Case Study: S4M (Solutions for Media) achieves instant, searchable video metadata with ABBYY FineReader Engine

ABBYY FineReader Engine goes TV!

ABBYY partnered with Cologne-based Solutions for Media (S4M) to integrate FineReader Engine into S4M’s Video Preview Management System (VPMS), now used by major German broadcasters including RTL. The challenge was extracting and indexing meta data from millions of satellite feeds: VPMS creates low-resolution (MPEG‑1, 352×288) JPEG “freeze frames” of on-screen text that must be converted into searchable, structured data for immediate use — a difficult task for typical OCR.

S4M uses ABBYY FineReader’s advanced image pre-processing and recognition to convert those freeze-frame images into accurate, searchable text that is exported into RTL’s database. The integration greatly reduces manual data entry, speeds up tagging and retrieval of video content, and enables editors and media managers to find and broadcast relevant footage faster.

S4M

Holger Noske

Director Digital Media Management