Axle Video is extending its media management system at the end of this month with a completely new way to find video clips on your network — visual search.

Driven by advancements in neural networks and deep learning algorithms, the new Axle AI Appliance allows users to search their media library against an image, including but not limited to a video frame grab. The company says Axle AI can deliver a ranked list of media clips, including an index to precise segments of those clips, with contents matching the search image.

The technology underlying the system is a visual analysis and search engine developed by Visual Atoms.  “Axle AI’s search engine employs the latest in deep learning technology to effortlessly link landmarks, locations, products or logos, based on their visual similarity,” said Visual Atoms CTO Miroslaw Bober in a prepared statement. “Axle AI saves users time and money in everyday tasks such as discovery of relevant content, finding alternative content, locating the rushes for a given scene in a shoot, linking edits back to rushes, or finding instances of the licensed material.”

At NAB, Axle CEO Sam Bogoch showed how the system could be used to find, as an example, all available clips that were shot in front of a certain building facade. By recognizing certain elements and patterns in the architecture, the search algorithms were able to quickly retrieve relevant clips based on visual characteristics alone, without the help of human-added metadata.

Cloud computing power was a dominant motif at NAB, but Bogoch said Axle AI is a strictly on-site solution, relying on local processing power to search on-premise storage. “Everything is on site,” he told StudioDaily. “The problems people have [with media management], in our experience, are on-premise problems,” he said.

Axle AI is priced at $4,995 for a preconfigured appliance that includes the required software and a license for analyzing and searching 2,000 hours of source material. Additional licenses, priced at $1,650, will be required for every 1,000 hours of additional visually searchable footage in a customer’s system. Turnkey systems that include Axle 2017 media management software, appropriate hardware, and a connected Axle AI Appliance start at $9,995, the company said. Axle AI is expected to ship May 31.

Axle Video: axlevideo.com