1. An automated method of detecting potential commercials in a video data stream that contains (i) segments of program type content, and (ii) commercial content, wherein segment representations of the video data stream are maintained in a first database, the method comprising: (a) receiving one or more video data streams in a video processing engine; (b) parsing, by the video processing engine, each video data stream directly into a plurality of successively contiguous segments, each segment having a predefined time length that is less than the time length of an average commercial; (c) creating, by the video processing engine, a representation of each segment, the representation of each segment being one or more fingerprints; (d) comparing, by a search engine that is in communication with the video processing engine, the plurality of segment representations to a plurality of known segment representations in a second database, and detecting any matches, the matches being likely known commercials, the method further comprising for segment representations that are not detected as matching known segment representations in the second database; (e) storing the plurality of segment representations in the first database, the first database including database records, each record including one segment representation and an associated timestamp that represents the time that the segment was aired or streamed; (f) identifying, by the search engine that is in communication with the video processing engine and the first database, any segment representations in the received and parsed one or more video data streams that match segment representations in the first database that were previously stored from video data streams that were previously received and parsed, wherein the video processing engine designates the content of each of the identified segment representations as being a portion of one or more potential commercials. and (g) electronically communicating the content of each of the segment representations identified in step (f) and the content of a predefined number of segment representations adjacent in time to the segment representations identified in step (f) to a content processing platform for subsequent recognition processing, and wherein for segment representations that are detected as matching known segment representations in the second database, steps (f) and (g) are not performed.