Mark Pascarella and Patrick Donovan, Gotuit Media
Gotuit Media--a company that offers metadata technologies
which, among other things, allow end-users to instantly
access the parts of a piece of video that interest them, and
which can also be used by video publishers to allow end-
users to make mash-ups out of their content--was recently
tapped by Fox Reality Channel to power an interactive
broadband video service for its Really Awards. The
company's other customers include Sports Illustrated (for
which it powers a search and navigation portal called the
FilmRoom), the NHL (for which it powers a searchable,
interactive, broadband version of the show, "NHL On The
Fly: Final"), and Sprint (for which it powers NFL Fantasy
Video, a mobile application that allows subscribers to
watch their own custom video highlight reels of their
favorite players).
Gotuit's president and CEO, Mark Pascarella, and the
company's VP of product management, Patrick Donovan,
recently spoke to [itvt]'s Tracy Swedlow about the
significance of the Fox Reality deal, about the company's
technologies and services, about using those technologies
to monetize video content, about new types of Internet
video programming that its technologies could enable,
about its future plans, and more.
[itvt]: Could you tell us about Gotuit's new deal with Fox Reality?
Donovan: Last year, Fox did the first-ever awards show for reality
television--the Really Awards--on its Fox Reality channel. This year,
we're powering a broadband video
site
that they have dedicated to their
coverage of these awards. We're indexing their video, both of the '06
ceremony and the '07 ceremony. The site also has a voting feature
where viewers can vote for the most memorable reality star of '07. The
winner of the vote will be announced at the awards ceremony on
October 13th.
Now what makes this project so significant for us is that it's the best
example yet of how our metadata and indexing technology can be used
to enhance entertainment programming. Our technology makes it
possible for the viewer to get instantly to video of whichever moment,
segment, personality, or award they're most interested in. So, when you
go to the Really Awards site, looking to view video of the 2006 awards,
you're not faced with one, big, impenetrable, hour-long video; instead,
you find that the video is indexed by--and accessible by--categories
such as awards, funniest moments, presenters, musical acts, favorite
characters, and so forth. So what our technology is doing is providing a
way for viewers--as soon as they land on the page--to personalize their
experience of the video by being able to instantly access the playlists
and scenes that most interest them.
[itvt]: How long after Fox Reality's broadcast of their 2007 awards
ceremony will indexed video be available on the site?
Donovan: As soon as it airs, we'll index it and can put it up within a
half hour after the broadcast is over. Prior to that, you can access
indexed video of the '06 ceremony. [Note: Donovan emailed [itvt]
Tuesday, to let us know that "Fox made the decision to wait before
releasing the video to broadband, and it will be up later this week."]
The reason we're so proud of this project is not only that it's significant
that a well-known brand like Fox and Fox Reality has chosen to use our
technology, but that the project provides such a great showcase for our
technology: people can actually experience the kinds of new
possibilities for on-demand video that our metadata technology makes
possible--they can see how much better their experience is when it's
indexed with Gotuit metadata.
[itvt]: How is Fox Reality going about promoting the availability of this
indexed broadband video service?
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Donovan: Fox Reality has a whole marketing push going on around the
linear TV show itself. They are also messaging that there's a broadband
destination site that has all the video from last year available, and that
the site also lets you take part in the awards by voting. If you look at
any of the reality TV blogs, magazines, etc., you'll see that they're
doing a lot of outreach to promote the site and the vote. Last year, the
winner of the viewer vote got 3 million votes. This shows how
interested they are in driving audience to the site to take part in the
voting, and also to consume the video.
[itvt]: Why do you think Fox Reality chose Gotuit for this project?
