Video Suite 2

AVAILABLE NOW !

Video metadata management for video and corporate communications professionals.

The benefits video offers are often countered by the medium's complexities. How do you find a particular scene in a library of thousands of hours of footage? How do you know which scenes contain sensitive information that should not be broadcast? How do you find the model release forms, transcripts or other related business documents associated with a particular shot?

Video Suite 2 enables you to complete tasks like these within seconds—not hours or days. Even better, if you can use a mouse, you can find everything you need using Video Suite 2. No video editing or IT experience is required.

Video "shots" are edited in a single window. Users can change shot boundaries; merge and split shots; choose keyframes for thumbnails; save frames as print-ready images, export shot boundary time references as SMPTE or frame numbers, and more.

Webcast Cataloged Content

Once your footage is cataloged, you can stream it to the Internet using popular video streaming servers that support the RTSP protocol, such as those from Apple and RealNetworks. Users can then view the video in real time, using one of the Canto Web Clients. For those that prefer to download rather than stream, Video Suite 2 makes that easy too.

Access to the video is governed by the very same Cumulus 7 permissions model you already trust, so you know you can determine with absolute precision who sees what. This helps you ensure that one client doesn't see the footage of another.

In addition, guest access makes certain footage available to all Web visitors. This makes Video Suite 2 an ideal solution for webcasting of podcasts or promotional footage.

Workflow Examples

Video Producer

A client's video is finished and you're about to archive the footage. You copy the completed video to the archive storage media (DVD, etc.) and catalog it from there into Video Suite 2. Once cataloged, you enter the metadata you'll need to find the shots in the future, and make adjustment to shot boundaries as you see fit. You also catalog any accompanying documents, such as model releases or contracts, and virtually "attach" those documents to the video itself. Now, the entirety of information you have about the project is in a single place, available to you at any time, without pulling out binders or reloading tapes.

Cumulus 7 view sets (catalog layouts) enable you to configure your video catalogs to look any way you want them. Choose the fields that are visible, select colors you prefer, and keep as many different view sets as needed.

At that point, the option to take the original footage offline is yours. All of the metadata remains searchable in Cumulus 7, even when the source video itself is offline. In the future, if you need to bring the footage back online, Video Suite 2 can point you to the proper storage media, saving you countless hours loading, relinking and previewing.

So, go ahead and dump those log files and notebooks—you'll never use them to find archived footage again. (If you want to keep a version of the final video online for previewing and streaming purposes, you can catalog a lower resolution variant of the master footage and save yourself lots of disk space.)

Later, when you (or a client) need to find a particular shot (or just see all shots in your library that include, for example, a certain phrase or were shot in a certain location), you'll use the Cumulus Native or Web Clients. You'll enter your search terms, or use the convenient Cumulus 7 Categories structure to browse for what you need. The asset records for applicable shots appear in seconds, offering access to all the metadata information you need. They can even point you to the original footage if it's offline and you need to find it quickly.

The Web Client interface to Cumulus 7 catalogs uses the same view sets available from the Windows and Mac OS X Clients. Access to thumbnails offers a quick scan of the cataloged shots, while information views permit instant metadata editing.

Corporate Communications Department

You've outsourced the production of a corporate video and have approval footage in hand. You want to show the footage to your CEO and VP or Marketing, but they're both at meetings out of the country. You could duplicate and over-night tapes or DVDs, but there's no guarantee they'll get there in time, and even in the best case, you've wasted an entire day plus the cost of duplication and delivery.

Using Video Suite 2, you'd just catalog the footage into your Cumulus 7 system and email the reviewers to let them know it's there. (Cumulus can even do this automatically for you!) They log in from any Web browser, day or night, and see the content streamed right to their hotel or conference room. You can get your approvals within hours, not days.

Once the video is complete, you'll catalog the final into Cumulus 7 and enter metadata as needed. You can stream it to customers over the Internet, or you can just keep it locked up, secure and ready for use. When a media outlet comes calling looking for source footage, you'll have what they need immediately. Within a few moments, you can email them a link they can use to access the footage they need. You'll have your company on the 6 o'clock news while your competitors are still making phone calls to track down footage.

Video Suite even makes it easy to save video frames in formats suitable for other projects, like annual reports, PowerPoint presentations, website images, and more.

It's easy to save all frames in a shot, a range of frames, or even a single frame. Output format options include TIF, JPG, BMP and PDF. You can even choose your output size and resolution. There's no quicker way to get video frames into reports, presentations or email messages.

Video Suite 2 can help turbo charge your company's internal communications too. Let your CEO use her webcam to record a monthly message to employees and webcast the message across your intranet.

Training and Technical Support

One of the most popular methods of training these days is screenshot-based tutorials. But the only method a user has to search the content of these and other training movies is by title alone. Using Video Suite 2, keyword-type searches can find training content that might not be apparent by title alone.

This enables your company to rapidly build and deploy a library of support materials that not only help customers, but can give you the edge when it comes to reducing customer support costs.

Usage Examples

Dialog-based clip searching   Ever wonder how the editors of those TV network promos can find video clips in which actors say just the right thing they need to make their point? Now you can do the very same thing without searching through hours and hours of archives. Just copy the dialog script used in a clip into the clip's metadata, and you can instantly find video based on the dialog it contains, on a convenient scene by scene basis.

Release form management   Keep release forms that actors signed "attached" to the video footage that applies, using the asset-relations management features of Cumulus. Never again will you go searching for releases or wondering if you got all the signatures you needed.

"CEO" video editing   Now your CEO or other managers can actually access video from their desktops (or laptops) and hand pick the footage they want before time and money is spent (or wasted) in a video editing bay. Using the many Cumulus metadata fields, managers can enter notes about the clips—even voice annotations—that editors can use to construct final clips.

Maintain a corporate video library   Keep corporate films ready for "anytime" distribution. Ensure that when a news agency seeks footage of your CEO or facilities, you have the files ready to go. Send a simple Internet link and you're far more likely to get the media coverage you're after.

Set up a video management service for others   If your company is a service agency that manages the files of others, now you can extend your services to include video.