FOR a daily dose of Web video escapism, go to YouTube once a day. But for variety, head to the hundreds of video sites.

While YouTube may be the most popular destination for watching videos, it doesn't quite encompass all the clips available.

Also, given that it is focused on mainly user-generated content, YouTube doesn't cover clips from official media sources with whom it does not have alliances.

Enter video search engines. These aggregators save you the work of going to individual video sites to seek out content. With just a keyword and a click, video search engines quickly dig out and display results from their databases.

Depending on the origin of the clips, sometimes you can even play them from within the search engine's interface.

Here are some of the more popular video search engines to test-drive:

blinkx.com

blinkx claims to be the world's largest and most advanced video search engine, with over 18 million hours of searchable video and 111 patents. Search technology includes speech recognition and video analysis with which to create more accurate results.

It also has alliances with over 200 media partners, including Reuters, Comedy Central and National Geographic.

Users can also build a customised video wall powered by blinkx for their blog or MySpace page.

truveo.com

Owned by Web media conglomerate AOL, Truveo's technology also powers the video search of sites such as those owned by Microsoft, CNet and Excite. For just plain video-surfing, start clicking at the numerous suggested popular clips on the home page. The numerous categories also offer quick access to official news, entertainment and TV show content.

fooooo.com

The most used video search engine in Japan, it is a good choice for those interested in unearthing Japanese video content. But Fooooo is more international than it looks. It has interfaces for 11 languages including Korean, German, French and Russian, and each language version is slanted towards region-centric content. The nifty auto-complete keyword feature suggests keywords as you type, which can be a time saver as well as expand your search choices.

Unsure? Try this

AS AN example, try using fooooo.com this way.

The search box would be self-explanatory. But also look out for the suggested keywords that appear as you type out your search term. For example, as I type 'american idol', a list of suggestions pop out under the search box. I can just click on 'american idol kelly clarkson' instead of typing out all four words. This saves some keystrokes and is also helpful when you know only the partial spelling of a certain keyword.

In case the search returns too many results, you can filter them in various ways. For example, you can check the Without YouTube option to eliminate YouTube results. You can also filter by duration of the videos. Channel limits the results to specific video sites, while Category filters results according to genre.

Last but not least, to the right of the Search button on the home page, you can click Add Plugin to enable searching Fooooo from the search box within Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox directly without having to navigate to Fooooo's home page first. For those who prefer clean designs, clicking the Use Simple Home Page link changes the interface to Fooooo's original minimalist interface.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life on 27 May 2008.