Miami Beach launches Sound Search to let residents search meeting video recordings

City staff announced that the City of Miami Beach has launched a feature called Sound Search to let residents search spoken words in archived meeting video recordings and jump directly to the moment a keyword was spoken.

City staff said, "We are pleased to announce that the city of Miami Beach has launched an innovative feature called Sound Search. This new tool is designed to enhance the efficiency and accuracy with which our residents can access specific information from city meetings." The staff member described the feature as providing "contextual playback" that starts a few seconds earlier than the matched phrase so viewers have surrounding context.

According to the staff member, Sound Search "allows users to conduct word searches directly within our meeting video recordings" and will "significantly reduce the time required to locate topics of interest, enabling residents to engage more effectively with the city's proceedings." The feature is available at www.miamibeachfl.gov/mbtb and can be accessed from any device's web browser by scrolling to the archived video section and running searches.

The announcement emphasized user-friendly access and the ability for successful searches to "direct users to the exact moment when a keyword or phrase was mentioned, with playback starting a few seconds earlier to provide context." No formal action or vote was recorded in the transcript regarding the tool's launch.