Video Sharing websites roundup

Fingerprint Tech Waits for a Grand Entrance

Video sites such as Microsoft’s (MSFT) Soapbox and MySpace already employ fingerprinting technology from provider Audible Magic, and Veoh has said it will implement fingerprinting this month. A Dailymotion spokesperson clarified that the site will continue to use Audible Magic for audio fingerprinting, but is adding in Ina for video fingerprinting. He emphasized that the initial Ina rollout on Dailymotion is only in France, though the company expects it to be implemented across all versions of its sites by 2008.

Facebook Finance Chief Yu Becomes a Director at Vobile

Facebook Inc. Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu has joined the board of Vobile Inc., a closely held provider of so-called fingerprinting technology for identifying video content.
Mr. Yu, 36 years old, joined the online social-networking firm in July from YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by Google Inc.

One Anti-Piracy System to Rule Them All

Hollywood appears to have a preliminary winner in its bake-off of anti-piracy technologies.
For the last year, the film industry, through its Palo Alto-based R&D joint venture MovieLabs, has been testing a dozen so-called “digital fingerprinting” technologies. The technology purports to scan file sharing sites, Internet providers and peer-to-peer networks to identify copyrighted material.

“Fingerprinting Performance” (Leonard Kleinrock, 2007)

Yesterday in Los Angeles, people affiliated with the Motion Picture Association of America talked about the ongoing tests at a day-long anti-piracy workshop that the MPAA co-hosted with the University of California. In his introductory keynote at the event, UCLA professor and Internet pioneer Leonard Kleinrock showed a single slide that suggested that one of the anti-piracy filtering companies had outperformed the other 11, with the highest number of matches of infringing content and lowest number of false-positives. But professor Kleinrock and MPAA execs declined to name the participating companies or who had scored best on the test, saying that secrecy was a precondition for their participation in the tests.

Nevertheless, afterwards, executives from Santa Clara, Calif-based Vobile were crowing in the hallways of the Universal Hilton Hotel.
The two-year old company’s technology, called Video DNA, has apparently bested others from the Royal Philips Electronics, Thomson Software & Technology, and the highest profile digital fingerprinting company, the Los Gatos, Calif.-based Audible Magic, which has deals to filter video sharing sites like YouTube and Microsoft’s Soapbox.

Movie Labs stress-tested the anti-piracy systems by loading hundreds of hours of copyrighted video content into the databases of the various filters, and then by flooding them with thousands of video files, some distorted, darkened and cropped, to try to scuttle their ability to find matches.
In the next phase of the ongoing tests, MovieLabs will see if the systems can handle ever larger quantities of copyrighted works. Theoretically, adding more songs, TV shows and movies in their databases could slow down these systems—and the Internet video sites that use them— since it could take longer to find possible matches.
MovieLabs has been sharing tests results with its member movie studios since the summer. MovieLabs chief executive Steve Weinstein says the technology is ready for prime time. “In a year you’re going to see many Internet companies using it. This technology has shown its viability.”

Full story at The New York Times

Another article in LATIMES

Battling Piracy, BayTSP-Style

“On an average day, there are 16 million violations that we’re finding,” said BayTSP spokesman Jim Graham. Of that, one million violations a month receive takedown notices. “Not all clients want to send takedown notices,” said Graham. “A lot just want to see the data on what’s available out there.”

Here’s how BayTSP works. A client gives it a list of titles (movies, TV shows, etc.) to monitor. BayTSP’s automated hardware then sniffs around major P2P sites, IRC, Usenet groups, public FTP sites and web sites and reports back its findings.

For P2P sites, if a title is found and the client wants to have it removed, BayTSP automatically generates a takedown notice that records the individual’s IP address, date and time identified, and sends it off to the ISP. The ISP then forwards the notice to the individual. Some ISPs and universities are adopting the open source Automated Copyright Notice System to automate the process of notifying infringers.

But what does all this cost? Between $25,000 and $500,000 a month, depending on how many titles you are searching and what services you want performed.

Full story here

The Wall Street Journal did a profile a couple months back:
- BayTSP employs more than 20 video analysts
- Analyst salaries start at around $11 an hour
- Viacom pays more than $100,000 a month to BayTSP
- BayTSP error rate on Web videos is only around 0.1%

Branded and Video Advertising Key to Future

Online ad spending will expand 28.6% this year, according to eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey. Next year, digital ad spending will increase 32%--amounting to nearly $28.8 billion.

Web videos are watched by 72% of Web users--or 135 million people--every month.
Ad spending around them is set to hit $775 million this year, and $1.3 billion by next year.

Asterpix Says Forget Hypertext, Think Hypervideo

One of the great things about the Web is the ability to link to a Web page, or a part of a Web page, from anywhere. Asterpix, a San Jose, Calif.-based startup, wants to bring that same ease of use to the world of video. The company’s technology -– which it calls hypervideo — gives authors the ability to link directly to objects displayed inside video clips.

These so called hotspots track the “objects” linked throughout the entire video clip. So for instance, when explaining the Coverflow features of the iPhone, one can link directly to the relevant point in the video right from the blog post. Hotspots are designated with blinking circles; click on them in the video to access the author’s notes, tags and target links.

The service doesn’t require you to download separate software on the desktop. Simply sign up and embed the videos as you would from any video source such as YouTube, MetaCafe, or Blip. Asterpix adds a separate invisible layer on top of the video that contains all the metadata (aka relevant linking information). Then just go ahead and drop it in your blog or on your MySpace page.

Asterpix is less than a year old and is backed by New Enterprise Associates; so far it’s raised $4 million in one round of financing. CEO Nat Kausik, who in his past life created a handful of successful networking-related startups, told us that in order to gain traction, the company will initially adopt a widget strategy. He feels that MySpace and other social networks are going to be fertile ground for his service. He was also candid enough to say that the business model of this company is evolving.

Asterpix’s technology could have big implications for online video-related advertising as it would allow advertisers to embed hotspots around products of high commercial value. For instance, Le Bron James videos could link his shoes to Nike (NKE) stores, or Tiger Woods clips could help push golf clubs or even apparel.

“Every object is now clickable and searchable,” says Kausik. Google AdWords, for instance can drive traffic right to the relevant spot in a video clip, giving people a sense of what they are buying. “We hope this will help unlock the monetization of video.”

Among the existing players in this space, Eline Technologies of Vancouver, B.C., is doing brisk business with its VideoClix software. We also recently covered Delivery Agent. Others, such as Tandberg and Microsoft (MSFT), are working on their own hypervideo technologies — all in hope of unlocking the ad potential of online video.