Downloadable and recorded application software for providing search capabilities for multimedia files, namely, the ability to automatically analyze images and video files and create a searchable index of their contents, the ability to automatically find digital images and video segments based on visual content, the ability to automatically locate pictures and videos that contain specific text visible somewhere in the field of view of the image/video, the ability to automatically recommend keywords/tags for an image based on the visual content in that image, and the ability to automatically provide e-mail and other electronic alerts to users when content of interest to them is observed during an indexing/live video monitoring operation; Downloadable and recorded application software for automatically analyzing images and video files and creating a searchable index of their contents, finding digital images and video segments based on visual content, locating pictures and videos that contain specific text visible somewhere in the field of view of the image/video, recommending keywords/tags for an image based on the visual content in that image, and providing e-mail and other electronic alerts to users when content of interest is observed during an indexing/live video monitoring operation