• by Lydia Loizides , Op-Ed Contributor, May 16, 2007

As video continues to evolve, so do enhancements for users who are consuming it.

Check out an interview with Laurie Racine, president of dotSub, whose tool subtitles digital content. Interesting technology? You tell me.

What was the driving force behind the creation of dotSUB?

DotSUB was the brain child of one of the co-founders, Michael Smolens. There are three co-founders altogether. Thor Sigvaldason is the other.  Originally, we each had a unique perspective about what a browser-based platform that enabled multilingual translations of digital content could do, but now our visions are inexorably interwoven. Michael was interested in advancing multicultural communications, Thor was interested in the application of open-source technologies and business models, and I was committed to expanding the market and opening up new audiences for independent and documentary filmmakers.

Who are your target customers?

DotSUB is enabled by the social fabric of the Web. As such, our customers fall into several categories: individual creatives who want to explore the reach and power of video as a means of communication and self-expression; new and traditional media enterprises that see the value in having digitized content available to people in languages that are most comfortable for them, or to use close captioning to reach audiences of the hearing-impaired; and global corporations and nonprofits who are using video for communication and training purposes.

What is the business model for dotSUB?

It is threefold. We are building an online destination for multilingual and close-captioned video; a professional work-for-hire enterprise that reduces the cost of translation to a price point where it becomes feasible for vast amounts of video content to be made available in multiple languages; and a dotSUB licensing model to allow customers to embed the tools into their individual Web sites.

Each aspect of the business has a revenue model attached to it.

On DotSUB.com, with content owners' permission, we will accept certain forms of targeted advertising that will not interfere with the viewer's experience. There are fees associated with having content professionally translated by us using our tool. Finally, there are licensing fees to afford others access to the platform to embed on their individual Web sites.

Do you believe that you will face competition in the next year? Three years? Five years?

Of course, but at the moment there are few who see the vast opportunity in making it possible to view digitized video content in myriad languages. This is truly an American-centric perspective -- that the world exists in living color and we all speak English. It may be that other technologies, incubated outside the U.S., are flying under our radar and that we will see them emerge as we become more successful. My guess is that the next year will be critical, as technologies are constantly emerging. One unique thing about dotSUB's tool is that it is actually engaging, simple and fun to use, and that is our advantage.

At the moment AI language translation is not reliable. We are partnering and will continue to partner with those who are making strides in the field of AI translation and will incorporate those advances as they become more robust and stable.

How is this technology valuable to advertisers and publishers?

Expanding on the tagline of 'any film, any language,' we could add 'and anyone can do it.' Herein lies the benefit to both advertisers and publishers.  Because dotSUB's technology creates a separate file that lies on top of the video as opposed to being burned into it, advertisers can reach out to multiple language audiences more efficiently and not have to recreate their content each time they want to target another group of customers. They can also add on messaging and branding that is not incorporated into the original video. For publishers, all content on dotSUB or other destination sites is exponentially more attractive because more people can interact with it. If a publisher allows their community to contribute to wiki-like translations of content, the social experience that arises from that kind of dynamic creates another whole layer of community for a given site.

Where do you hope to be a year from now?

We have been boot-strapping the operation for the past year. Within the next several months we will go after outside funding, and a year from now hopefully have dotSUB being used by multiple customers in a variety of verticals across the digital media space. We don't mean to be grandiose, but we think the applications for this technology are rather substantial.

If you could land your dream customer/client, who would it be, and why?

It depends on what moment of the day that you ask any of the three co-founders. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are obvious partners. Our goal is to be ubiquitous, and we are looking for partners who can help take us there.