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Overview

Searching for content in Brightcove Beacon OTT apps has been greatly improved with a new and more intuitive and intelligent search experience.

What’s New?

With this update, Brightcove Beacon now supports:

• Multi-word search: Search using complete phrases for more precise results.

• Real-time search from the first keystroke: See suggestions and results instantly as you type.

• Typo tolerance: Find content even with small spelling errors.

• Metadata search: Retrieve content based on descriptions, tags, genres, and other metadata.

Multi-word search

With the new multi-word search capability, you can now enter full phrases or multiple words in a single search query to find more accurate and relevant content.

By default, the search engine tries to match all words in the query. However, if an exact match isn’t found, it can still return partial matches based on relevance.

Example

Search for: fast action thriller

Results

Movies tagged with: fast action thriller

Titles containing: fast action

The search engine prioritizes close matches to ensure you still find useful results.

Real-Time Search from the First Keystroke

Real-time search provides you with immediate search results as you type.

The search engine anticipates potential search queries based on the initial letters or words entered.

Example

Search for: rom

Results

Suggestions: Romantic Comedies Rome Travel Guides Romance Movies

With each additional character you input, the search results and suggestions are refined to better match the intended query.

Typo Tolerance

Typo tolerance ensures that you can still find relevant content even if you make small spelling mistakes in your search query. This feature improves the search experience by allowing minor errors without completely altering the search results.

The search engine automatically corrects common misspellings and returns the closest matches based on relevance.

Search for: advanture movies

Results:

• Adventure Movies
• Action-Adventure Films
• Top Rated Adventure Films

Typo tolerance applies to different types of spelling mistakes, including:

• Single-letter errors (e.g., adventure instead of advanture).
• Missing or extra letters (e.g., superheros instead of superheroes).
• Swapped letters (e.g., mvoie instead of movie).

By default, typo tolerance allows for up to two character mistakes in a query. However, exact matches are ranked higher, ensuring the most relevant results appear first.

Metadata Search

Metadata search allows you to find content based on additional information beyond just the title. This includes attributes such as descriptions, genres, cast names, and tags, making it easier to locate relevant content.

With metadata search, even if you don’t remember the exact title of a movie or show, you can still find it by searching for related details.

Search for: Christopher Nolan

Results:

• Inception (Director: Christopher Nolan)
• Dunkirk (Director: Christopher Nolan)
• Interstellar (Director: Christopher Nolan)

Metadata search can retrieve results based on:

• Descriptions: Searching for "spy thriller" can return action-spy movies even if the title doesn’t contain those words.
• Genres: Searching for "romantic comedy" will return all movies categorized under this genre.
• Cast Names: Searching for "Leonardo DiCaprio" will return all movies featuring the actor.
• Tags and Keywords: Custom tags added to content can be used to refine searches.

Metadata search ensures a richer search experience, allowing users to discover content in multiple ways beyond just the title. This makes content discovery faster and more intuitive in Brightcove Beacon OTT apps.

Words Segmentation

Words segmentation ensures that search queries in languages without clear word boundaries, such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, are properly processed for accurate search results. Unlike Latin-based languages, where spaces separate words, logographic languages rely on context to distinguish words.

Brightcove Beacon’s enhanced search now supports intelligent segmentation, allowing for better recognition of words in languages like Japanese.

Search for: 長い赤いドレス (Japanese for "long red dress")

Results:

• "長い" (Nagai) – "Long"
• "赤い" (Akai)– "Red"
• "ドレス" (Doresu) – "Dress"

With proper segmentation, the search engine correctly identifies each word within the phrase, improving search relevance.

Japanese Transliteration and Type-Ahead

The Japanese language has three writing systems: Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. When typing a search query in Japanese, users typically enter words phonetically in Hiragana before converting them into Kanji or Katakana.

To enhance search accuracy, Brightcove Beacon supports Japanese transliteration and type-ahead, allowing the search engine to recognize and match words in both their original Kanji form and their phonetic Hiragana representation.

Search for: さくら (Hiragana for "Sakura")

Results:

• さくら (Hiragana form)
• 桜 (Kanji form)
• サクラ (Katakana form)

Search Limitations

While the enhanced search functionality in Brightcove Beacon significantly improves content discovery, there are some limitations to be aware of. Understanding these constraints can help optimize search queries and ensure the best user experience.

Pagination Limits

By default, the search engine returns up to 1,000 hits per query. This limit can be increased up to a maximum of 20,000 hits. However, increasing this limit may impact performance.

Rate Limiting for Indexing Operations

To maintain performance and stability, the search engine enforces rate limits on indexing operations. Applications have a limit of 10,000 indexing operations per unit. If this limit is exceeded, the API may return an HTTP 429 error indicating too many requests.

Query Length Limitation

The maximum allowed search query length is 512 characters.