Donovan: Well, they have a 60-minute show with 13 to 16 different
award categories--last year it was 13, this year it's 16--with various
presenters, and with a ton of different personalities and shows being
talked about. They were looking for a way to let the viewer get quickly
to whatever their favorite show or star is, because, if you're a "Big
Brother" fan, that doesn't necessarily mean you're a "Survivor" fan or a
Flavor Flav fan. So when we showed them how--by wrapping their
video in our indexing technology--you can present viewers with these
playlists and allow this kind of instant access to the parts of the video
that most interest them, the people at Fox Reality really liked that.
The other thing they really liked--and this is a feature of our
second-generation player--was that they could take our technology and
customize it with the exact look that they wanted. In other words, they
could give it a look that was similar to the look of the linear TV show.
You can see how very different what we've done for Fox Reality is
from what we've done for Sports Illustrated, for example. So Fox
Reality not only liked the fact that our technology could offer a much
better viewing experience, they liked the fact that they could customize
our player to reinforce their branding.
[itvt]: Now, as I recall, when Gotuit started out, you were very much
targeting your platform at the cable industry. Now you seem to be
working directly with broadcasters and other content providers, and
focusing your efforts on the broadband video space...
Pascarella: You're right that cable--and, in particular, cable VOD--was
the initial entry point for our technology. We've conducted trials with
both Time Warner Cable and Comcast, reaching a peak of our
technology being available in over a million homes throughout the
Northeast. Then, more recently, we expanded the technology to both
broadband and mobile video formats. It's always been our vision to not
only deliver this unique viewing experience, where the consumer has
complete control and can enjoy video content in a highly personalized,
non-linear fashion, but to be able to do that regardless of platform or
device. So we started in cable television, and then expanded to
broadband and mobile. We've seen empirical data across all three
platforms we've offered our services on that confirms that when you
make it simple and easy for consumers to access the parts of a program
that they find most interesting, they'll stay longer and watch more.
Also, we've found that, when you can delineate and precisely describe
what occurs in each scene within a video, you have greater flexibility
and more monetization opportunities from an advertising standpoint.
[itvt]: What is the current status of your various cable VOD
deployments? Are you proactively seeking additional cable
deployments at this point?
Pascarella: The market trials that we did with cable VOD, which
peaked at over one million homes, have all been completed, and
delivered outstanding results in terms of increased views and
advertising served. The data clearly shows that end-users loved to be
able to bring up an index of the program they were watching and
navigate to a particular scene, or choose a compelling playlist that cuts
across the entire video library.
Viewing time on Gotuit-enabled channels was significantly higher than
before the content was enabled with Gotuit technology. Gotuit-enabled
channels dominated other channels from better-known brands that were
not enabled by Gotuit. The business case is further supported by the
fact that Gotuit technology creates an advertising capability of both
on-screen banner ads and in-stream video ads, that did not exist before.
We are ready to help the cable industry distribute our patented
technology more broadly when they make it a priority.
[itvt]: So I take it you're not abandoning the set-top box?
Pascarella: No. We believe that the traditional livingroom-television
environment will be a large and interesting part of our business going
forward. However, at the moment, the largest and fastest-growing
components of our business are broadband and mobile. It's nice to be
able just to talk directly to the content publishers and work with them to
create the kind of user experience and monetization opportunities they
want.
[itvt]: Now, just to clarify, when one goes to the Fox Reality site and
accesses different parts of the 2006 or 2007 Really Awards video, those
different parts are not actually video clips, correct?
Donovan: Exactly. The big difference with Gotuit is that we don't
actually create clips or edit the video in any way. What you're seeing on
the Really Awards site is the video file of the 60-minute broadcast still
existing in its original, intact form. What we do is create a set of
metadata describing it, which allows Fox to offer viewers a detailed
playlist of individual segments of the video--and which also allows
those viewers to take a scene they like and send it to a friend or embed
it on their blog: when the viewers do that, they're not actually sending
clips; all they're doing is sending our metadata. Actually, Fox is very
interested in using our technology to encourage their viewers to take
their favorite moments from the show and distribute them throughout
the Internet.
[itvt]: How does an end-user go about embedding the video on their
Web site?
