We often get the question, "How does SnapStream's TV search appliance work?" so here's a brief explanation.

First, for anyone new to SnapStream's TV search technology, a quick summary of what it is: SnapStream Enterprise is an "appliance" that allows an organization to record lots of television and then search inside those recordings. By "appliance", we just mean that the product is a self-contained server that you buy from us that's quick and easy to setup. Here's what the hardware looks like:

Once you have a SnapStream Enterprise TV Server setup, the first thing you'd typically do is tell it what you want it to record. You can do this using the SnapStream program guide -- you can record a single instance of a show, you can record every instance of a show, or you can record a particular channel 24 hours a day:

Once recordings are made, you can search inside those recordings for anything you might be looking for. Some examples of TV search scenarios:

• A presidential campaign wants to search for every mention of their candidate and their candidate's competition is mentioned on TV -- so they can respond to that TV coverage more efficiently.
• A city government wants to search all of their local TV stations for mentions of their police department, their fire department, and anything else related to their city government.
• A television comedy show (like The Soup on E!) wants to search thousands of hours of television for things to make fun of.
• A journalism department at a university wants to do a type of research called content analysis (also known as textual analysis), so they use our search technology to chart word frequencies over time.
• ...and the list goes on.

As an example of our TV search results, here's an ad-hoc search that I did on "George Carlin" (I ran this query just now on Friday, June 27, 2008):

You'll see for each search result, there's

• the name of the program that contained the match,
• the time at which the match occurred (for example, Anderson Cooper 360 at 8:59pm yesterday),
• and finally there's an excerpt of the transcript with the matching words bold-faced.

(A side note: you can also setup SnapStream Alerts that would e-mail you everytime certain words appeared on television -- the results would look similar, but you'd get them on e-mail).

So how does our TV search technology work? It searches over a combination of

• closed-captioning data and
• program guide data.

The FCC requires closed-captioning to be included on almost all TV programming (more on the details of this on the fcc.gov website). So while SnapStream Enterprise is making a recording, it also simultaneously records all of the closed-captioning data for that show. In the process of recording the closed-captioning, SnapStream Enterprise does some clean-up of the text to make it easier to read and easier to search. And then we index all of that text in a time-coded fashion, so when we find a match, we can direct the user to not only the program where the match occurred, but also to the time within that program. Program guide data is also used in our search process so users can easily filter searches by program genre, by channel, or by program title.

In addition to being simple to use, the SnapStream TV search engine also offers up a lot of power in the hopes that our customers can find whatever it is they are looking for on television. More on this in the next blog posting! Meanwhile, if you have any questions, post 'em in the comments.

The Las Vegas Convention center is huge at 3.2 million square feet and while at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas, SnapStream only occupies 100 sq. ft. of that space. And based on feedback from visitors last year, we know that the SnapStream booth was hard to find.

Hopefully this year we're easier to find simply because we're not as far back in the South Upper Hall as we were last year (many thanks to our contact at the NAB, Joy Lindsey!):

But, we still wanted to make it easier for you to find us so here are some maps and directions.

Directions to SnapStream at NAB2008:

1. Get to the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center (veterans of the Las Vegas Convention Center will know that this is on one end of the convention center, furthest away from the Hilton and the North Hall)

2. Take the escalator up to the South Upper Hall

3. Walk down the main corridor of the South Upper Hall (you'll pass massive booths from companies like Sony and Motorola)

4. When you see the Ross Video booth, hang a left.

5. You'll see us on a corner to your right -- our booth number is #SU6008.

See you at NAB!

A few weeks ago, we began shipping a small update to SnapStream Enterprise 4.8 -- version 4.8.1. This new version of SnapStream Enterprise adds a few new capabilities and a slew of bug fixes.

One new capability is what we're calling "saved guide searches" -- with this new feature, you can schedule recordings by keyword in the program guide. For example, if you are a presidential campaign, you could schedule SnapStream Enterprise to record any show with the words "presidential", "campaign", or "election" in the title or description. Or if you are a tabloid or celebrity magazine following Brad Pitt, SnapStream Enterprise can now record any program with the actor in it.

