to place advertisements based on the content of a video. Anvato says it is also launching a set of tools for creating "unobtrusive" advertisements around video.

Anvato says it used the product to search infringements of 20 primetime network programs that aired over the past six months, and in one week found more than 2,000 videos, viewed some 6 million times, on sites such as YouTube, Veoh and DailyMotion.

The company says ContentID simulates human vision using a sophisticated set of computer vision algorithms and is inherently robust against evasion techniques such as transcoding (video format conversion), resolution loss, geometric distortion, video editing and mash-ups. It works regardless of the audio track.

Anvato says its objective is not to block consumer access to content, but to facilitate sustainable business models for content owners and distributors, allowing them to decide how to handle infringements.

"Quite a few content owners want to claim ownership and share the advertising revenue through standard revenue-sharing practices with distributors," said Alper Turgut, CEO of Anvato. "Their goal is to monetise, not block consumer access to content. Using Anvato, both publishers and distributors can convert a legal liability into profits."