Donovan: Similar to other services, right underneath the player, there
are embed codes and link codes for the particular playlist or scene that
you're watching. So the end-user just has to copy and paste that into
their blog or Web site to have an embedded player for that portion of
the program.
[itvt]: Now, one of the more interesting things about your technology is
that it enables people to experience video in quite a different way from
traditional linear television...
Pascarella: Exactly. I think this is the larger point of our work with Fox
and our other customers. What a lot of people are highly interested
in--and this is something that has ultimately influenced their purchase
decisions--is that our technology enables Internet video that isn't just
modeled on broadcast--i.e. that isn't just experienced in a linear
way--but that leverages some of the unique things that the Internet
makes possible.
Video delivery has been around since 1941, and the Internet--taken
purely as a delivery mechanism--hasn't really improved on the
traditional methods. That is, of course, if you think of video purely as a
passive, linear experience. However, what the Internet does is that it
opens up a space for a different video experience--i.e. for interactivity
that allows individuals to customize their experience of programming
in a way that hasn't been possible before. We feel that our Gotuit
PowerVideo Suite technology, by wrapping video content in rich and
granular metadata, unlocks the potential of Internet video by making it
easy for individuals to really define their own experience of a piece of
video--and even to manipulate, personalize, and share that video. And it
makes this possible, even as it leaves the video itself intact and
unaltered. We've had a lot of people look at our technology and realize
that it really enables a paradigm shift in the way that audiences
consume video--and, of course, they can also see that it has major
positive benefits in terms of monetizing that video.
[itvt]: So you're saying that your metadata technology could enable new
genres of programming that are Internet-specific--as opposed to
traditional linear programming that's just delivered via the Internet as
another channel. Could you speculate on some of the new kinds of
programming you feel your technology could eventually enable, if
more and more creatives get their hands on it?
Donovan: Sure. Imagine your favorite multi-character drama, like
"Lost," being indexed in this way. The viewer could now choose
"Character View," and only see scenes of Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, etc. Or
he could choose "Flashbacks," and watch only the scenes from before
they crashed on the island.
For an example of a brand-new kind of programming, imagine a video
experience like the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.
Publishers could produce programming knowing that they would allow
the audience to choose their own path through it, based on what they
wanted to watch. Do you want the character to live or die? Depending
on your choice, you would see a new segment or playlist.
Another example would be new, personalized video products. I am a
huge Boston sports fan, and I might sign up for a video product that
would allow me to see only the teams, players, or plays I am interested
in. Some of our work with Sports Illustrated shows this kind of
ability--for example, the NFL and NBA Draft products.
Same concept applies to news--allowing the viewers to personalize the
topics they are interested in. Training and enterprise video is another
area where applying metadata to enable personalized access would be
very effective.
You are also seeing publishers and brands put the creative control in
the hands of the audience, by making content available and allowing
the audience to remix new video experiences, such as ads, movie
trailers, etc. Gotuit metadata can be leveraged the same way, by using
metadata to define a new path--a remix--through the video library.
However, the core need that publishers have to drive greater
monetization from their current video assets is what our solution best
addresses today. Publishers don't have to invent new content; they
simply have to enrich the content they already have with a new level of
metadata.
[itvt]: Now the tools within the Gotuit PowerVideo Suite that enabled
this new offering from Fox Reality are Gotuit VideoMarker Pro, Gotuit
VideoPlayer, and Gotuit VideoDiscovery, correct?
Pascarella: Yes. Gotuit VideoMarker Pro is the tool that is used to
generate the metadata that's wrapped around the video file. Gotuit
VideoPlayer is our set of highly customizable modules that is
integrated into the customer's player environment to make them Gotuit-
enabled. Gotuit VideoDiscovery is our video search capability, where
all the metadata that is created is available for the viewer to search
across the video library and within each video asset.
