Chop, slice, and 'deep-tag' your YouTube faves with Gotuit's SceneMaker
(Credit: Gotuit Media)You know what I'm talking about. It's not your favorite YouTube video, but it would be if it were shorter, because it's got one hilarious moment bogged down in nine minutes of dumb commentary and bumping the camera around. Some people say that's what you've got to deal with when it comes to user-generated amateur video. But it doesn't have to be that way, according to Boston-based broadband video start-up Gotuit Media. It launched a new Web tool today that's hoping to make online video content more, well, adaptable.
Until this point, Gotuit has focused more on corporate new-media tools. Founded in 2000, the company has since inked partnerships with companies like Time Warner Cable and Comcast to help with broadband video-on-demand technology. Then, last July, Gotuit dipped a toe in the consumer-content market by launching its own broadband video portal: it now has channels for music videos, news, entertainment, weather, and sports.
But now, it's trying something totally new: what executives Patrick Donovan and Mark Pascarella, whom I met with a few weeks ago, call "deep tagging." Gotuit today launched a tool called SceneMaker, which allows you to tweak videos found on YouTube and Metacafe, annotating them with intra-video tags (i.e. "Here's where the cat falls off the TV" at 3 minutes, 17 seconds) for other Gotuit users, and bookmarking clips within videos so that you only have to e-mail and share the good part. Hence, you can pick out your favorite joke in that "Saturday Night Live" sketch, or the best play in that NFL game clip, or what-have-you. There's a Firefox toolbar, too, so you can always have access to SceneMaker's functions.
Now I'm going to pose a question to all you lovely Webware readers: Is "deep tagging" too much? It's cool, sure. But will it catch on? Try it out and let us know what you think!
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline.
