1. User experience: Interactive transcripts – like the one implemented here – http://www.20onfive.com/ -
create a much more engaging and interactive experience. Users can search for or click on any word to jump to that part of the video. Users can also clip and share a specific section of a video simply by highlighting the spoken text.

2. SEO: transcribed video is much easier to index by search engines, and thus becomes much more discoverable. However, with so much online video, only a cost-effective, scalable solution is realistic on a large scale.

3. Accessibility: Last week’s passage of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act mandates captioning for certain types of online video, including all Internet content that also airs on TV. Accessibility requirements will likely become even more stringent in the coming years.

4. Translation into foreign languages can really only be accomplished with a high quality transcript.

The company is called PortalVideo (http://www.portalvideo.com). The description from their site with notes in brackets from me: “Our unique transcript-based editing system [over the internet] dramatically reduces the time and cost of creating a rough-cut. Make a video edit [on any internet-connected computer] by cutting and pasting text from the transcript. Collaborate easily with clients and workgroups anytime, anywhere over the internet.”

Michael Kolowich
DigiNovations

http://www.cinital.com/

86a Sherman St
Cambridge, MA 02140

877-CINITAL (246-4825)

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/01/06/a_new_script_for_moviemaking/

http://video.on.nytimes.com/index.jsp?fr_story=FRdamp254885

Only 1/2 of Americans have high-speed Internet, and he doesn’t think that will change very soon. Most of the rest of what he says is about very practical considerations of consumers who want to watch movies; not directly relevant to what you’re talking about. (But the little film of Pogue is worth watching if only because he’s funny.)

Anyway, thanks very much for the list of companies. It’s great to see so much activity happening right here!

– Dan Weinreb, Common Angels

At DigiNovations, we’re working principally on the content side, but we’ve geared our entire business around internet TV channel implementation and web video content production. Our most visible effort was the design and implementation of Mitt TV (http://mittromney.permissiontv.com) for the Romney for President campaign, but we now run many dozens of internet TV channels for companies and organizations all over New England.

I also author a blog called “Web Video Expert”, that focuses on what businesspeople should know about this convergence. It’s at http://www.web-video-expert.com/blog

Michael Kolowich
Executive Producer
DigiNovations / North Bridge Productions
Concord, Massachusetts