[itvt]: Could you talk us through the process of how your technology
indexes/generates metadata for a piece of video? How long does it
usually take?
Donovan: How long it takes depends on the type of content and how
rich the publisher wants to make the metadata set. In the case of the
Really Awards, it's fairly straightforward content. Beforehand, we'll
pre-load as much data about the content as possible. In other words,
we'll pre-load the playlist structures that the publisher has defined and
any attributes that will be associated with each segment for search or
advertising purposes. For the Really Awards, these attributes include
things like "Character Name," "Program Name," and "Award
Category"; for other customers, like Sports Illustrated and Sprint,
attributes are things like "Player Name," "Team Name," "Position,"
"Play Type," "Date," etc. The system is flexible to allow the publisher
to define the attributes that their audience will want to search for, or
that their advertisers will want to advertise against. Publishers can
create rules to define the required attributes that must be present to
ensure that the metadata will be consistent and complete.
Then the person doing the indexing will start watching the show.
They'll mark the logical start- and end-points of each meaningful
segment, and give those segments a title and a description. They'll
capture a thumbnail, and then associate any attributes or tags to that
segment using the pre-loaded lists--again for the purposes of either
search or advertising. Once the segments are defined, they are placed
within the playlist structure that the publisher has defined. This is done
with a simple drag and drop.
Using VideoMarker Pro, we can do the indexing as the show is airing.
It's a process that actually does not take nearly the time it takes to air
the show. But, of course, we can't finish until the show is over, if we
are indexing it live like we do for the NFL games each weekend. When
the process is finished, it gets checked for quality and completeness,
and gets published to the broadband site or mobile destination. It can
usually be available within a half hour of the end of the show.
In general, programming with more natural segments, like news,
training video, interviews, etc., can be indexed in a fraction of the
actual content duration. More fluid content, like basketball, soccer, or
hockey, takes a little longer to index, but it is still less than the actual
content duration. The important point to realize is that for a minimal
investment in time you get out an extremely valuable data set.
Pascarella: We view Gotuit as establishing the standard for video
metadata. We believe that anyone producing video ought to wrap their
video content in the most granular and rich metadata set possible, for
two reasons: first because this maximizes the utility of a video for the
audience--by making it possible for each individual audience member
to get the maximum value from that video by quickly and easily finding
those parts they're most interested in. Secondly, because it brings about
new monetization opportunities, allowing for greater flexibility and
greater yield in delivering targeted advertising. Advertising can be
targeted specifically by keyword to the video content. As a video
producer, why would you ever want to ship your product to any digital
platform, without first wrapping it in rich, granular metadata, that truly
unleashes the power of your video library?
[itvt]: Could you give us some more detailed examples of how your
technology can improve video publishers' and site operators' ability to
monetize their content?
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Donovan: Sure. Most broadband content today is supported through
in-page and in-stream advertising. To improve monetization, the
publisher must 1) attract and retain a greater audience, 2) have them
watch more video, and 3) drive a higher CPM for the in-page and
in-stream ads. Gotuit impacts all three dimensions.
First, allowing the audience to quickly and easily discover the content
they are most interested in helps to keep the audience loyal and
returning to the site. The audience grows as viewers have more
interesting playlists and segments from a Gotuit-enabled library to
spread virally instead of just disconnected clips. It also grows by
having more detail about the video assets to publish out to third-party
video search aggregators to drive traffic back to the original site. For
example, instead of Fox having one item in their MRSS feed for the
Really Awards, there are now 40-plus different items that can be
syndicated out.
Second, viewers spend more time watching Gotuit-enabled video
libraries. The video itself is productized to present more interesting
views when the viewer first gets to the page. For our work with the
NHL, for example, each 30-minute episode has a "Big Hits" playlist
that grabs the viewer's attention immediately. A large percentage of
content viewed on Gotuit-enabled sites is due to a viewer choosing a
playlist to watch, rather than just a single clip. Viewers navigate the
playlists while they watch the video, queuing up the next items they
want to watch. We have seen visit time more than double for some of
our customers.
