We need your advice! Upload Process

Hey Guys,

We would love your input as we design and build out our bulk uploader.

Can you take a look at these designs and let us know what you think?

http://design.pwsdev.com/cutcaster/upload-page/
http://design.pwsdev.com/cutcaster/upload-page-describe/
http://design.pwsdev.com/cutcaster/upload-page-submit/
http://design.pwsdev.com/cutcaster/upload-page-submit-edit-media-details/
http://design.pwsdev.com/cutcaster/upload-page-submit-completed/

I'd love to hear any and all feedback because we are going this to make the process easier and for you guys ;-)

Thanks

How cool is this? World Wide Telescope

This is going to be great.

There are some pretty nerdy looking kids in the video of the kids react to the WWTelescope. I think one of them looks like Bill Gates from 2nd grade but The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe. Think Google Maps and being able to drag around your local maps but now think of it in terms of the universe and the sky. This will help provide context for the universe and open up anyones imagination who looks at it.

Robert Scoble wrote about it over on his blog and gave us the heads up.

Some other things.

1. It’s dedicated to Jim Gray, the Microsoft Researcher who sailed out of San Francisco Bay about a year ago never to be heard from again. He started this project with a paper back in 2002.
2. It runs only on Windows. It’s coded in C#/.NET, you’ll meet the developer in our video and you’ll hear more about that then.
3. It’s free, but only in a private alpha right now. I’m not sure when it’ll be released to the public.
4. There are terabytes of data, all seamlessly integrated for the first time here.

This is really going to be an inspirational tool for children and adults. I can't wait to take a look at it in the Spring of 2008.

Getty Images gets bought by Hellman & Friedman

2.4 BILLION. That's B for billion and 2.4 as in 2.4 billion. That is a hefty sum to pay for this woolley, slow moving mamouth, rich in content though. Getty Images Inc got snapped up today by private equity shop Hellman & Friedman affiliates for $34 per share in cash, in a deal it said was worth $2.4 billion, including the assumption of debt. That is a nice premium to the $1.5 billion everyone thought was the asking price only a month or so back and a premium of 55 percent over their closing price in January. Seems like H&F might have overpaid a bit and I'd love to know how they came up with that valuation but I know that Getty wasn't going to sell themselves for the 1.5 or 1.6 billion, which was the amount dangled in front of their eyes a month back. They have until the second quarter of this year to close the deal which I expect will.

What does this mean for the industry? Well there are going to be some big changes over at Getty which has been in a sink hole the last few years. Everything will still run through the giant image and footage company but I wonder if Jonathan Klein's job will be safe. I doubt it. How much of their workforce will be cut? Probably more than should be but they always have a place at Cutcaster ;-) What changes will be made in strategy and how will the company now report those changes to the people under contract with them? Will H&F be able to turn Getty around and alleviate the uproar photographers under contract with them have been creating?

More to come later ;-) but a fun way to start off the week. If you have any thoughts on the deal lets start a discussion below.

And the winner is...

So this past week Toshiba announced it would discontinue the HD DVD, opening the door for Blu-Ray to become the new high def DVD standard. What a lot of people have been talking about however, and what this CNET article we found through Techmeme does a good job of analyzing, is how online digital video downloads are going to be the true wave of the future. With the advent of Apple TV, cable and satellite video-on-demand services, who is going to go through a costly update of an entire DVD library?

Online Video Advertising...

According to this Techcrunch article, Google AdSense is rolling out a video-based ad placement service. Apparently, "Google is finally opening up the advertising program to any publisher in the U.S. that serves one million or more video streams per month." That's a fairly big threshold to reach so clearly only top-rated streaming sites will be able to participate in the program.

Funny, but one of these sites is Google's very own YouTube, which means the 70 million videos available may begin to feature what are arguably minimally intrusive text/video banners (see the article for some screenshots). It will be interesting to see how this very rapid transformation of the YouTube viewing experience will be taken by its loyal user base. If it's successfully incorporated (which would make it instantly mainstream), then that could mean significant additional revenues for any number of video content sites (including Cutcaster) that find traditional site banners either too annoying or too tacky.

