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3 Video Predictions for 2012: Thought Equity Motion's Kevin Schaff
Following are 3 video predictions for 2012 from Kevin Schaff, CEO and founder of Thought Equity Motion which offers cloud-based storage, access and licensing services for master-quality video.
Categories: Predictions
Topics: Predictions, Thought Equity Motion
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Thought Equity Motion Acquires Panvidea To Streamline Video Delivery
Cloud-based video platform Thought Equity Motion has acquired Panvidea, bringing together two complimentary companies that are focused on streamlining digital video management, work flow and delivery. Thought Equity's CEO/founder Kevin Schaff and Panvidea's CEO/co-founder Chris Cali (who will become VP, Platform Technologies) briefed me on the deal.
The big picture here is that as digital delivery to multiple devices gains steam, the back-end processes of getting high value content quickly, securely and cost-effectively to the right places becomes critical. Distributing via tape with lots of manual steps involved isn't acceptable any longer. Kevin sees Panvidea's platform, which manages the full spectrum of video preparation (ingest, storage, customization, transcoding and delivery to multiple platforms/devices), as complimenting Thought Equity's platform which is focused on master file and archive management. Combining the capabilities is intended to give content providers a full end-to-end solution.
Categories: Deals & Financings, Technology
Topics: Panvidea, Thought Equity Motion
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Thought Equity Motion Raises $25 Million For Cloud-Based Video Asset Management
Thought Equity Motion has raised $25 million from Shamrock Capital Advisors to further develop its cloud-based video asset management platform and
expand globally. As Kevin Schaff, CEO and founder of Thought Equity Motion explained to me last week, the company is capitalizing on the media industry's shift from analog to digital work flows which is improving operational reliability, saving capex and opening new revenue opportunities.
Thought Equity Motion has optimized its cloud service for media companies that want to move from storing high-value libraries on tape or on local hard drives to doing so in the cloud. First and foremost, Kevin said the company's focus is on secure, redundant master file storage. Thought Equity Motion's cloud is particularly suited to large video file sizes with high throughput ingest and encoding. The company is now ingesting 1 petabyte of video per month, a dramatic increase from just 6 months ago. Files are kept at a secure, enterprise-class physical storage facility with on-demand encoding and access.
Categories: Deals & Financings, Technology
Topics: ACC, NCAA, Shamrock Capital Advisors, Thought Equity Motion
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Complimentary Webinar, Tues, May 3rd: Unlocking the Value of Video Content Libraries
Please join me for a complimentary webinar next Tuesday, May 3rd at 11am PT / 2pm ET, as Colin Dixon, senior partner at research firm The Diffusion Group, Mark Lemmons, CTO of Thought Equity Motion and I discuss how media companies can unlock the tremendous value in their video content libraries. At the conclusion of the webinar, a complimentary white paper will be distributed to all attendees.
Media companies have traditionally had to live by the constraint that that once video is archived, it is "stranded," with its best monetization days most likely behind it. A combination of technical and business issues have conspired to limit the total potential ROI. As a result, media companies are sitting on mountains of valuable video content that hasn't been easily shared or monetized.
Now however, a perfect storm of innovation, business model ingenuity and rapidly changing consumer preferences is changing all that. Projects like the NCAA Vault and ACC Vault, which are both powered by Thought Equity Motion, are showing that it is both possible - and profitable - to surface library content in unique and differentiated ways. In this timely webinar we'll explore the processes and best practices involved with media companies bringing video content libraries to life online.
Learn more and register nowCategories: Events
Topics: Thought Equity Motion, Webinar
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Complimentary Webinar: Unlocking the Value of Video Content Libraries
Please join me for a complimentary webinar on Tuesday, May 3rd at 11am PT / 2pm ET, as Colin Dixon, senior partner at research firm The Diffusion Group, Mark Lemmons, CTO of Thought Equity Motion and I discuss how media companies can unlock the tremendous value in their video content libraries.
It's no secret that to date most of the monetization any particular video will generate will occur in the relatively short-term after its initial release. A combination of technical and business reasons have conspired to constrain the total potential ROI.
