Within seconds, I was viewing exactly the segment I had wanted to see. It was very cool indeed. The service was made possible through software from a company called Virage, and how it was produced in this case was pretty straightforward. The closed-caption text was converted into HTML files, which in turn were associated with 158 video clips. AltaVista then used its search engine technology to index the HTML files, allowing users to find specific text and then view the associated video clip.
Closed caption makes things easy because someone has already transcribed the video tape.
Things aren't so easy when closed-captioning isn't available, but Virage has ways around this. It can turn to TelePrompTer text or scripts. It has also announced a partnership with IBM for speech recognition, for times when no written record is readily available. The Holy Grail of video search is the ability to truly search for images irrespective of having associated text. For example, at a conference I was at earlier this year, a spokesperson from Excalibur, another video search company, talked about the challenge of finding that clip where President Clinton hugs Monica Lewinsky in a crowd.