Virage Then And Now

"Going 'digital' in a world where most capture systems are based on tape means that the majority of video content has to be digitized or encoded. But that's not enough to unlock the power of having video in the digital domain," he explained as we crowded around the screen and watched in awe. "What makes the video 'intelligent' is a combination of converging technologies. Virage applies technologies to log the video--in real time--at the beginning of the workflow: the encode process. By inserting the video logging at the head-in it means we are not artificially introducing a new task into a well established video production workflow but we are making the video asset searchable."

Virage--We Make Video Searchable
While explaining how digital video assets could make us all more efficient in our jobs and accelerate video workflow processes that were previously reserved exclusively for high-value content, Montalvo launched a brand campaign for Virage. "Searchable video" became synonymous with the company's name. And at the same time, the company demonstrated the best partnering skills in the industry.

Through a combination of its proprietary and open source code and by selecting ubiquitous technologies (like a browser), Virage stitched together third party technologies, such as databases from Oracle, searching engines from Verity and affordable bandwidth (which initially was just in the enterprise but eventually reached out to where it is today) and introduced Video Logger. VideoLogger output is searchable and the results can be viewed with a browser.

In the year that followed after the market had grasped the concept of intelligent video, Virage branded the notion of "SmartEncode." But that begged the question: What after that? The workflow that follows the introduction of media into the digital domain (especially where the media hits the Web) needed to be managed on a platform.

Virage leveraged its foothold in customer accounts with the SmartEncoding system and developed a network-based content management and publishing platform that was considered the first and, by some, the best of a new breed of solutions for streaming media production. With Virage Solution Server (VSS) at the core of the platform, customers can webcast an intelligent live stream with precision and control, they can streamline the process of producing video for on-air, tape, or digital distribution, and, finally, they can publish content from the VSS to the web. VS Publishing allows a company to organize, manage, customize, and publish video and other rich media assets on the Internet.