The BBC and IBM have agreed a deal that will supply the broadcaster with video search technology for its children's TV sites. The BBC currently only allows for text searches using Microsoft proprietary technology. It has previously experimented with a limited launch of video search software supplied by Virage, but on nothing like the scale of the IBM deal.
Early adoption of advanced video searching technology could be the "difference between success and failure" for BBC's online operations, head of future media and technology Ashley Highfield told the Guardian.
"All current video search technology - on the likes of YouTube as well - only works using meta tags or key words added to the videos, not the content itself," he added.
"That is fine if everything is meta-tagged at a high level, otherwise you just won't find the video you are after."
The IBM deal will also help to simplify the massive project to digitise the corporation's total archive of TV and audio content, clocking in at more than 1.4 million hours.
"It is hugely important for us when we start to uncover our archive as we have none or just simple tags on much of the content," said Mr Highfield.
"There is no way to find many archived programmes and we want to see if we can shortcut this, so the archive doesn't have to be all manually tagged," he added.
IBM will also be involved in the BBC's long-term ambitions to reorganise the way it stores its content, moving from a by-channel basis to classifying all data across its platforms by subject matter.
