This functionality helps the end-user find the material they want, and helps the material to be managed and administered. The basic indexing information is textual, and includes such things as the type of material, a description and key words.

This information needs to be stored in a database, and an interface to it provided which allows the end-user to browse through the index, or to use a search engine to find the material they want based on a given string of text, or a particular keyword, etc. Currently most indexing is text based, although research is currently being performed into how other aspects of multimedia material can be used to help find the desired item. MPEG (The Motion Pictures Expert Group) is currently working on a standard MPEG-7 ‘Multimedia Content Description Interface’ to extend the current text based search capabilities to include more information types. Some such areas are finding similar images, graphics such as icons, music based on a few played notes, movements between objects, scenarios, and extracting additional textual material from subtitle text.