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Posts Tagged ‘co:Veodia’

Following on the heels of Cisco and Google, IVT is launching its own version of “YouTube for the enterprise.” Google launched its “video for business” application just a couple of weeks ago, while Cisco hit the market in June with “Enterprise TV.”

IVT will challenge those players as well as start-ups Veodia and Brightcove with a portal-like media center that can aggregate not just videos but all rich media, such as recorded WebEx meetings, iTunes podcasts, Cisco video conferences, webcasts, and Polycom conference calls.

IVT PrimeTime is a portal that corporations can use to manage content within their organization. Employees can upload video for corporate training into the portal and search for videos and other media within it. Users can set up channels for specialized content and access controls to determine who can view it.

IVT is based in Los Angeles and Palo Alto, Calif. Its clients include Cisco, AT&T, IBM, E&Y, Oracle, NEC, Rohm & Haas and EDS. It provides them with rich media video communication and webcasting software. Now it is adding PrimeTime to cash in on corporate video sharing. The company says it will make it as easy to share videos in a business context as can be done on consumer video sites such as YouTube. Rohm & Haas said it has been using IVT PrimeTime for months now and has archived hundreds of hours of video.

The company says it can easily transcode video from any format into Adobe’s Flash format for universal viewing. Each component of IVT’s product is installed as a web-based platform. For users, it has a PrimeTime Studio tool that makes it easy to stage webcasts and upload video.

The company has 20 employees and was founded in 2005. In 2007, it raised a $3 million first round from Monitor Ventures and Tudor Investments. IVT is thinking about raising a new round. It sounds like a “me-too” company. But the company says that founder Greg Pulier has been involved in developing content creation tools and online video applications for years. He foresaw the need to make a unified platform for all sorts of rich media, not just video.

veodia.jpgVeodia is about to make it easier to for companies to create high-quality video content.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based start-up, which is trying to squeeze into the crowded online video market, has just added compatibility with Adobe’s nearly ubiquitous Flash Player.

That could be a huge boost for Veodia’s video service, which launched last May (our coverage). The service uses the H.264 codec (one of the codecs used for Blu-Ray DVDs) for higher video quality and, until now, could only be played in Quicktime.

As of today, Cohen says his company is the first to allow normal users — not just big media studios — to create high-definition Flash video. Unless you use Veodia, the only way to create H.264 video for Flash is through a professional program like FinalCut, Cohen says. Veodia, on the other hand, lets you record video through a simple in-browser dashboard — you just hit “start” and your camera starts sending footage online. (See the sample video below. As before, the video quality is much higher than competing sites like Ustream and Justin.tv. The novelty is that it’s in Flash.)

Rather than wanting to compete with the popular consumer-focused video sites, Cohen emphasizes serving large companies — he wants Veodia to provide the technology that companies use to create videos for training, marketing and corporate communication. With that in mind, Cohen says he took a risk two years ago by developing his service around a high-quality video format.That risk initially caused some complaints, Cohen says, since Quicktime isn’t as widely available as Flash on personal computers. (There was less resistance when it came to Veodia’s mobile and set-top box services, since the format works on the iPhone and AppleTV.)

Cohen probably breathed a sigh of relief in December, after Adobe announced Flash would support H.264 — it was a sign that he had bet on the right format. Now, he describes the announcement as the “last step” needed to ensure that the video format will eventually find mass acceptance. Indeed, Veodia’s ease-of-use combined with the new Flash compatibility could play a big part in that acceptance.

Veodia was initially angel-backed, and it just raised a first round of venture funding, Cohen says, although he won’t offer any details yet.

veodia.jpgVeodia is the latest company pushing improvements in video, for bloggers or others wanting to broadcast high-end content.

Separately, another company, called Me.TV which isn’t doing anything extremely new but worth mentioning, joins the parade of video companies.

First, Veodia. The Palo Alto, Calif. company lets you tape top-grade video, and publish it via blogs, or as podcasts to iPod or Apple TV, for example. It lets you archive it all. Another advantage is that it keeps everything online. No storage. By contrast, if you use YouTube, you capture video on your Webcam, save it on your computer, and then you upload it. Fine for a short file. But Veodia puts hours — 24 hours or more — right online and makes it ready to stream immediately. It’s professional quality, and much better than the Flash video you see on YouTube. You can sign up now for a free beta version.

veodiadem.jpgIt’s best used with a high-end TV camera, because it shows high-quality video, or H.264/MPEG-4, which is about the same quality as real TV. You can use a camcorder too, or webcam. You plug the camera into your computer, register and Veodia gives you a plug-in to your browser. A simple dashboard lets you hit a start button, and you’re off. Veodia takes care of the rest — handling framerate, bitrate, etc — details you don’t want to worry about. It provides reports too, i.e., how many people watched, what platform they watched from, and other info you may have asked for. Click on image at left to see an example; if you’re not using RSS, you can see it embedded below too.

It has partnered with WebEx to offer the service to WebEx users. Webex’s own service is different because it is designed for multiple people interacting, over relatively low quality video.

The round was led by Steven Berger, chairman of Turnitin and iParadigms (bio here), along with five other angels. Chief executive Guillaume Cohen tells us he turned down venture capital money, so this is the latest example of angel investors encroaching traditional VC turf. Cohen saw a market for this product, after working for France Telecom spin-out Envivio, and seeing the large number of dollars being spent by customers for these tools — and for products that didn’t well at that.

Veodia will be free to individuals, but will charge for extra services, such as helping you sell live broadcasts — for things like tutorials, webinars or concerts. That service, planned for September launch, helps you generate virtual tickets and will take care of billing. For businesses, Veodia will charge a monthly subscription for things like online storage, and streaming capacity based on minutes a month.

The only question is how many people will end up really wanting such high-end stuff. The masses appear to be gravitating to quick, short videos, of the sort at YouTube and Kyte. And large companies like Brightcove are already trying to serve bigger businesses.

metv2.jpgFinally, a mention of Me.TV, another new video site produced by Los Angeles-based Demand Media. It’s a social network, letting people register .tv domain names ($25/yr), and then giving them a way to feature their videos. Me.TV provides a template to choose from, and you can add blog posts, and videos from elsewhere on the Web too. It will take a cut of any revenue from advertising. This seems quite elaborate, given all the other ways you can produce video, and video sites for free. However, if you don’t want to hassle, and are keen to share video, or in Hollywood trying to keep up with the Jones’, this may be worth it. The model is somewhat like Ning’s for social networks, though Ning doesn’t make you pay for a domain. Techcrunch reviewed it here. Demo video below (click on link; we’re not embedding video, because RSS readers won’t be able to see).

metv.jpg

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Veodia, which helps businesses create high-quality video content, has raised $8.3 million in a first round of funding.
I last spoke to Veodia chief executive Guillaume Cohen in March when he announced that in addition to Quicktime, Veodia would also support Flash content. At the time, Cohen said Veodia had raised funding, but he couldn’t provide [...]

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