Syndicaster Beta Launches Conference Videos Instantly
A new version of Critical Media's Syndicaster launches in beta today at OnMedia NYC 2010, and conference organizers might want to pay close attention to the results. The product, Syndicaster beta for Web feeds and conferences, does a remarkable job of breaking live video into useful sound bites and then syndicating those clips in minutes to interested Web sites.
[This is the second version of Syndicaster to launch. The first was targeted at broadcasters and debuted in October, 2008. It's now used on four continents, says Critical Media CEO Sean Morgan, generating more than 17 hours of television every 60 seconds. It's been used by 65 broadcasters, including LIN TV, Bloomberg Television, Hearst TV, Journal Broadcast Group, and NPG cable to create over 30,000 clips since launch, he says.
The reason it's so much in demand is that Syndicaster drastically shortens the time and energy needed to break video into clips, create a transcript, and upload the results. As you ingest video with Syndicaster, the feeds go to a Syndicaster stack, which creates a transcript of the material on-the-fly. You then edit the video simply by highlighting text in the transcript. No video editing skills are needed. Give your clips a title, metadata, and geotag information and you're done. Editing doesn't even need to be done on-site, since editors can log into the system from anywhere.
Syndicaster will also take care of the upload process for you. When you publish your clip, it gets posted to your own site, as well as to any video hosting sites (like YouTube) that you select. You can choose to embargo material, so that it's on your site first. The clips also go to ClipSyndicate.com, a video syndication platform owned by Critical Media. Clips then appear on partner sites based on the keywords assigned. ClipSyndicate.com works on a revenue share model, so the system also monetizes your content. If partner sites don't want to create a set of filters, then can elect to simply show video channel, such as all business videos or all news videos.
The appeal of Syndicaster is that it works live, so you can create and post sound bite clips from a conference while the event is still going on. You can also edit conference video down, so that viewers don't have to watch an hour-long conference to find breaking news.
"News is being broken at these events, and now it can be made into sound bites in real time," says Morgan.
With Syndicaster, conferences can build a video brand around themselves, Morgan points out, spotlighting material from their events. "It's an untapped market; it's some of the highest value content out there," he adds.
Mark Cuban will deliver the keynote address at the AlwaysOn NYC 2010 conference tomorrow morning, and the organizers should have clips posted by the time he's finished speaking.
"The feedback we've been getting has been tremendous, because there's this wealth of content at conferences that never gets in front of people's eyeballs," says Morgan.
While pricing varies for Syndicaster, Morgan says it starts as low as $200 per month. Extras include private white label players, ad servers, and CDN servers.