For example, check out this post by Jack Bell in the New York Times last week, in their soccer blog called Goal.  It talks about an unbelievable goal by the Danny Ceperos, the goalkeeper for the New York Red Bulls, to help power their 3-1 win against Columbus, and uses the Gotuit embedded video player to show readers that exact play.

The same highlight was grabbed by Ives Galarcep, another soccer blogger here.  Note that after watching the highlight, viewers can choose to watch more scenes from the game video, which brings them back to the QuickKicks portal in the context of that scene.

Driving more visit traffic is just one of the major benefits of having rich, scene-based metadata.  To learn more about how to unleash the full value of a video library using video metadata, read our latest whitepapers.

Wednesday, October 29^th - 3:50PM

“The Television and the PC-Mobile: Technology and Content that Bridge the Digital Consumer Experience”: The combination of the TV, the set-top, the broadband connection and digital video recorder is breaking down the barriers of TV viewing experience. Every player in the entertainment and technology food chain - from content owner to middleware and headend operator, to the subscriber service provider and finally to the CE manufacturer, all play an equally key role. The idea that consumers might use a TV, demanding personal and enhanced video services, as they do a computer has arrived - and it is our job to make the future happen today. In the near future, viewers might be watching a football game and at the same time, on a second window on the TV, that viewer might also be shopping for tank-tops or buying snacks from the supermarket. That viewer might be taping a show, watching a movie and doing research for a term paper on the web at the same time. The TV set will serve as gateway to entertainment and information as sure as the computer opens the door to a world of information. TV, interactive TV, IPTV, PVR, broadband based TV, there will likely be as many ways to describe the way consumers will use and access content and programming as there are companies supplying the options. In this session we will explore that coming future.

The panel is being moderated by Allison Dollar, CEO, ITV Alliance.

The full list of panel attendees is:

-          Mark Pascarella, President & CEO, Gotuit

-          Braxton Jarratt, CEO, Clearleap

-          David Jensen, Partner, IBM Global Business Services

-          Marc Scarpa, CEO, SimplyNew

-          Robert C. Raciti, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, industry advisor, GE Commercial Finance

-          Colin Stiles, EVP, Sales & Marketing, Monsoon Multimedia Inc.

-          Allison Dollar, CEO, ITV Alliance, Moderator

Thursday, October 30^th - 2:15PM

“Video Metadata Revolution: Unleashing the Value of Video Programming in an On Demand World”: As “on demand” video programming becomes widely accessible via numerous platforms and players, rich video metadata is being used to enable consumers to personalize their viewing experience, tailored to their interests and viewing environment. As a result, while consumers were once limited to viewing programs from beginning to end, they can now engage in video “snacking”, “playlisting”, “remixing” and “sharing”. At the same time, rich video metadata is offering content producers and distributors new ways to present and organize the program assets, thereby creating new revenue streams with the opportunity for higher CPM, metadata driven, contextual advertising. As technology, content and advertising companies now work together to unleash the power generated by rich video metadata, the consumer will be in the driver’s seat, watching video when they want and how they want.

The panel is being moderated by Larry Gerbrandt, Principal, Media Valuation Partners.

The full list of panel attendees is:

-          Mark Pascarella, President & CEO, Gotuit

-          Ron Berryman, Senior Vice President, GM - FOX Stations Group, Fox Interactive Media

-          Eyal Hertzog, founder and chief creative officer, Metacafe

-          Josh Kline, President & CEO, Secure Path Technology

-          Gary Baker, Founder and CEO, ClipBlast!

-          Larry Gerbrandt, Principal, Media Valuation Partners, Moderator

This should be a great show. Hope to see you at our booth!

The video search engines like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Pixsy, Blinkx, Truveo, etc. all have differing approaches, but share the same fundamental unit of video in their indexes - the video asset.  At Gotuit, we thought about the problem differently, and use premium scene-based metadata to vastly increase the amount of information that describes a video within any search index.

First announced last month with Pixsy, Gotuit customers can use our Video Metadata Management System to author rich, structured metadata about each individual scene in their original videos.  We then syndicate an mRSS feed of the scene-level metadata to all the major search engines.  Importantly, there is no video editing required so it is much simpler for the publishers to operationally manage whole assets than thousands of small clips.  The metadata instead defines ‘virtual clips’ so that they can be indexed by the search engines using their current algorithms.

The video search impact is dramatic.  Imagine an example of a 30 minute asset with six searchable metadata elements that now has a metadata file describing the 15 scenes within the asset, and each scene being described with ten elements.  The result is a 25X increase in the amount of information that now exists in the video search engines.