Categories: Events
Topics: Thought Equity Motion, Webinar
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Sony Pictures Taps Value of Archive With Thought Equity's Metadata Editor
Major content providers are continuing to realize that new value can be mined from archives of long-form premium content by creating and indexing metadata in order to distribute shorter clips of key scenes. The latest example came this week as Sony Pictures Entertainment struck a deal with Thought Equity Motion to use its T3 Metadata (screen shot below) for its enormous catalog of entertainment content.
Categories: FIlms, Studios, Technology
Topics: Sony Pictures, Thought Equity Motion
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CBSSports.com College Network To Mine Value of Universities' Sports Video Archives
Sports continues its role as a leading online video innovator, as this morning CBSSports.com College Network, a division of CBS Interactive, is announcing an initiative to enable its 175 university partners to mine the value of their
extensive sports video libraries, in a new partnership with technology provider Thought Equity Motion. Last week Rob Schupler, CBSSports.com College Network's SVP of University Relations and Dan Weiner, VP of Marketing and Products at Thought Equity Motion briefed me on their plans.
Rob explained that CBSSports.com College Network has a broad mandate with its university partners - to create their web sites, manage content, help build their fan bases, protect their brands and monetize through different business models. A key area of fan interest has been audio and video content, which is often available through premium subscriptions. However, when it comes to archived video content, the sites have mainly only offered a tiny fraction of what's in their vaults, usually just highlights from the past season. Rob said that the traditionally manual process of producers accessing archived content made providing a richer assortment operationally and economically unviable.
Categories: Sports, Technology
Topics: CBSSports.com College Network, Thought Equity Motion
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New "ACC Vault" Launches With Classic Men's Basketball Games
Online video continues to make reliving the best moments of your favorite sports teams easier and the latest example is the new "ACC Vault" launching today. Through a partnership of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Raycom Sports and Thought Equity Motion, an archive of full-length, classic ACC Tournament and regular season men's basketball games from the 12 member programs dating to 1983 are now freely available to visitors (for an example, see the below clip of UNC's Michael Jordan hitting a nice jumper against Duke in 1984). The partners plan to add more sports highlights over time and envision ACC Vault eventually becoming an "all sport video Wikipedia."
Categories: Sports, Technology
Topics: ACC, ACC Vault, NCAA Vault, Raycom Sports, Thought Equity Motion
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NCAA and Thought Equity Motion Renew Deal For Video Archive Access
The NCAA and Thought Equity Motion are announcing this morning a multi-year extension of their technology and rights management agreement. Last March, in conjunction with the NCAA Men's Basketball March Madness, the "NCAA Vault" was introduced, which contained searchable access to every moment of video from the last 10 years of the final 16 teams' games. One of the things I was most impressed about with the NCAA Vault is how flexibly exact clips could be found and also how fast the response times were.
In the renewed deal, Thought Equity will also be adding other NCAA Division I championship events like Women's Basketball and Baseball and Wrestling, plus add social media capabilities and enhanced metadata. Thought Equity will also be working with the NCAA to identify other rights windows and business models.
Categories: Sports, Technology
Topics: NCAA, Thought Equity Motion
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New "NCAA Vault" is More Evidence of Archived Assets' Value
This year's "March Madness" men's college basketball tournament is just around the corner and in addition to the now-customary live streaming of the games (and this year an iPhone app for additional streaming), a new feature was introduced last week: "NCAA Vault" - a video index to every single moment in "Sweet 16" history for the last 10 years. NCAA Vault is powered by Thought Equity Motion, a technology provider that partners with media companies and rights-holders to digitize, deliver and monetize video assets. Last week I spoke with Thought Equity's CEO and founder Kevin Schaff to learn more about how the Vault works and the background of the deal with the NCAA.
Kevin explained that Thought Equity indexed all 150 of the Sweet 16 games' video with rich metadata for players, teams and highlights. This yielded a searchable database of 6,000 moments, which users of the Vault can tap into in a number of different ways. They can search by player, team, year, game or description of the play they're looking for. For more casual use, the Vault also presents lists clips of great shots, blocks, plays and finishes, plus most outstanding players and current stars. In addition to being a standalone site, the Vault is linked to from the March Madness main site.
When you search for a specific play, it will load and when done, the remainder of the game will continue playing until you want to move on. I can say from doing this several times that watching a play quickly and addictively morphs into watching several minutes of the game itself. Below the video window there's a text description of each play in the game. If you scroll the list and begin clicking on different plays what you'll immediately notice is how fast the new video loads and begins playing. Kevin explained that part of the reason is because the system is simply moving to a new cue point in the existing video file (in other words a new video file hasn't been created). This is a similar technique other indexes use; still, I don't think I've ever seen a new clip load as fast as these do. It's comparable to the experience of changing TV channels.
