Filter Startup: YouTube Audition?

Company that can fingerprint video wants to solve YouTube’s copyright woes.
March 14, 2007
By Alexandra Berzon, RedHerring

A video-filtering startup would like to play a starring role on YouTube.

San Mateo, California-based MotionDSP on Tuesday unveiled Ikena, a tool that can track content on user-generated video sites by detecting a unique set of motions in each clip. Company CEO Sean Varah said that could addresses a key claim in the $1 billion suit Viacom brought against Google this week–that YouTube should be using filtering tools to permanently block copyrighted videos from appearing on the site.

YouTube has delayed plans to implement comprehensive tools to filter copyrighted content, claiming that developing such a system is complicated and time-consuming, with many factors to consider. Viacom argues that YouTube has deliberately stalled.

That’s left room for startups to develop their own filtering software. So far the early leader is Audible Magic, which can identify content based on “digital fingerprints” in a video’s accompanying audio soundtrack. The Los Gatos, California-based startup has a licensing deal with MySpace to filter out content owned by Universal Music Group, NBC and Fox.

But MotionDSP may be ahead in developing tools that track motion in the video itself, as opposed to audio or text attached to the video.

The software is based on the company’s video enhancement technology that uses motion sensors to clean up blurry or grainy videos. With content provided by media companies, Ikena creates a “signature” or “hash” based on motion in the video. The signature gets stored in a database and matched against any similar video a user tries to put up on the site.

MySpace provided the inspiration for the product, Mr. Varah said, when an executive asked him a few months ago if the company could use its video enhancement tools to identify and filter content. But Mr. Varah said he hasn’t heard from MySpace in a while. The company, angel-backed so far, is in the process of raising venture funds. Mr. Varah said he expects to close a round of funding in the next six weeks.

Gartner analyst Allen Weiner saw a demo of the product. He was impressed to see that it could identify and block videos when users alter the images or length and then try to repost them—a common way that users try to get around detection tools.

But Mr. Weiner pointed out that MotionDSP still hasn’t demonstrated that Ikena is ready to be used by large scale video sites.
“Clearly there’s a little bit of getting from here to there,” said Mr. Weiner. “From what we’ve seen of the technology, it provides a solution to the issue at hand of copyrighted content.”