Gotuit Allows Users to Tag and Clip Web Video

A video site hopes to make sense of the ever-increasing number of Web videos by allowing its users to tag sections of videos and find specific scenes within those videos without having to watch the entire clip.

Digital media company Gotuit has launched the feature on its online video portal, initially offering the service with videos available from both YouTube at Metacafe. The technology makes use of the embedded video functionality to offer users the capability to mark scenes within the clip.

Called SceneMaker, the Woburn, Mass. company believes it will make the social video experience more enjoyable. "It gives the power of the executive producer to the consumer," Gotuit CEO Mark Pascarella told BetaNews in an interview earlier this week.

Users would be able to splice the video into scenes, and then send these clips to users. In addition, the user's clippings would be searchable from the main Gotuit Web site. Pascarella emphasized that Gotuit does not alter the video's content, and those wanting to see the full video are directed back to the original site.

"We have no intention of becoming a social video upload site at this time," he added, saying Gotuit's aim is to become the site to go to more deeply search social videos. While only two sites are currently compatible with the service, deals are in the works with other providers.

Gotuit believes it's offering is what is missing from social video. Many videos run as long as 10 minutes, however in most cases, the most relevant portion of that video may only be several seconds. Through Gotuit's offering, the consumer would be able to go directly to that spot.

"By adding SceneMaker to the Gotuit portfolio we are empowering the community to discover and experience online video in a whole new way," Pascarella said. "We have created a simple, web-based application that takes video beyond user-generated - to an entertainment experience that is completely user-controlled."

The technology behind SceneMaker has been around for a long time, Pascarella said, and is based on patents that the company first obtained in the 1990s. It had been available to the company's clients and used internally for several years, but has just now been made available to the public.

Besides its online destination, Gotuit also operates an on-demand cable offering available on Comcast and Time Warner outlets in portions of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Where it has an offering, it is the number one on-demand destination it claims.

In addition, it launched broadband videos from several providers including the Associated Press in July of this year.

Asked whether Gotuit planned to extend is tagging functionality to its offerings on other platforms, Pascarella responded, "We see multiplatform in the future," although declined to offer any timeframe as to when it would be available.