Digital Media | News

ReelSurfer Takes Video Search to the Cloud

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/12/10

A company that specializes in technology for doing video search has taken its product to the cloud. ReelSurfer has begun showing its Cloud Video Search Platform, which consists of multiple tools that enable users to search for targeted dialog segments within a larger video and to create clips for easy distribution online. The company has also announced a partnership with a company that will handle transcription and captioning of video assets from within ReelSurfer's video platform.

The University of Strathclyde in Scotland and National University are both launch customers. The former said it expects to use the service in its S-Team Conference, taking place shortly in Scotland, which is teaching science teachers advanced education methods. The latter, a California-based private, non-profit institution, is using the service in its School of Media and Communication for delivering online media education. "Faculty have more time to focus on providing quality course content now that they don't have to wrangle multiple tools to compress, upload, and embed video into online courses," said Karla Berry, dean of the school at National U. "We're working to create the film school of tomorrow, and ReelSurfer's powerful video search and other features enable us to focus on the important part of our job: quality content and instruction."

The new cloud version of the application is expected to help customers expedite implementation of the technology and avoid investment for in-house infrastructure, according to the company co-founders. "As organizations are producing more and more media, they are having real problems managing all that data and providing it in a meaningful way to their users," said co-founder Neil Joglekar. "Providing the most flexible solution to fit customers' needs has become increasingly important and we have worked closely with our current customers to create a solution to help achieve their video goals."

The company also has teamed up with Automatic Sync Technologies to add transcription and captioning services, of particular use to students with either learning or physical disabilities. The ReelSurfer software now includes AST's CaptionSync service, allowing ReelSurfer users to caption videos from within the video search and management application.

AST was partially funded by a grant from the United States Department of Education to investigate improvements in captioning. AST's CaptionSync service provides a workflow for speeding up the process of creating captions, although the transcription work itself is done by people, not by automated means.