Microsoft introduces text search … for videos!

Microsoft's Azure has switched on a range of media services, including one that makes it possible to conduct text searches of audio and video content.

The new Azure Media Services offer encoding and streaming services backed by a content distribution network that should make it possible to deliver video around the world without the embarrassments that marred yesterday's iThing launch.

There's also something called “Advanced Content Indexing” that Microsoft explains is based on a research project called MAVIS - the Microsoft Audio Video Indexing Service.

MAVIS uses deep neural net-based speech recognition to turn audio files, or audio tracks from vide, into text file. The new Azure services turn that – or enough of it to be useful – into metadata so that it becomes possible to search a collection of media files using keywords.

Microsoft's pitching the tool as a way to search video archives. The Reg can imagine it will also come in handy for finding specific moments in media files. Allied with a movie library, perhaps you'll soon be able to search for a quote in a film and be transported to the moment in question.

It's been a busy day in the cloud for Microsoft, which has also announced that its OneDrive cloud storage service – or at least the consumer version - can now handle 10GB files. Microsoft promises the feature is coming real soon now for the business version of OneDrive.

Back at home, there's also a new right-click option to share links to documents stored in the service and the ability to drag a whole folder off the desktop and into the OneDrive web page to initiate an upload. ®