Online video service Hulu, which allows viewers to watch TV series and movies online, has recently launched a new feature called Captions Search.
With the help of this new feature, users can search for keywords in the Closed Captions that are available with videos. In essence, this means that Hulu viewers can now search for particular scenes in a movie or television show that comes with closed captions.
Captions Search results include a preview of the section of the video containing the keyword, which can be seen by hovering over the segment featuring the search term. One can also see that clip in full size by clicking on the search result’s text.
Hulu Captions Search is currently avalaible in Hulu Labs or through the “Captions” tab on any video that has been provided with closed captions.
Another interesting feature of Captions Search is the heat map. This feature provides a graphical representation of the viewer interest generated during various stages of the show. A large range of viewer behaviours have been assessed to generate this graph, and it appears at the top of the video. This heat map can also be used to navigate directly to a particular captioned section of the show.
The features are still in the beta phase, but are likely to go live pretty soon.
Preview of Captions Search on Hulu
