What may have gone largely unnoticed in Adobe’s announcement last week that it would be making its Flash video format available for the TV screen, is another important initiative: making video easier to use for consumers.
Today, the content within an online video cannot be searched. Unless someone manually inserts keyword metadata, there is no way to find a particular part of a clip or to fast forward to a certain spot.
At the National Association of Broadcasters convention last week, Adobe showed a beta version of a tool that would automate that process. Adobe Story, a new application now in private testing and scheduled to be released next year, will ingest a movie script and automatically break it down by character, key lines and interactions.
With the metadata paired to the footage, consumers will theoretically be able to search, then view just certain sections or specific dialogue in Web-based videos. A user could follow key lines in a movie, or just one specific character’s interactions and scenes.
If the technology works, (content creators will get to play with a beta version of Adobe Story later this year), Flash-based video could become as easy to search as a text-based Web site.
“Unlike HTML code used on Web sites and found by search engines, rich media today is opaque,” said Mark Randall, chief strategist of the company’s dynamic media group. “We want to make it more discoverable.”
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