Not only is there more data, but the data is more accurate and drives more relevant results due to the power of the human-authored metadata.  Details like specific characters, locations, events, emotions, scene types, and other keywords are now present.  Video is very subjective, and the person describing the scenes can add information that simply could not be derived by an automated solution, but would be very valuable to match against human-entered search terms.

Obviously, the ultimate goal of better video search is better monetization.  As Pixsy’s CEO Chase Norland said, “Allowing our search technology to work against each scene inside an asset, instead of just the asset itself, grows the search index for each video by an order of magnitude for the user to better search against and the website to monetize.”

Not only does Gotuit metadata explode the amount of information in a video search index, all of the scene boundaries are ad insertion avails.  Plus, the scene metadata can drive more targeted ads - both in-page banner and in-stream video ads.  Having seen the incredible economy that has arisen over targeted text-based ads, is there any doubt that there will be a similar evolution of the video-based ad market?

Premium, scene-level video metadata is what unlocks this opportunity for video search and content monetization, and look for more developments in these areas here at Gotuit in the near future.

Here is the panel description from MITX:

“The Ins and Outs of Making Money from Online Video”
Ok, so your online video site is up and running, or maybe you’re still planning its launch. Your attention quickly turns to the most urgent question of all: how can you - or your clients - actually make money from your efforts? Should you use advertising? Subscriptions? Corporate sponsorships? Or maybe just use the video for enhanced customer relations or branding to fuel other revenue streams? The choices are many. Since it’s still so early in the online video market’s evolution, data and best practices can be hard to find. In this timely panel discussion, you’ll learn from experts about today’s best practices in monetization, hear about concrete examples that are working, and gather valuable data.

During the discussion, the following questions will be answered:

• How are publishers, brands, media companies and agencies successfully making money with online video today?
• What criteria should you use to evaluate each revenue model’s merits?
• What are the pros and cons of each approach?
• What tools are available to capitalize on each approach?
• Who are some of the key partners to know about?
• What are the upcoming trends to be aware of?
• Where can you go to find useful data?

 The full list of panel attendees is:

• Mark Pascarella, President & CEO, Gotuit
• David Carson, Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Husky Media
• Keith Johnston, SVP of Integrated Production, Mullen
• Waikit Lau, CEO, ScanScout
• Will Richmond, Editor/Publisher, VideoNuze (Moderator).

 It’s a great topic, and one that we are excited to be invited to contribute to.  Hope you can make it.

Our pick is Florida’s QB Tim Tebow.  Check out his 2008 preview.

We will be set up in the Partner Pavilion where you can see demonstrations of our very latest technology, including our recent integration with Move Networks, plus our President & CEO Mark Pascarella will also be speaking on a panel.

The panel is: “The Syndicated Video Economy—Reality or Hype?” on Tuesday, August 19^th @ 2pm, and is being moderated by Will Richmond, President & Founder of Broadband Directions and publisher of the VideoNuze broadband video news and analysis service.

Here is the panel description from Akamai:
Executives from leading media and entertainment companies will discuss the best way to package and monetize video assets. Which strategies are most likely to prevail?

The panel roster includes:

· Will Richmond, President & Founder - Broadband Directions (Moderator)

· Mark Pascarella, President & CEO - Gotuit

· Eyal Hertzog, Founder & Chief Creative Officer - Metacafe

· Nick Rockwell, CTO - MTV Digital Networks

· Peter Scott, Executive Director of Digital Partnerships - Turner Sports

It should be a great discussion and a terrific event. Hope to see you there.

First, it means any video publisher that is currently using Move Networks, or thinking about switching to Move for their premium video quality, now can take advantage of Gotuit’s ability to deliver personalized, non-linear viewing experiences that will serve (more) advertising along the way at precise advertising insertion points.

We have proven our ability to surface a video archive and improve its shelf-life by exposing it in a variety of playlists or navigational paths. This is done without doing any video editing. For example:

• Sports content By Team, By Player, Event, Top 10 Plays, Goals, etc.
• Comedy or drama content By Character, By Topic, By Plot Line, Best Scene;
• Entertainment content By Artist/Performer, By Song, By Event, By Date;
• Searching within the video;
• Jumping to any scene of interest;
• Defining your own scenes and remixes then sharing them with friends.

This flexibility fundamentally changes how publishers using Move can present and monetize their content. (Check out XONtv at www.xontv.tv to see this first hand.)

Second, this adds to the list of video codecs which Gotuit has enabled. Publishers can stream broadband video in Flash, h.264, and now Move Networks and use Gotuit. In fact, XONtv originally went live with Flash last November (as announced here) and was converted to Move. In our past, we have also powered MPEG-2 for cable VOD and 3GPP for mobile applications. This highlights how Gotuit’s rich metadata is independent of video codec or distribution platform.

