veotag, inc.TM to Launch Breakthrough Video Enhancement Tool that Enables Video Makers to Enrich The Online Video Experience by Letting Audiences Know What's Inside a Video and Allowing them to Click to What they Want to See
New Web-based Video Authoring Tool Allows Individuals and Video (and Audio) Professionals to Easily Annotate Any Video - - New or Already Existing Online - - with Clickable Text Linked to Content Within the Video
NEW YORK- June 1, 2006 - The explosion of video on the Web - YouTube streams 30 million videos a day - is giving rise to a new problem: viewer frustration. Because audiences have to rely on text searches to find individual videos - and then have no way of knowing what's really inside a video without watching the whole thing - the video-on-the Web experience is sub-par.
"The dozens of video sharing sites, like Vimeo, Google Video, Revver, Blip.TV, and YouTube, make searching for videos fascinating. But, that fascination is turning into frustration. Locating a specific scene or piece of content in video, or an audio file, is like hunting for a needle in haystack. In fact, amateur and professional video authors tell us that excitement over video and audio content on the Web will soon give way to audience exhaustion and exasperation. Who wants to spend five minutes watching a cooking video just to see the 20 seconds when the chef shows how to make a roux?" said Scott Rhodes, President and CEO of veotag, Inc., a provider of resources and tools that help solve problems associated with video and audio on the Web.
He points out that the frustration occurs on two levels: (a) finding the desired video and audio online and then (b) not knowing what's really inside them. And, these difficulties are mounting exponentially; one site alone, YouTube, is receiving 35,000 video submissions a day and tens of millions of new visitors each month, and online videos are getting longer and thus more cumbersome to cull through.
veotag, (www.veotag.com) is in the beta launch of a 100% Web-based tool that enables video (and audio) authors, amateur and professional, to make their videos more manageable and enjoyable for viewers. Once the creator veotags a video - a simple process that's free of charge and easy for anyone - online audiences will know exactly what's inside the video and be able to click directly to the parts they want to see, in whatever order they want.
For instance, any online video author can take video of, for example, a rock concert, create a veotag menu of commentary and explanatory text and thereby let any online viewer click directly to "guitar solo," "Stairway to Heaven" or "drummer close-up," in any order he or she wants. The viewer will thus know what's in the video and be able to go directly to desired scenes.
Said Mr. Rhodes, "The kinds of guides or tags that video hubs and search engines currently provide for videos are extremely rudimentary - classifications by popularity of download, brief descriptions, like 'boy sings aria.' They provide no sense of what's really in the video or audio file nor where pieces of content are within the file. And they certainly don't provide a 'clickable' text map - table of contents, as it were - of the content."
He added, "veotag lets anyone add clickable text to virtually any online video or audio file, and through that clickable text, tell his or her audience, or the whole online world, what's inside the video or audio. That clickable text, in turn, lets viewers get to where they want with one click. Anyone who creates videos and/or posts them on the Web owes it to audiences to supply some detail about the content and make it more navigable."
veotag enables individuals to "annotate" with clickable text just about any video (or audio file), and it requires no special software or technical skills.
To "veotag" a video, the producer or author goes to veotag's website (www.veotag.com) and enters the URL of the video (or audio file) he or she wants to annotate. veotag locates the video, and then begins playing it on the author's screen. Whenever the author wants to add a comment, he or she can stop the video and type desired text in an adjacent text box, and then resume playing the video.
When the author has finished adding text, he or she saves the text to a personal veotag account. veotag then gives the author a veotag.com URL to share with anyone - or everyone.
Viewers of the veotagged video can click on the text and go right to the corresponding scene (e.g., "Sally, 18 months, takes her first steps). Viewers reach the veotagged video by going to the veotag.com URL associated with it: They don't need to know the URL of the original video.
In addition to making it easier to go directly to specific parts of a video, veotagging will also make it easier for everyone on the Web to find and use video and audio: veotag gives authors the option of submitting their veotagged videos and audio files - i.e., veotag URL and clickable text -- to the major search engines. That means Web surfers searching key words that happen to match veotag text will be directed to the veotag URL.
veotag Could Transform the Entire Online Video and Audio Experience
"It's not just new videos that can be veotagged with clickable text and then, if desired, sent to search engines. Anyone can be a veotag author of virtually any video that's online: As long as you know where the video resides -- its URL -- you can enhance it with clickable text and have that version available to anyone via its new veotag URL. The original, un-enhanced video, of course, also remains in force at its original URL," said Mr. Rhodes.
Anyone who creates, views or uses video on the Web benefits from veotagging.
Business and other Organizations that use Video: Businesses will be able to increase the effectiveness and usability of any video - e.g., video of a training program or sales meeting -- that's used online. In one real-life example, an ad agency pitching a client oversees uploaded a veotagged video that contained agency capabilities, story boards, discussions among agency execs, footage of sample commercials and so on. The potential clients were able to click around to the video to parts they wanted to see and also use the video as a visual guide during conference calls with the agency. In another example, a company could upload a veotagged version of a three-hour training video that is mainly of talking heads. What would have been a dry, ponderous, hardly used video could then become a useful tool for trainees because they would be able to click to parts that are relevant to what they need to learn.
Search Engines: As more video and audio authors have veotag share their veotag text with search engines, videos and audio will become easier to find and more enjoyable to use on the Web. Accordingly, search engine users will have better experiences.
Veotag expects to generate revenue through three sources: advertiser-supported services; pay services; third-party fees and licensing.
veotag, Inc. is a provider of resources and tools that help solve problems associated with video and audio on the Web. veotag allows video authors and sound file producers, amateur and professional, to tell audiences what's inside their videos and audio files and to search within those files by clicking on descriptive text. The company is located in New York City. For more information, see www.veotag.com.