Digitalsmiths Intros MetaData System

Betting on consumer demand for increasingly complex video viewing, white-label video technology company Digitalsmiths on Monday debuted a new product for premium video content libraries. The new product provides premium video publishers with new functionality like a free-form single box video search capable of identifying videos by dialogue, objects within a scene, locations and other complex criteria.

Based in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Digitalsmiths provides publishers with video indexing and ad-targeting technology bundled with a white-label video service. Digitalsmiths' suite of visual interpretation tools processes each frame of video using proprietary algorithms such as facial recognition, scene classification and object identification to build a unique time-based, metadata framework -- or "metaframe" -- of informed video tags.

The new technology, according to Digitalsmiths CEO Ben Weinberger, quite simply helps content owners make the most of their available content. "An advanced metadata management framework, like MetaFrame, can bolster their digital media strategy, give them a distinct competitive advantage and enable them to deliver content on-demand, anytime, anywhere on any device," Weinberger explained.

Rivals in the emerging field of video platforms and indexing include Brightcove, blinkx, thePlatform, Ooyala and Fliqz, to name a few.

Brightcove would presently appear to be dominating the industry--having recently signed a number of top publishers, including Time Warner's AOL, The New York Times Co.'s NYTimes.com, and 16 Condé Nast Web properties. Overall, Brightcove is now the online video platform of choice for over 93 magazines across 21 publishing families.

Still, Time Warner's hugely popular and video-heavy celebrity gossip site TMZ recently dropped Brightcove for Digitalsmiths. The startup also previously reached a deal to power Time Warner's TheWB.com.

Separately, Digitalsmiths debuted a new video search capability packaging its proprietary technology into a single search box that is embedded in a player. The new free-form search technology combs a video library for matches across a set of criteria going beyond the traditional show title and subject matter to include actor names, characters, locations, objects within a scene and specific dialogue.

Late last year, the company closed a second round of financing worth $12 million. The round was led by .406 Ventures, and included existing investors The Aurora Funds and Chrysalis Ventures -- the two of which helped the startup raise $6 million last year.< /p>

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