Thought Equity is very mindful of how, for some users, the Vault will be essentially a "stock video" database and so it has done several things to really enhance its value. Most important, it has created a Publishing Guide, which provides URLs to each of the moments so that writers and fans can search for incorporate links to just the plays they want. Conversely, if you're watching a video highlight and want to link to that moment, one click generates a URL for that clip. Thought Equity has even integrated the bit.ly URL shortener, so that you get a Twitter-friendly URL to use. Finally, Thought Equity has created an API so that 3rd parties who want to integrate the database, or pieces of it, with their own services, can do so easily.
Kevin explained that Thought Equity's model is to partner with media companies and rights-holders to license exclusive rights to their archived assets in order to create rich, searchable video databases. In the Vault's case, monetization is through advertising and CBS will sell the new high-value inventory. Thought Equity has worked with other media partners (e.g. Paramount, HBO, NY Times, BBC, etc.) with a monetization mix of advertising and licensing (i.e. the "stock" model). Over 10.5 million hours have been indexed to date with many more on-deck.
From a user's standpoint, the Vault is another exciting example of how the combination of online video and indexing technologies opens up access to memorable sports moments. Consumer usage creates the ad opportunity, but equally interesting are the myriad professional uses of the video. For bloggers and others running sports-oriented sites, the Vault opens a ton of new upside. Last week I wrote about how MovieClips.com is trying to create a similar Vault-like experience for movie clips; no doubt others will follow as the value of archived assets becomes increasingly apparent.
What do you think? Post a comment now (no sign-in required).Categories: Sports, Technology
Topics: CBS, March Madness, NCAA, Thought Equity Motion
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iStockphoto Pioneers Lucrative Microstock Video Marketplace
A lot of my time at VideoNuze is spent exploring how broadband's massive penetration has opened up new opportunities for video distribution to consumers. But a recent conversation with Kelly Thompson, COO of iStockphoto served as a reminder that broadband is also beginning to play an important role for professionals seeking stock video footage.
For those not familiar, the "stock" industry refers to photographs, images, audio and video that creators make available for use by others under various license arrangements. Stock assets are often used by creative professionals in lieu of having to create their own because of time and expense limitations.
iStockphoto pioneered a new "microstock" online marketplace which allows stock assets to be downloaded for as little as a dollar apiece. The company has grown rapidly, anticipating $200M in revenues this year
delivering over 30M assets, or about 1 every second of every day. iStockphoto splits between 20-40% of each download fee with its contributors depending on terms the contributor has chosen. This year it will pay out over $60M to thousands of contributors. Kelly noted that some contributors' whole income is derived from iStockphoto payments (top contributors can make $300K-400K/year). Getty Images, the largest stock house in the world, bought iStockphoto in 2006 for $50M.What caught my eye is iStockphoto's move into stock video distribution. Though video has been available for just 3 years, Kelly anticipates it will account for $20M or 10% of revenues in '09. Kelly explained that there's been a massive increase in the need for stock video, as demand for it to be included in PowerPoint presentations, web sites and online campaigns has surged.
Buying stock video at iStockphoto is easy. After setting up an account, you enter keywords or just browse the video catalog. You're presented with thumbnail images, which expand to play the full video when you roll over them. Payments are made using "credits," iStock's currency. Videos are offered in different quality and prices, depending on the user's needs. A lower res video might be around $15 to download while the same in HD quality might be $75.
Kelly explained that widespread broadband access and inexpensive HD cameras that produce amazing video are the key contributors to making iStock's stock video downloads take off. With the market for stock video growing rapidly, competition is heating up from well-funded players like Fotolia and Thought Equity Motion, which specializes in video collections from premium providers like MGM Studios, National Geographic and NBC News.
Still, with broadband's rise, and now mobile video's increasing popularity, the market for stock video seems like it has a lot of growth ahead. Clever companies continue to recognize how broadband creates different types of opportunities to distribute video to various end users.
What do you think? Post a comment now.
Categories: Commerce
Topics: Fotolia, iStockphoto, Thought Equity Motion
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