What is a Reverse Search?
Now we have search engines like Google, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and many more. One can search a term and get all the relevant written image/video content published or uploaded by content creators all around the world. In a normal search, we put a term, and search engines lookup up that term in their database. But certain times we need to do reverse searches where we want to put the content and want to check whether that content exists on the Internet or not. For text content, we have several plagiarism checkers where we put the content and they look for its copies on the web. In the case of images, we have several reverse image search options including Google’s own reverse search and many other platforms like Berify, TinEye, etc. Also Read: 15 Best Google Alternatives You Can Try
What’s a Reverse Video Search?
When it comes to videos, there is no direct option for performing a reverse video search. The most evident proof is when you Google this term ‘reverse video search’ the very first result is of Berify.com that is basically a reverse image search tool not a reverse video research video tool. If there would have a reverse video tool Google is smart enough to rank that. You might ask why even after years of existence of search engines there is no reverse video search engine. The reason is very simple: there are millions of videos getting uploaded on the Internet. The size of these videos is very huge. It is simply not feasible to store all the videos on the Internet in a database. It will need a lot of computing power and as there are only users looking to reverse video search.
How To Do Reverse Video Search: A Comprehensive guide
How To Prepare A Video For Reverse Video Search
Okay, When there is no reverse video search engine what are available options. One of the easiest ways is to do a reverse video search by doing it through reverse image search. You might be getting serious. The idea here is we can take several screenshots of the video and then try to reverse the image search for that. It works fairly well in most cases. We need to prepare the video for reverse video search. Follow the below steps to get the video ready.
Open the video you want to reverse video search on a video player. As an example, I have downloaded one of my YouTube videos and played it on my Mac.The quality of the video needs to be higher. At least (1280×720). It is not completely mandatory but if the quality is good chances of getting correct results will be higher. In this case, the video I have is a Full HD (1920×1080).Now take screenshots in the video. Try to take screenshots on the point where extra data like texts are visible.You can use the Snipping Tool on Windows to take screenshots on Windows PC. On Mac, Command+Shift+3 takes a screenshot of the entire screen. If you want to take a screenshot of a specific part then Command+Shift+4 gives you the option to select the area you want to capture.After taking the screenshots, save them in the most popular image formats like JPEG/PNG.Now when you have screenshots of the different parts of the video ready. Now it’s time to perform a reverse image search of them.
1. How To Reverse Video Search Using Google
My first recommendation will be reverse image search using Google Images. Why? Because Google certainly has the highest number of images in its database. Chances are very high that you will get correct results. Other reasons are Google Reverse Image search is completely free, It has an unlimited upload size option, It supports almost all the image types. Follow the below steps to reverse video search using Google.
Go to Google Images homepage. In the search box, you will find a Camera Icon on the right, If you will hover on that It will show search by image. Click on that camera icon.
Clicking on the icon will pop up a box where you will find search by image. “Try searching with an image instead of text”
You will have two options: either you can paste the URL of an image or upload an image. In our case, as we have all the images taken in the form of screenshots. We will go with the upload an image option.Once you have uploaded the image Google will start looking up for all the places in its database where that image might be available. In just a matter of seconds, results will be in front of you.
Also Read: YouTube Timestamp Link: What Is It And How To Create One
2. How To Reverse Video Search Using Bing
No doubt Microsoft Bing is one of the best alternatives to Google Search. Alike Google Reverse Image Search, It also gives an option to perform Image Search. Follow the below steps To Reverse Video Search Using Bing.
Visit Bing homepage. You will find a search bar where usual searches can be performed.
On the right of the search bar, you will find two options. One for searching the web using your voice and the second search using an image. Pick the second option search using an image. A pop-up will be visible where It will be written Try Visual search with a picture instead of text.
There will be three options to bring images to perform the search. Either drag and drop or browse, paste image URL or Take a photo. Bing also gives an option to perform a sample test using one of the images given there.In our case, we will go with the first option. We will drag and drop the screenshots and then perform the search.
I tried searching for this screenshot from a song “Kun Faya Kun Kun” from the bollywood movie Rockstar and Bing was smart enough to provide similar results. Similar to Google and Bing Reverse image search other search engines like Yandex also provide this feature. I am attaching a couple of screenshots of the Yandex homepage by looking at them you can understand how you can do the reverse image search. You can try it as well but in most cases, Google and Bing can be your go-to choice due to the huge collection of images they have. Not just search engines are able to do a reverse image search. There are many tools available on the Internet having the ability to reverse search images. These tools work very well even better than Google and Bing in some cases. But one downside with these tools is they are not free. Some of them are free but not all of them but anyways you can try them by taking trials.
3. How To Perform Reverse Video Search Using Berify
The very first tool I will recommend to you is Berify.com. If you search reverse video search on Google. It will be the very first search that means it is credible. It prioritizes its reverse search engine to find stolen images and videos. Berify performs reverse image search using its collection of over 800 Million+ images as well as through other popular image search engines. The best part about Berify is it is not totally independent of other search engines but it works mainly through its own database and uses other search engines as a supplement.
Go to Berify.com and do a free sign up.
On the homepage, you will find a search box. In which you can either upload images by drag and drop or browse on your computer. Once images are there click the search button.Berify will look into its database to provide results.
4. How To Perform Reverse Video Search Using TinEye
One of the most popular specialized reverse image search engines on the Internet. As per the claim made by TinEye currently, they have 46.9 billion images in their database. It is easy to perform a reverse image search on TinEye. Just follow the below steps.
Visit TinEye.com
You can either upload the images by dragging them or browse them on your computer. If you want to perform the reverse image search by an URL you can also do that. You can also copy and paste an image from your clipboard. After uploading the image click that search icon and TinEye will find the relevant results.
The best part about TinEye is: It offers extensions for browsers like Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Firefox. Users need to just right-click on the image and perform a reverse image search.
5. How To Perform Reverse Video Search Using Shutterstock
When we talk about stock images one name that always came in our mind is Shutterstock. It is one of the biggest sites on the Internet for stock images. They have a huge database of images. Having such a huge database can be very helpful in reverse image search. That’s why Shutterstock launched its reverse image search engine.
Now when you will go on the shutterstock website. You will get two options. One for search for images and the other for search by image. To perform reverse image search go with the search by image option. You can drag and drop the image or browse on your computer to upload. Once the preferred image is there you can search on the ever-growing database of stock images.
Wrapping Up
So these are the available ways by which you can do reverse video research. Now when I have gone through different possible workarounds for doing reverse video search, It’s time for a conclusion. Although, there is no direct reverse video search tool on the Internet as of now. But It is not that hard to find the actual source of a video. I have explained some of the available options above. The idea is very easy here. Just take some screenshots of the video frame and on the place of reverse video search just do a reverse image search and it will do the job. There are plenty of free options like the Google Reverse Image search tool. You can also try out other search engines. If you are a professional photographer, the lawyer then spending a premium for reverse image search is not a bad deal. Because having such tools will help you in your profession. You can try tools like Berify, TinEye, Shutterstock. What do you think is the reverse image search engine helps in doing reverse video search? Did these methods work for you? Let me know in the comments.
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