A contest aimed at discovering the next smart search engine for audio and video clips came closer to getting a winner on Friday, as it moved into the second round with seven teams from five countries still in the running.

The contest, organised by Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research, wants to find a developer that can create new ways to find multimedia files quickly and accurately, without relying on text tags that are used now.

Teams from Singapore, China, France, Japan and the United States are still in the hunt, after surviving an earlier round of elimination.

The next round starts on Sept 1, and the winner will emerge from the finals held in Singapore in October.