Is media search still a work in progress?

David P. Moore

I saw to latest Faithlife blog post yesterday that featured a timeline slide on Micah. I decided to search for it in my library. It took several different types of searches to finally find it in "DIY Bible Study." (Did a Basic search on Micah NEAR #image). The obvious choice of doing a Media Search for Timelines with the keyword Micah does not pull it up--either by "Search All Word Forms" or not. Did I do something wrong or is this a bug?

Veli Voipio

I was thinking something similar.

I've started reading https://www.logos.com/product/17179/the-letters-to-the-seven-churches-of-asia-in-their-local-setting and I try to check information about those seven cities. Within my resources, there is lots of information, but I have to try several searches creatively in order to catch all or at least most of the information.

I feel that in the course of the years the search engine has improved a lot, particularly regarding to the pictures.

Occasionally the search slows down and I have to wait one or more minutes. I have the feeling it is related to the videos. Maybe it has a bug so that occasionally it will search every pixel in the videos?

Edit: maybe the problem in not in the search, but in making the video thumbnails, because that seems to be slow. Thus when I want to see the video in the search result, it creates all thumbnails first, then hides them and only after that shows the video?

Mark Barnes

David P. Moore said:

I saw to latest Faithlife blog post yesterday that featured a timeline slide on Micah. I decided to search for it in my library. It took several different types of searches to finally find it in "DIY Bible Study." (Did a Basic search on Micah NEAR #image). The obvious choice of doing a Media Search for Timelines with the keyword Micah does not pull it up--either by "Search All Word Forms" or not. Did I do something wrong or is this a bug?

I've also responded in your similar post on the Proclaim forum.

But specifically with the questions raised here:

1. For the time being, you need to get used to the differences when you're searching for online content and local content. Online content doesn't support fields, for example, so if you restrict your search by a field then you won't see any online content at all.
2. If you're looking for media about a specific topic or book, then it's well worth making sure you have the book/topic selected in the search suggestions drop down. In this case, that means searching for <Micah> or <Topic Book of Micah>, rather than just "micah". If you prefer not to search, you can use the Factbook instead (or the Media Browser, if you only want online results).

You might think that it's Logos' responsibility to perform the search in the most appropriate way, and it's not your responsibility to know in advance whether you're interested in online results or local results. If you do think that, you'd be perfectly justified, and I'm sure that by the time we get to Logos 8 or 9, then all this will matter much less. But the feature is still relatively new, and when you create something new it's not always easy to integrate it well with what already exists.

Dave Hooton

David P. Moore said:

The obvious choice of doing a Media Search for Timelines with the keyword Micah does not pull it up--either by "Search All Word Forms" or not

It only came up with "All Media" in "All Resources", but it should have come up with Timelines.

David P. Moore

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/807676#Comment_807676

Mark Barnes said:

Online content doesn't support fields, for example, so if you restrict your search by a field then you won't see any online content at all.

Thanks for your reply Mark, and I understand what you are saying about the different types of content. However, after seeing the replies in the Proclaim list I realized that my question didn't have anything to do with Proclaim, and unless I'm wrong, I don't think my question has anything to do with online content. The Micah timeline sits in a book on my computer (DIY Bible Study, file name DIYBBLSTDY.logos4.) So when I do a Media/Timeline search on Micah, should it not appear in the results?

I guess my real question is: what is FaithLife advertising when it provides me with the ability to do a Media/Timeline Search? Are they saying "we will thoroughly search your computer for all media quality timelines on Micah" or are they saying "we will try to do this search, but the results may not represent all the timelines that you have in your library on this search topic." I just need to know how much trust to put into the search function going forward.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/807709#Comment_807709

David P. Moore said:

I don't think my question has anything to do with online content.

That depends on what your question was:

If your question was, "When I did a timeline search, why didn't the specific result from DIY Bible Study show up?", then your question doesn't have anything to do with online content.

If your question was, "When I did a timeline search, why didn't I get the timeline of Micah?", then your question does have something to do with online content, because that timeline exists in the online media library (as well as in the DIY resource).

I've answered the more general question already. I'll answer the more specific one.

You didn't get that result because when the DIY Bible Study resource was put together, then that image wasn't tagged with "Timeline". In other words, the problem is with the resource, not with search.

David P. Moore said:

I guess my real question is: what is FaithLife advertising when it provides me with the ability to do a Media/Timeline Search? Are they saying "we will thoroughly search your computer for all media quality timelines on Micah" or are they saying "we will try to do this search, but the results may not represent all the timelines that you have in your library on this search topic." I just need to know how much trust to put into the search function going forward.

Tagging is never going to be perfect, so you should never rely on it 100%. Within Bibles it's probably 99.99% accurate. Within other resources, less so.

David P. Moore

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/807840#Comment_807840

OK thanks Mark!