Seeing Machines

I found this over at Robert Scobles blog and thought it was interesting for using in video search, possibly detecting copyrighted content and who is developing the best technology to categorize video online.

Gavin Longhurst, Vice President of Business Development for BigWorld Technology, showed off his new face detection software, called “Seeing Machines,” yesterday at the Stanford University Metaverse Summit, which Robert got to attend. They are preparing to show this technology off at the Game Developer Conference which is in San Francisco next week and we will give you an update when they do.

Get your Photos at Cutcaster - Adobe shutting down its Stock Photo Site

As of April 1, 2008, the Adobe® Stock Photos royalty-free image service will be discontinued. We made this decision in order to focus our efforts in other areas, and we want to share this news with you and let you know how it affects you.

Over the next few months we will be making changes to Adobe Stock Photos. On March 4, 2008, search functionality will be disabled. You will be able to purchase images through our service until March 31, 2008.

So from now on that means you have to get your photos at Cutcaster ;-) or take them yourself.

Anyone know the real reason why they are shutting their doors on stock?

Cutcaster over at Sphred

Take a look and give us a vote after you sign up when you get a chance. Thanks Sphred.

Happy Valentine's Day

I hope everyone is having a great Valentine's day.

Here are some great Videos uploaded by Julien for Valentine's Day.

Here.

And again.

And one last time ;-)

Is 7 bucks what your photo is worth?

Is $7 The Magic Number For Microstock?

February 13, 2008

By Daryl Lang

As Corbis prepares to launch the first ad campaign for its micropayment site SnapVillage this month, the site is in the unique position to answer a vexing question: What's the right price for a royalty-free microstock image?

SnapVillage, unique among microstock sites, lets photographers assign their photos one of five prices ($1, $5, $10, $25 or $50). The hope is that photographers will monitor their sales and settle on the prices that generate the most revenue. (SnapVillage does not charge different prices depending on file size.)

Early figures at SnapVillage suggest the sweet spot is $7.

That's the average price of an individual SnapVillage image so far, according to Adam Brotman, senior vice president of SnapVillage.

Read the rest at PDN.

Let's see how this average sweet spot works out for SnapVillage. I appreciate them sharing the data with the community. Cutcaster will do the same for the betterment of licensing content online and finding the correct market price so both seller and buyers are happy.

I also asked Daryl about the footage market which he responded with this, "I tend to pay more attention to photos than video, since our readership is mostly photographers, but I’m glad to know about your site. I think Shutterstock recently lowered its prices for footage, and I think Getty did the same thing. It’s a really unsettled market right now, kind of where micropayment photos were 3-4 years ago." It's definitely a fragmented and highly segmented market ;-)

Thanks Daryl

New Licensing Model? Will it work?

Images today are generally licensed for a flat fee, exclusively or non-exclusively. GumGum founders Ophir Tanz and Ari Mir think a better way is to charge for impressions, or on an advertising-supported basis.
GumGum allows any publisher to search for images (there are thousands available now via a number of photography agencies) - here´s an example search for "Britney" [these images are from the X17 photo agency]. Images can be licensed on a CPM basis (generally $0.20 or so, but determined by content owner), or for free with an advertisement.
Any photographer can now upload images and sell them. And any publisher can create an account to license images. Down the road, GumGum says, they´ll be adding video, audio and text content for licensing as well.


This is interesting. I think I understand it conceptually, but not practically.

Has anyone tried using Stock Photo Express?

I ran into this company today and it seemed to solve a lot of issues that contributors run into when uploading photos on the internet in bulk. From the website, Stock Photo Express is software that makes it easy to manage your stock portfolio, associate IPTC/XMP data with your images, and batch upload them to selected microstock photo agencies.


Features of Stock Photo Express

• Write IPTC data (e.g., image title, description, keywords, copyright) into image files

• Account for the status of each image

• Copy and paste IPTC data from one image into another

• Multithread upload of your images to selected stock agencies

• Schedule uploads

• Add any microstock agency which supports FTP uploading

• Status accounting for each image

• Metadata search in your images

As we know at Cutcaster, this takes a lot of time and could be a great product to save you some time. Let us know what your experience is with software like this.

