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MillimeterMark In
Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM
Based on OmniBus' iTX app, Origin Digital's Odaptor uses an on- demand web-based interface that allows users to more quickly build new channels and programming, without investing in infrastructure. The market for videocasting application service providers, such as Origin Digital, is expected to grow to $1.9 billion by 2011.
Move Your Video Online
By Dan Ochiva
If you haven't done so already, maybe it's time to consider using the Internet to deliver your video.
We're not talking just about homebrew video on YouTube anymore. In September, MySpace announced a series of 8-minute videos called Quarterlife, produced and directed by veterans Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, and the trend-setting 1980s TV show thirtysomething). The budget is said to be more than the $100,000 an hour that many higher-end web series spend.
According to news reports, Herskovitz (who is also president of the Producers Guild of America), spots the series as a move to bring shows to the online world before standard TV broadcast, returning producers back to a more powerful position. (Changing federal regulations in 1995 allowed the major networks to again own the programs they distributed, wresting control from smaller production companies.)
Watching video on the Internet is something we're growing accustomed to. According to a July report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project about online video, 57 percent of adult web surfers have used the Internet to watch or download video, and 19 percent do so on a typical day.
Major players Viacom and Warner Bros. Television signed on with newcomer Joost (www.joost.com) for show delivery, rather than building their own sites. In a still rare move from Internet to traditional TV, Yahoo Music has entered into a deal to distribute its original online music performance series (Nissan Live Sets) through MTV's high-definition channel MHD.
Can you expect to make money distributing online? Revver (one.revver.com/revver) and Google Video (video.google.com), for example, allow you to readily monetize your video. Other pay sites include Atom Entertainment (www.atomfilms.com), Metacafe (www.metacafe.com), and Blip.tv (www.blip.tv). (For more info, check out Scott Kirsner's useful site, www.scottkirsner.com/webvid/gettingpaid.htm.)
But rather than just posting to one of these consumer-oriented sites and hoping for the best, consider the growing trend of broadband video application server providers or ASPs. (An application service provider hosts software applications on their own servers; a client just needs an Internet connection to make use of the app.)
Such service providers offer top-notch transcodes, metadata wrangling, and other services that appeal to professional video producers. Companies such as Brightcove, thePlatform, Entriq, Maven Networks, and Origin Digital are key competitors in this marketplace. While video delivery as a service is still a nascent market, research firm ABI Research expects broadband video ASP sales to reach $1.9 billion by 2011.
“We remove the risk and cost from putting your video online,” says Darcy Lorincz, CEO at Origin Digital. Announced at this year's NAB, the company's Broadcast Odaptor technology offers a pay-as-you-go hosted broadcast playout infrastructure. Based upon OmniBus' innovative iTX software system, Origin Digital can deliver everything from digital media management, ingest and scheduling, and playout to commercial insertion and branding. Transmission control also works across multiple platforms, including IPTV and mobile TV channels.
The company has even gone virtual: Origin Digital now provides the technology to allow users to integrate streaming video and music into its Second Life (www.secondlife.com) virtual world communities.