Third, this announcement is the latest in a series of Gotuit integrations with other companies in the broadband video ecosystem. Our focus is on delivering technology and tools to author scene-level metadata and advertising insertion points. Integrating our video metadata management system with partners such as CDNs (like Akamai), ad providers (like DoubleClick & Advertising.com), and content management systems (like Move Publish) allows publishers with existing video workflows to easily adopt Gotuit. Look for more integrations with other content management systems to be announced soon. (If you are a potential partner and would like to discuss an integration, let us know at partners@gotuit.com.)

Or, if you are a Move Networks customer looking to improve your user experience, session time and/or advertising inventory, drop us a line at sales@gotuit.com.

Gotuit’s President & CEO Mark Pascarella will speak at the Digital Hollywood - Building Blocks 2008 conference next week in San Jose, CA. He will be on the panel: “Video Metadata Revolution: Unleashing the Value of Video Programming in an On Demand World” on Thursday, August 7^th at 2:15pm.

Here is the panel description from Digital Hollywood:
As “on demand” video programming becomes widely accessible via numerous platforms and players, rich video metadata is being used to enable consumers to personalize their viewing experience, tailored to their interests and viewing environment. As a result, while consumers were once limited to viewing programs from beginning to end, they can now engage in video “snacking”, “playlisting”, “remixing” and “sharing”. At the same time, rich video metadata is offering content producers and distributors new ways to present and organize the program assets, thereby creating new revenue streams with the opportunity for higher CPM, metadata driven, contextual advertising. As technology, content and advertising companies now work together to unleash the power generated by rich video metadata, the consumer will be in the driver’s seat, watching video when they want and how they want.

The full panel roster includes:

· Shelly Palmer, Managing Partner, Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC (Moderator)

· Greg Smith, CTO, Move Networks

· Mark Pascarella, President & CEO, Gotuit

· Thanasis Iatrou, President & CEO, Media Excel

· Chase Norlin, CEO, Pixsy

· Josh Kline, President & CEO, Secure Path Technology

· Tim Hanlon, Executive Vice President, Denuo - A Publicis Groupe Company

We have been invited to speak at a number of other conferences and events this fall, check back here for updates.

For example, if you are interested in SI’s mock draft, choose this path. Or, if you are a huge USC fan and want to easily see just the Trojans in the draft, click here. Maybe your team needs a wide receiver, so you just want to quickly see all the WRs in the draft. Or you just want to see great highlights of your favorite player, such as Chris Long.

Presenting the library with these various paths for the viewer to take results in a more engaging experience and longer session times. Gotuit’s use of metadata allows SI to do this without requiring multiple copies of the videos or any video editing. The source library is unleashed by publishing it with a rich metadata set for the viewers to use to personalize their experience.

SI is also being aggressive about using the embedded player to enhance their editorial coverage with video as you can see in Don Banks’ mock draft article here.

During the draft this weekend, the NFL Draft FilmRoom will be updated to present the actual draft order playlist and playlists for each NFL team so viewers can quickly and easily see who their team came away with.

Too many publishers make the mistake of not optimizing their library by only presenting one path for their viewers to take. SI could have put each video up as a separate clip with a search box, but instead they thought about the various reasons their viewers would have for coming to the site and used Gotuit metadata to offer compelling choices to pull in more viewership. With strong usage distributed across the various paths, this is proving to be a successful strategy.

Here is what Streaming Media editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen wrote about our flagship product: “The Gotuit PowerVideo Suite is the only product in our Editor’s Picks list that also took home a Streaming Media Reader’s Choice Award (Oct/Nov pp.30-42). That award was in the Search and Indexing Platform category, but the VideoDiscovery Module is only part of the PowerVideo Suite’s four-pronged attack. Granted that’s a terrific app for both viewers and advertisers - videos in a library are marked with metadata for each logical scene, and then scenes are categorized into playlists based upon that metadata - but the VideoMarker and VideoMixer modules are equally impressive. The former lets users themselves control the marking and tagging of their favorite clips, while the latter allows publishers to give users various degrees of control over the metadata, building far richer search and indexing experiences than would otherwise be possible.”

The full list of 2008 Streaming Media Editor’s Picks is as follows: Accordent Media Management System, Adobe Media Player, Apple iPhone, Elgato Turbo.264, Gotuit PowerVideo Suite, Microsoft Expression Encoder, Mogulus Live Broadcast, Rhozet Carbon Coder, ViewCast Niagara GoStream Plus, and Wowza Media Server Pro.

It is an honor to be acknowledged by such an authority on the industry, and alongside such prominent companies and compelling products. We have been building out our patented video metadata technology for over eight years, and this recognition is a tremendous validation of our unique approach to unleashing video libraries.

Click here to see our official announcement.

