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To get one's videos indexed correctly by the search engines dedicated to that content, it's the spoken word rather than the pretty pictures that matter most. Mike McDonald listened in on the expert panel at SES Chicago discussing the process.

The cost effective way to index video content, said TVEyes' David Ives, is through the use of the audio track. Right now the only way to really index video well is to actually crack open the file and use voice recognition software to find specific keywords.

As important as meta data is to video today, is how irrelevant it will be as video search matures.

(Mike noted that the main idea of Ives' talk involved shifting from meta data indexing to spoken word; we discussed that in July with PodZinger CEO Alex Laats, so maybe the technology is available now, perhaps? - David)

Ives also had some concerns about pre-roll advertising. He cited anecdotally how advertisers found their pre-roll dropped in front of videos containing objectionable or inappropriate content. That means search engines that want to provide contextual ads for videos will need to have their spoken-word indexing up to snuff.

Blinkx co-founder and CTO Suranga Chandratillake suggested what has become very apparent - video is a mainstream, even expected, part of the Web today.

Like SearchForVideo.com's David Clarke, he thinks plenty of progress on video search is under way, even as text search has been the focal point of search innovation to date. Site publishers who want help in getting their videos exposed through Blinkx can do so with the search engine's DirectPlay service they can also submit RSS/XML feeds or the video content URL directly to SearchForVideo.com

Even though video has become very popular in terms of content, the ability to search it effectively doesn't match the volume of video content that exists. The winner in this arena will gain a significant advantage when video ads become part of video distribution, but unlike text search and ads being dominated by Google no single player has stood out from the video search pack yet.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.