[rajington]

I had a similar problem previously and considered automating it by comparing frames. It's not easy and would have obvious false positives/negatives, but YouTube does help by publishing key frames and it could at least be used to help rank results.

Take this example music video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vopR3ys8Kw

Frames:

https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/0.jpg

https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/1.jpg

https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/2.jpg

https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/3.jpg

And this lyrics video version (more interesting because it's SOMEWHAT changing):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoAqHxm5dpo

Frames:

https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/0.jpg

https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/1.jpg

https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/2.jpg

https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/3.jpg

Simply finding the differences between frames would give the first video a higher score than the second.

[spdustin]

I commented on your parent post before reading this...

Nice catch on the thumbnails that YouTube already captures. A histogram comparison between the second and third auto-generated thumbnails from the lyrics video was mostly equivalent when I ran one. That would be a good sign that it's not the actual music video.