Third, and probably most important, all the metadata that is defined can
be used to drive more targeted and valuable in-page and in-stream
advertising revenue. Instead of just buying "Soccer," for example,
advertisers could choose "David Beckham" and pay more to only show
their ads next to, before, or after any scenes that include David
Beckham. There are many ad networks out there, but in order to be
most effective, you must have the data to use for targeting. Gotuit
metadata is the most useful and actionable data, especially for in-stream
video advertising. Not only does each segment have a rich data set, but
the entire video asset gets defined with logical points at which to insert
an ad. The publisher is no longer tied to forcing a pre-roll before every
clip, but instead can define when to insert an ad based on the time spent
or the number of segments watched. This optimizes the realized
revenue without driving the audience away by showing too many ads.
[itvt]: As you just mentioned, when a video producer uses Gotuit's
technology to index a video, the video is available to video search
engines complete with its indexing, correct?
Donovan: Yes. When we index a video, all of those segments that are
defined--along with their titles descriptions, thumbnails and so
forth--are published out in MRSS feeds that these third-party
video-search aggregators are equipped to ingest, and then index
themselves. A non-Gotuit-enabled broadband video site will just send
asset-level information to those third parties. We, however, send
segment-level information that can be discovered by those third-party
search engines, so you end up with a much larger dataset describing
that video.
And, because the video remains intact and the granularity is in the
metadata, you have an advantage when somebody discovers your video
in a third-party search engine. For example, say someone were to do a
search for "Rob and Amber" from "Survivor" on a search site that had
indexed our MRSS feed from the Really Awards. When they clicked on
the search result from our feed, they'd come back to the Really Awards
video to the exact segment where Rob and Amber appeared in the
show. However, they wouldn't just be discovering a Rob and Amber
video clip; they'd be discovering the point in the original video file
where the Rob and Amber segment occurred. So, they'd be able to see
the segment in its original context, and would see both what happened
before that segment and what happened afterwards within the playlist.
And, in turn, what that means is that our technology drives longer
viewing sessions, deeper user-engagement and, ultimately for those
same reasons, better monetization.
Pascarella: Our technology makes broadband video infinitely more
discoverable, regardless of what your access point may be--whether it
happens to be a search engine, or the actual video asset on
FoxReality.com. By having this layer of metadata for a video, we
enable the viewer to search for elements within a video asset, rather
than just to search for the asset as a whole.
[itvt]: Do you work proactively with video publishers to make their
indexed video discoverable by search engines?
Donovan: Yes. It's actually a standard part of our offering. We assume
that folks who want their video indexed want it discovered as much as
possible. So we automatically send out MRSS feeds to third-party
search engines and aggregators. Of course, if they don't want their feed
sent somewhere, we can turn it off for them--part of our process with a
publisher upfront is to specify those kinds of details.
[itvt]: Are you forming partnerships with the advertising networks out
there, or do you leave that to your publishers?
Donovan: That's up to the publishers. We're independent of third-party
ad providers, and we integrate with whichever ad provider the publisher
is using. To date, the ad providers we've worked with include
Advertising.com, Broadband Enterprises and DoubleClick. If a
publisher uses an ad provider we haven't yet worked with, we'll simply
integrate with them. If a publisher doesn't have any advertising
relationships, we can serve ads for them through a relationship we have
with Advertising.com. Typically, though, we're focused on premium,
professional video content, so most of our customers have their own ad
sales group and sell their own advertising.
[itvt]: What's Gotuit's business model for the Really Awards project?
Pascarella: Our business model in this instance and in general is
software licensing. So we're being paid based on the software
technology that we deliver, and their usage of that.
[itvt]: Do you expect to work with Fox Reality on additional projects
going forward?
