Brightcove: A Pick for Online Video Pros
Each web video sharing service has its strengths and weaknesses, and each has also developed niches amongst content creators. YouTube is the favorite of your neighborhood camkid; vlog scenesters can generally be found on Revver or Blip.tv.
Brightcove, the Cambridge, Mass.-based online video service started in March of 2004 by Jeremy Allaire, is becoming the preferred choice of professionals, large media companies and politicians. Rudi Guliani, fellow presidential aspirant Barack Obama,The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, and The Washington Post, Newsweek and Elle Magazine are using Brightcove for their video efforts.
The company has raised a total of $81.2 million in funding from the likes of venture funds AllianceBernstein, Brookside Capital, Maverick Capital, Accel, IAC and Morgan Stanley as well as media companies AOL, Hearst and The New York Times.
While it is unlikely that Obamas of the world care much about the under-the-hood bells and whistles of Brightcove platform, anyone who is serious about online video publishing should give this service a look. The interface is slick and the tools are geared towards managing lots of content, while making it relatively easy to customize the user experience.
The content management features are quite robust, allowing for lots of control over media assets, meta information, broadcast and display mechanics such as home site linking and embedding, and a templating system that makes it relatively simple to pull together backgrounds, logos, multiple episodes and even user-generated content into cohesive branded viewing experience.
Personally, I’d prefer a more open and customizable architecture using Castfire and a bulk CDN, for instance, but business users seem willing to accept some limitations on customizability in exchange for turnkey ease, which Brightcove certainly supplies.
For those looking to make money off their video efforts, Brightcove shines admirably. Besides the standard ad-supported model, Brightcove also offers a new pay-per-view beta — something that only Brightcove and Veoh are offering, currently. This dovetails with Brightcove’s agreement to offer content to TiVo’s fledgling on-demand service, and long-form shows like Showtime’s The Tudors feel like a natural fit, making a la carte purchases of premium television network shows seem a natural trajectory.
On a scale of one to ten, I’d give this service an eight. Not what I’d recommend for up-and-coming vloggers, but definitely worth considering if you’re a publisher trying to decide between going third-party or developing a video solution in-house.
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Great review of a great site. Indie filmmakers and video producers also have a home at http://www.hungryflix.com.
We offer paid downloads in iPod and Apple TV compatible MPEG4.
Brian Andrews on March 27th, 2007 at 6:13 am - Permalink
Thanks for the great coverage here on NewTeeVee…
Cruxy has been offering pay-per-view/download for all media types well before Brightcove and Veoh. By leveraging Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services, we’ve been able to do this for much less than $81 million.
While we do admire the power and scope of the Brightcove platform, we feel that it can be a bit overkill for emerging creators. We also feel that creators are moving towards more mixed media needs, and should not be siloed into one content type.
Some of our best selling creators are the fellas from HowToDoTheRobot.com: http://cruxy.com/howtodotherobot
the New York-based cooking & culture channel Chic.tv: http://cruxy.com/chic_tv
and Italian visual designers, The Fake Factory
http://cruxy.com/thefakefactory
Nathan Freitas on March 27th, 2007 at 7:17 am - Permalink
Thanks for the review! Up-and-coming vloggers could also check out Brightcove Personal Channels: http://blog.brightcove.com/blog/2007/02/share_your_vide.html
And in time they can remix their videos through Aftermix: http://www.deitte.com/archives/2007/02/aftermixing_at.htm
Brian Deitte on March 27th, 2007 at 10:16 am - Permalink
This is a good review. It’s convinced me to give them a try anyway.
hash on March 27th, 2007 at 10:23 am - Permalink
Did you get a chance to try Brightcove’s new video editing tools in Aftermix? David Berlind raved about the application last month.
Mari Silbey on March 27th, 2007 at 11:13 am - Permalink
Castfire is currently rolling out additional functionality for content publishers. If you would like more information or a demo, please e-mail me @ brian@castfire.com.
Brian Walsh on March 29th, 2007 at 4:31 pm - Permalink
[...] which has raised huge amounts of money is slowly becoming an infrastructure provider of choice for large content providers, mostly because the company has developed tools that integrate with their existing production [...]
NewTeeVee Brightcove gets a bigger piece of FOX « on June 17th, 2007 at 9:01 pm - Permalink
Fliqz offers a wonderful solution that allows publishers, and websites to fully customize the look, feel and brand of there videos. It is a far less expensive model and still allows the use of ad serving. Any user-generated web 2.0 type site would love the ability to customize and syndicate with the Fliqz platform
check out http://www.fliqz.com
Joshua on September 6th, 2007 at 1:36 pm - Permalink