Stock Photo Express

Getty Drops After New York Times Says Auction Is in Jeopardy

Saw this one coming.

By Sarah Rabil and Joseph Galante
Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Getty Images Inc., the media company
exploring financial options, fell as much as 7.1 percent on the
New York Stock Exchange after the New York Times reported that
its efforts to sell itself may be unsuccessful.
Getty hasn't received any offers significantly above its
market value of $1.6 billion, the newspaper said, citing
unidentified people briefed on the matter. Kohlberg Kravis
Roberts & Co., Bain Capital LLC and Providence Equity Partners
Inc. expressed interest in Getty last month, the Times said.
The company, the world's largest supplier of photographs to
newspapers and advertising agencies, hired Goldman Sachs Group
Inc. last month to explore financial options, after its shares
lost almost half their value in 12 months. Getty spokeswoman
Bridget Russel didn't immediately return a phone call and an e-
mail seeking comment on the report.
Getty, based in Seattle, dropped $1.70, or 6.4 percent, to
$24.92 at 10:08 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite
trading, after falling as low as $24.72.


It's interesting that Private Equity buyers are moving in around it. Not sure the synergies there and probably why they aren't willing to pay that much of a premium for the sagging company.

Cutcaster selected as top 5 Start up in NYC by InSITE

We got some fantastic news this weekend. For the last month, we have been preparing for our presentation/pitch to InSITE. InSITE is an entrepreneurial mentorship program that brings together the best and brightest students from Columbia and NYU Business and Law schools to support New York entrepreneurs in the development of their businesses and pursuit of venture capital and angel investments. They select 5 NYC based startups to help each semester out of a large pool of candidates and we were selected as 1 of the 5. Gooo Cutcaster!!!

InSITE fellows meet with these companies over a three-month time period, providing consulting services that include:

* Overall Business Review
* Business Plan and Exec Summary Analysis
* Business Model Analysis
* Pitch/Presentation enhancement and Story Practice
* Management Review & Recommendations
* Strategic Analysis (timing, competition, and alternatives)
* Deal Analysis (including valuation potential)

We are really excited to be working with InSITE and Vikram, our team leader. It will be interesting to see these students take on the licensing world we are in and what business models are the best to pursue. We also get a chance to meet with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati who have asked to set up a meeting between our two companies. At the end of the semester we get to pitch Cutcaster to a room full of Venture Capitalist and Angel Investors so it is very exciting. I can't wait to have InSITE on board and have to thank Molly Siems (she made the introduction), Hugh Dornbush and Kyusik Chung, who all three are on the InSITE board and really helped us along throughout the process..

I'll keep everyone updated on how it is going ;-)

Cutcaster offers royalty free images, stock photos, stock footage and stock photography for advertising, publishing or web design.

Is there a market for advertising templates?

Is there a market for selling people video and picture templates which they can use for advertising, they can customize and then turn into advertisements for their own local businesses?

Would businesses who wanted to advertise but not have the resources for a big agency to work with them use templates instead?

Should Cutcaster offer templates for people who want to use them for advertising?

Culture Catch Film Salon Series - Kevin Bacon

Last night, I was invited to a pretty cool screening of The Woodsman with Kevin Bacon starring in a role as a pedophile reentering society. Culture Catch presented another movie screening in their Film Salon Series. If you haven't seen the movie or heard about it, it's a powerful but I thought a bit slow at times. Bacon does a great job bringing this difficult role to the little screen. After the movie, Kevin spent about 30 minutes speaking about the role and how he got into character and dealt with playing the role. You can check out some of the footage over on Culture Catch.

I went to the screening with my friend, Sabine Anton, who is an internationally renowned film producer and news documentarian and was nice enough to invite me. She has worked in New York for the past 10 years for Europe’s largest Television network RTL and does some really great work now bringing peoples' lives and biographies to life over at "Your Life on Film." Check it out.

What does Royalty Free stock licensing mean?