Just in time for people filling out their brackets, this SI FilmRoom showcases regular season highlights of the teams in this year’s NCAA college basketball tournament. Gotuit metadata presents multiple views into the video library to let the viewer take the path that is most interesting to them.

For example, fans can use the By Seed view to easily watch just the top seeded teams in the tournament. The By Conference view lets viewers watch a playlist of the teams in a particular conference, such as the Big East, Pac 10, ACC, SEC, or Big 10. The Still Alive playlist will be updated throughout the tournament as the field goes from 65 down to the eventual champion. Finally, there is also a By Team view to use an alphabetical list to access a particular team.

From an advertising perspective, this is an important milestone as it is our first live implementation with DoubleClick for in-stream video advertising, and Quigo for in-page text ads. Look for more details on this in a future post.

Like all our implementations, even though we never edit the original source video into clips, viewers can use the link and embed codes to share specific video scenes or playlists using our metadata to point to the precise sections within the video library.

I am personally more of a pro basketball (Celtics) fan, so I will leave you with this SI FilmRoom video for the Kansas Jayhawks, in honor of Kansas alum and Boston Celtics captain Paul Pierce.

SI FilmRoom: 2008 Kansas Jayhawks

Starting this semester, Carleton students can take advantage of VideoNotes™, an on-line video portal powered by Gotuit that lets students annotate the classroom lecture video and create remixes that can be used as study guides for particular topics.

Students can mark scenes from the lecture video, give those scenes their own title, description and keywords, and create a remix/mashup with both scenes they defined as well as scenes defined by others.

Students can now effectively search inside the two-hour lecture videos to find the specific topics of interest, and share what they find or create with the community. This is all achieved leveraging metadata, without any video editing or new videos being stored.

Here is a link to one student’s highlights from Lecture 4 of Professor Dan McIntyre’s Introduction to Psychology course, dealing with Motivation: http://videonotes.carleton.ca/?mid=25.

VideoNotes is another great example of using the power of metadata to deliver a personalized viewing experience that optimizes the value of the video library. Allowing the students themselves to define what is relevant further engages them in the learning process and deepens their understanding of the content.

(And to be clear, we also believe they should still go to class and not just watch video.)

Gotuit was founded back in 2000 with a simple idea – using rich metadata to describe stored video so that the viewer can take their own, personalized path through the video library. When viewers watch live video, they have no choice but to watch it in the broadcast sequence. However, once the video has been recorded and can be watched on-demand, the viewer should be able to watch it in any order they want. Our founders filed numerous patent applications around this idea of using metadata for the enhanced navigation, discovery, search, and monetization of stored content. Gotuit was founded when those patents issued.

If a library has been indexed using Gotuit, viewers can jump inside any video directly to the scene that is most interesting, or select playlists with scenes across multiple assets. Choose a news video and jump right to the sports section. Watch only scenes of your favorite character in a sitcom. Catch up on a particular storyline in a drama. Review a particular procedure within a training video. The possibilities are endless and cut across all categories of video.

Gotuit has numerous implementations across cable video-on-demand, broadband, and mobile platforms. In each case, viewers sampled more video and had longer session times than before the library was enhanced with Gotuit metadata.
In addition to making the viewing experience far superior, publishers enjoy much more flexible and powerful ways to monetize their content. First, since viewers are watching more video they see more ads along the way. Second, those ads can be more targeted by taking advantage of the rich metadata describing the scenes they are watching. Third, publishers can create brand new products from the original video library simply by using metadata to present different views of the same content.

A crucial advantage of Gotuit’s approach is that the original video library remains in its unedited form. The metadata becomes the lens through which the audience sees the video, so there is no need to cut the video up into clips or edit the video in any way.

In the past 18-24 months many publishers focused simply on getting their video online. With that done, many are now taking the next steps to differentiate and capture the full value of their library. In upcoming posts, we will highlight some of the best examples and biggest mistakes we see in the areas of video presentation, video search, user engagement, and content monetization.

Finally, since it is Super Bowl weekend, here is a sample from the Gotuit-powered Film Room by Sports Illustrated, where viewers could see the collegiate highlights of all the players in the 2007 NFL draft - by position, player, college team, draft order, or NFL team – all using metadata to provide the different paths. Below are highlights of the Giants first round pick, Aaron Ross and the Patriots first round pick, Brandon Meriweather.

New York Giants 2007 First Round Pick - Aaron Ross, DB, University of Texas

New England Patriots 2007 First Round Pick - Brandon Meriweather, DB, University of Miami

(By the way, as a Boston company we are obviously rooting for the Pats. Prediction: 38-17 and a fourth Lombardi Trophy coming back to New England.)

Thanks for reading, and come back in a few days for “The Daily Show – What Not To Do.”