Pascarella: We would certainly hope that to be the case. I think we've
undertaken this relationship with the expectation that we'll continue to
work together to do more exciting, innovative things. What's been clear
from our discussions is that there's real interest in creating new viewing
experiences around television programming for the broadband
environment.
I think we both feel that it's important to move beyond simply
repackaging or redistributing programming content in its original linear
format, so that the broadband experience of that programming is truly
unique and differentiated. To that end, Fox Reality is not just providing
broadband viewers with new functionality enabled by our
technology--i.e. the ability to navigate to the precise parts of the show
that they're interested in and to embed that video in their own Web
sites, etc.--they're also providing broadband viewers with exclusive
access to footage of the event's red carpet. Their goal is to ensure that
broadband viewers of the Really Awards show get a very different
experience from viewers who have watched it in its linear broadcast
format.
[itvt]: Your technology also has applicability to mobile video, correct?
Donovan: Absolutely. Any metadata we create with the Gotuit
PowerVideo Suite is independent of platform. So if Fox Reality, or any
other customer, wanted to offer a linked broadband and mobile
experience, the metadata we created for their video would apply
equally well to either platform. The only thing that would happen
differently is that the video would be transcoded into the appropriate
format for the mobile platform--so Flash or 3GPP or whatever.
Actually, one of the differentiators for Gotuit is that the metadata we
create is platform-independent, and so we're live today on broadband,
cable and mobile.
Our flagship mobile application is NFL Fantasy Video, which we built
for Sprint. It is one of the only mobile applications that allows for a
personalized video experience--in this case, NFL football highlights.
Subscribers can choose their favorite players and then see the video
highlights of just those players on their Sprint mobile phone each week.
In addition to their favorite players, they can also scout any other player
in the league to see their highlights. This is possible because we index
every play of every NFL game each week, and publish the metadata
along with the video. The archive of all the plays from this year and last
year is available for the subscribers to easily watch for a cost of $5.99
per month.
[itvt]: Presumably, Gotuit is going to face more competition as people
realize the usefulness of rich metadata for broadband video...
Donovan: That is true, but I don't think I've seen anybody doing
broadband video in the way we do it. Other people are certainly
clipping their content--they'll create a bunch of clips that they'll send to
YouTube or whatever. But, as we discussed earlier, if you do that, not
only do you create many more assets that now have to be managed, but
you lose the original context of each clip.
What makes our solution superior is that it's much more efficient and
much simpler. You keep the original content the way it is. You describe
as many metadata sets as you like for as many products as you have
and in as many different ways as you want to represent that content, but
from an asset-management point of view, you only have one asset to
worry about.
The tools that we've built into the PowerVideo Suite to index video are
extremely efficient. As we discussed earlier, it lets you load in data
beforehand, and assists the indexer in creating a very rich dataset. As
we mentioned, for our mobile application, we index every single NFL
game, and that content--the video with all the rich metadata we
generate--is available within a half hour of the conclusion of each
game.
The bottom line is that we've got very strong intellectual property
around this use of metadata for improved search, navigation and
monetization of content that was written back in 1996 and granted in
2000. If someone is doing it the way we just described it, they may well
be using IP we've already defined.
Pascarella: You're right. More and more people in the industry are
coming round to understanding the importance of metadata and how it
needs to be used. And, with the rise of on-demand video, audiences are
starting to look for the kind of experience that our rich metadata
technologies can enable. People are starting to say, "Boy! I should be
able to do things differently with an on-demand video, right? I
shouldn't have to sit and wait to see what's going to happen, like with a
live broadcast, because it already happened. I should be able to jump to
the point I want. I should be able to just see the scenes with my favorite
character, or just see the scenes I need to catch me up with this
plotline."
Metadata is the key that unlocks all of that. And the key thing for us is
that we've been doing it since 2000. We've got a set of tools that
optimizes the production of it, as well as the consumption of it on the
player side. We can save publishers a lot of time and effort by using our
tools to jumpstart the performance of their video libraries.
