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October 4, 1999

Videos With Value

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Most video-logging software analyzes video and audio by recognizing scene changes, new speakers, topics, and key events. Users can then search indexed video based on key words and retrieve the specific video clips that correspond to the search criteria. Other products let companies link video to other types of data and publish the enhanced video to an intranet or Web site.

Industry analysts say more businesses should make use of digital media asset management. "Companies should be approaching video asset management as an aggressive strategy to leverage new business and revenue opportunities," says Jeremy Schwartz, a senior analyst with Forrester Research. The opportunities include licensing media assets or making them available on a fee-per-view basis via the Net.

The U.S. video-logger software market started slowly but is showing solid growth. About 400 units were sold in 1994, but that number should hit 3,000 this year and grow to 14,800 by 2004, according to Frost & Sullivan. At the same time, revenue will grow from $400,000 in 1994 to a projected $29 million this year to $212 million in 2004, the research firm predicts.

Some video asset-management companies are positioning their systems as the key element that will make streaming video more useful in the enterprise. "The market has adopted streaming audio," says Digital Lava CEO Bob Greene. "They get it, and they understand it. The next curve is streaming video," he says. "The market is understanding what that is all about and is starting to embrace it, but it's still early."

Leading streaming media companies, including RealNetworks Inc. and Microsoft, are creating strategic alliances with media asset-management companies. "What's required to make streaming video relevant in the enterprise are applications such as video indexing," says Marty Roberts, product manager for RealNetworks' enterprise group. "Streaming video is the underlying architecture that allows these applications to work."

Key enterprise uses for media asset management are business communications, marketing and brand management, and training. Business communications includes everything from distribution of executive speeches to reviewing news con-ferences. In the marketing realm, product managers can use media-management tools to review video of TV commercials and product launches. For training, users can sift and search their way to the portions of the educational video that are relevant to them.

"Every company has a closet or warehouse full of video," says Patrick C. Condo, president and CEO of Excalibur Technologies, which offers software called Screening Room that lets users analyze, catalog, browse, search, and publish video. "We make that content available to the enterprise."

"The enterprise is our fastest- growing market," says Carlos Montalvo, VP of marketing for Virage and the former head of Apple's QuickTime business unit. "Simply streaming video on the corporate intranet doesn't make video more useful. You want to be able to go into a large storehouse of video and pick out the elements you want," he says. With searchable video, you can see how many clips are relevant to the search criteria and receive only those clips. That's a more efficient way to route video information on an IP infrastructure without bringing down the network."

Excalibur's Screening Room software costs about $50,000. The Virage VideoLogger is priced at $30,000 to $50,000 per Windows NT workstation seat. The price depends on add-on capabilities.

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