Video Search Engines 

Yahoo! Video Search 

+Great results, options

Yahoo! Video Search is the leader in this domain. Some might call it the default winner since Google hasn't technically made an entry in this domain yet. But not giving it to Yahoo! just because Google is not there would be unfair for all the great work they have done in coming up with this offering.

This search engine has (almost) everything you would want in a video search facility. You can filter results on file formats with the option to choose from one, more or all of AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Windows Media and Real. Other options are to filter the results based on the size (small/medium/large) and duration (less than one minute or greater).

Perhaps one area where Yahoo! Video Search engine can improve itself is by including index flash movies as well, since a lot of multimedia content is now being distributed in this format. 

But even with these small areas of improvement as is, Yahoo! Video Search engine is a rock solid offering and the best in it's category. ¨ 

Singingfish 

+Audio/ video 

-Opening frame of video not displayed

This is a dedicated audio/ video search engine with plenty of options. You can search for audio or video or both types of content matching your keywords. You can filter your results on length and type of files (MP3/Real/Windows/QuickTime) as well. 

You can also search specific categories of content such as Music, Movies, News etc. Your mileage on the same may vary though. It has a clean looking interface with a 'family search' option, which filters out the adult content. It also allows you to save your results but the results presentation is a downer.

Unlike Yahoo! it does not show the first frame of the video as reference to 'preview' what the video is about. Agreed the first screen can only give you so much idea but half a loaf is better than no bread, isn't it! 

Also the index offered by Singingfish isn't as large as Yahoo's. But the relevance of the results is good, which makes it a very competitive offering. ¨

BOTTOM LINE 

Though Google has a service called Google Video that indexes (as of writing this article) only TV serials broadcast in the US. That is why we did not include it in this category. This segment is in very early stages of development but is one that is bound to become very popular in the future. There aren't too many players in this category yet and Yahoo! is the comfortable winner, though Singingfish didn't disgrace itself either and looks to be a promising service.

Sorting results by user-specified criteria and adding support for Flash content is something these search engines should work on. Another desirable feature would be the ability to preview a video from the results screen itself-a small 5 second clip which can be generated on the fly from the source since copyright issues might prevent them to be stored along with the search engine index.