Excalibur takes wraps off video analysis tool
Excalibur (Vienna, VA) has unveiled a new product for capturing, analyzing, screening, searching and retrieving video and closed-caption text over the Internet, intranets or extranets. Screening Room, now in beta, is based on Excalibur's new Video Analysis Engine, a software developers kit for creating video applications, and RetrievalWare, which searches through closed-caption text and other metadata. Also included is the ability to automatically infer and create storyboards. The product is targeted at organizations in the media, entertainment and broadcasting industries.
Also included is a capture station, which captures and analyzes analog or digital video assets, creates video storyboards, and extracts closed-caption text and other metadata. A video asset server indexes and stores captured video assets for browsing, search and retrieval in a client/server environment. An edit client makes revisions, including adding text annotations, to produce a storyboard allowing video playback, close-captioned text searches and image content searches. A screening room client offers access to completed storyboards through a Web-based browser.
"Excalibur has positioned itself well for some time as a search and retrieval solution for all forms of digital content," according to the Delphi Group (Boston). With the beta release of Screening Room, Excalibur "has taken a fundamental tool and delivered it as a specialized vertical application a direction being taken by any technology vendor smart enough to see the migration of value from tools to solutions." "Breakthrough advancements in managing video content provide new opportunities for organizations to transform their video archives into new revenue streams," added International Data Corporation (IDC, Framingham, MA) research manager Gerry Murray. "Excalibur's long standing history of providing advanced search-powered applications positions it well in this emerging market." The product will be officially released this summer, at which time pricing and packaging will be announced