[itvt]: Since Gotuit seems to be focusing more on broadband video
these days, why not create a low-end version of your tools that would
work for smaller content creators--or even for regular people who want
to put their video up on the Web and ensure that it can be easily found
by search engines? So a version of your tools for
user-generated-content environments.
Pascarella: Well, we started to do something a little bit like what you're
describing--putting our tools in the hands of consumers--with
SceneMaker.net, and I think you'll see more development around
that--where we let consumers index user-generated or professional
video and compile their own playlists or video mash-ups. And you're
right: the amount of video being produced--by individuals as well as by
premium publishers--is increasing exponentially by the day, and rich
metadata is needed to describe all that video.
For now, though, where we think the best business case for us lies is in
offering a premium toolset to premium brands--to content owners and
programmers. And we therefore haven't prioritized user-generated
content very highly. But our solutions, or a version of them, could
definitely be used for user-generated content, and certainly could be
used by smaller publishers. In fact, later this quarter, we'll be making
some announcements about new toolsets that could be used by smaller
publishers, as well as by larger publishers, to index their
video--solutions that, if they're using some other broadband video
solution, would be able to merge the metadata with the solution that
they're using. If you've already built a broadband video environment,
that doesn't mean that you can't enhance it with Gotuit technology: you
can apply the advanced discovery and navigation components that our
technology enables, without having to swap out your existing
environment.
[itvt]: At one point, wasn't Gotuit attempting to develop its own
destination broadband video site at Gotuit.com? What happened to it?
Gotuit.com now appears to be a corporate site...
Donovan: Yes, when we first entered the broadband market, we had our
own destination site where we had content that we licensed ourselves
across Music, News, Sports, Weather and other categories. This was
done primarily to showcase what our technology could do. As we have
been able to attract customers such as Sports Illustrated, the National
Hockey League, Fox Reality and others, there is no longer the need to
have our own consumer-focused site, so we re-launched our corporate
site at Gotuit.com to focus on our business-to-business value
proposition.
[itvt]: As you just mentioned, Gotuit's metadata technology can also
be used to facilitate mash-ups. You recently enabled a mash-up service for
Capitol Records Nashville. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Donovan: Gotuit VideoMixer is the latest module within the Gotuit
PowerVideo Suite. As you mentioned, it was most recently used by
EMI/Capitol Records Nashville to promote the launch of the first
album of one of their artists, Luke Bryan. Capitol Records has made
five videos available--the original music video, footage from three live
concerts, and the video press kit--and allows the audience to define
their own segments and then remix them into their own video
experience.
Publishers can either allow people to use an audio bed for their remix,
or just the natural scene audio. For the Luke Bryan Remix project, his
hit single is the audio bed for each remix. Capitol Records is using this
to promote a contest where the audience makes their own music video
for the hit single. One thing we have learned is that a portion of the
audience will like using the pre-defined scenes that were provided,
while others will define their own scenes to make exactly what they
want.
Capitol Records likes how it is driving a deeper engagement with Luke
Bryan's fans, without having thousands and thousands of new videos
being created. With Gotuit, each remix is simply another metadata set,
defining that user's path through the video library. There is no new
video to store or manage, but the user can send out links and embed
their remix wherever they want.
[itvt]: What kinds of announcements should we expect to hear from
Gotuit over the next few months?
Donovan: We will have several new customers and products to
announce over the coming months. We are also proud of some awards
that will be announced soon, such as the Streaming Media 2007
Readers' Choice Award, where Gotuit won for "Best Search and
Indexing Platform."
[itvt]: How is Gotuit funded? Is the company still seeking venture
funding at this stage?
Pascarella: Gotuit is privately held and funded by investments from
Highland Capital Partners, Atlas Venture, Motorola and private
investors. We are not actively seeking additional funding at this time,
but may seek additional investment in the future.
URL: Gotuit
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