Royalty-free pricing means the cost of a stock photo or video is based on it's artistic and technical qualities, not the specific use. You will not have to buy any additional rights for any subsequent usage of the images or photos you purchase via Cutcaster. By selling a royalty-free photo, a photographer permits you many uses of the photo, including any alterations like, but not limited to cropping, color alterations, creating derivative work from it, etc. The photographer will always remain the copyright owner of the photo.

Got $300k? Revver could be all yours!

CNET is reporting that video sharing site Revver is trying to sell itself for $300-500k, a pretty crappy price given its total funding of $12.7M. As most of you know already, Revver is a video sharing site that shares advertising revenue with its content creators. It also appears that Revver is in over a million dollars of debt and over half its staff has left.

According to TechCrunch, the company has had no luck finding a buyer even at such a low offering price. Both LiveUniverse, a “network of entertainment Web sites”, and Microsoft’s Soapbox (i.e. MSN Video) have considered buying Revver but neither has bitten.

Is Revver about to dance its swan song? Say it ain't so, Joe. It's never nice to see other's fail and we are sorry to hear about this but please let us know if anyone has any information.

Media Request Submitted-Fireworks

media_type : video
project_type : needed for RF use
description : fireworks scenes or shows. 15 to 30 seconds. finales!
priority : normal
deadline : July 4th
project_title : Fireworks

Sharing vs. Selling

Would you rather share your work with others or do you want to license it to them? What drives you more? Getting some notoriety or getting some money? How can you do both at the same time?

How we generate Revenue at Cutcaster?

We believe that Cutcaster’s sales will be primarily derived from the marketing of video and image reproduction as well as broadcasting rights to a range of business and individual customers. The site will employ a micro-payment model for this type of licensing and will tier the pricing of the content based on the resolution size of the file.

Revenues will arise from two principal types of licensed sales through the Cutcaster website:

1. Royalty-free sales or sales in which the user pays a one-time fee for unlimited use, are recognized from the time the video or still image is downloaded by the customer.

2. Rights protected sales or “extended licenses” are recognized when an agreement has been completed with the customer for the use of the video or still image (the “content”), and the “content” has been made available for use. Rights protected pricing terms do not call for additional fees beyond the agreed fee, and the buyer is contractually obligated to pay the invoiced amount upon agreement of the usage terms and delivery of the image for use by the seller.

The price is generally determined by resolution size and the extent of the rights granted over the use of the image or video clip. This can vary significantly across geographic markets and customer groups, i.e. how it is used and who is seeing it.

Digital Stock Footage Market

Stock footage is estimated to be a $300 million market(US), according to BBC World-wide, and is poised to grow to $1 billion by 2010(US) as more clips make their way into Internet ads, cell-phone snippets and digital billboards. ‘Thought Equity’, based in the US say its revenue grew by 500 percent in the first six months of 2006, very similar growth experienced by dedicated footage companies in the UK.

Just some interesting tidbits on the day ;-)

A Small Part of Cutcaster's Value Proposition

Similar to the benefits a stock exchange brings to an otherwise un-transparent stock market, a centralized, organized and regulated environment would provide a number of basic services for registering members and processing transactions in digital media that do not currently exist in one online package. Oversight, efficiency in execution, transparency, listing standards, asset protection (DRM; copyrights), centralized billing, transaction history, and most importantly the ability to quantify demand to determine fair value pricing, are the primary components.

Moreover, when all trading activity occurs in one location, the transactions themselves become easier to monitor, track, and analyze. Together, this valuable “market data” can be consolidated and then transmitted to both the internal community or sold to outside third-parties. This information dissemination should help create a fairer trading environment, as sellers can control their inventory by segmenting the market to achieve the highest sales prices, while buyers interact with the creator community by bidding for and requesting content.

Currently, there are a hodgepodge of different systems, services, and web platforms that make connecting content creators and media buyers in an effective and dynamic way all but impossible. There have been some attempts (Mochilla.com, for example), but these have tended to only focus on the professional space (i.e., connecting professional artists with major film studios and media companies). Cutcaster will instead focus on the entire spectrum of amateur and profesional buyers and sellers; we simply want to be a home for the monetization of user-generated content.