We've also added a enhanced DirecTV Pay Per View data in the program guide. Those of you using your SnapStream Enterprise TV Server to record from DirecTV may have noticed that large portions of pay-per-view channels on DirecTV would be displayed with everything listed as "Pay-Per-View":

Well, now you'll get data detailing the specific paid programming on those DirecTV channels:

So check out the release notes for SnapStream Enterprise for the complete scoop and existing customers can upgrade their SnapStream Enterprise TV Server and their SnapStream Enterprise Link clients.

Background: SnapStream's Enterprise TV Server is currently be used by television stations for "airchecks". An aircheck is the process by which a television station records and searches past television broadcasts for the purposes of competitive intelligence, research, and FCC compliance. Today, April 1, 2008, SnapStream is announcing an exciting new addition to its television search technologies!
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SnapStream Media Launches Enterprise TV with BearCheck™ Technology
Remove the fear of watching TV by automatically being alerted to bears on the screen.

Houston, April 1, 2008- SnapStream Media, Inc. announced today the addition of the patented BearCheck™ technology to its Enterprise TV Server solution. In addition to recording and searching over 3000 hours of television across 10 tuners, the Enterprise Server can now detect and alert the viewer to the presence of bears on the screen. Handy for organizations that have an unusual aversion to the pictures of bears, BearCheck™ takes all of the worry out of the TV viewing experience.

Available as a free upgrade to all Enterprise TV servers, BearCheck™ may be available for download in the future.

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George Washington University’s independent student newspaper, the GW Hatchet, reports on the use of our SnapStream Enterprise product in the School of Media and Public Affairs. The story highlights the impact that SnapStream's television search technology will have at GWU's public policy and journalism schools, making it so that faculty and students can search television broadcasts for educational research and analysis. A few choice quotes:

Sean Aday, an associate professor at GWU, says:

"It's a great tool for research. For example, with the recent news about the U.S. embassy in Serbia, we could collect and compare coverage from all the networks. Graduate students, especially in the research methods class, will be able to conduct their own content analysis.”

Paul Fucito, GWU's director of communications, says:

"It takes seconds and minutes now to do what took weeks or months. After recording, let's say a month of Andersen Cooper, you can then go back type in relevant keywords, find the clips that apply and watch those segments."

Article: SMPA acquires TiVo-like technology

A few weeks ago we started offering webinars for SnapStream Enterprise, our television search appliance.

If you aren't familiar with it, SnapStream Enterprise like a DVR on steroids crossed with a search engine -- it lets you record a bunch of television shows and then search inside those recordings for every mention of:

• your presidential candidate
• your city's mayor
• a celebrity (in case you're their publicist)
• swear words (in case you're monitoring foul language on television at the FCC)
• ...or pretty much any other topic that might have been covered on television.

And anyone in your organization (city government, production studio, PR agency, corporate communications department, etc) can do these searches from their desktop PC.

Anyways, register for one of our webinars to see the product first-hand and to learn more about the most recent release of SnapStream Enterprise (version 4.8). To sign-up, see the calendar of upcoming webinars and choose a date and time that works for you.

Long hours and hard work have paid off. We’ve polished off old features and added new features in the latest 4.8 version of the SnapStream Enterprise TV Server.

Some of the shiny new features include:

SnapStream TV Alerts (via email): Create a saved television search that runs automatically on every new recording. Whenever matches occur, the Enterprise Server will dispatch an e-mail with clips of the new results. SnapStream Alerts can be setup to run as-it-happens, daily or weekly.

Access Control: The SnapStream Enterprise TV Server now supports the creation of user accounts with restricted privileges. Activities like watching recordings, watching live TV, scheduling recordings and changing settings can now be access-controlled on a user-by-user basis. Access control supports integration with Active Directory, so your users don’t have to learn a new set of credentials.

Automatic Sync to iPod/iPhone: Automatically sync recordings and clips to iPods or iPhones by subscribing to an SnapStream Enterprise RSS feed in iTunes.

Frame-by-Frame Playback: Paused videos can be advanced by single frames with the arrow keys for more accurate clipping.

Administrator Email Alerts: The Enterprise Server can be configured to notify an administrator by e-mail whenever an error occurs.

Google OneBox Integration: Integrate television search results with Google's enterprise search products, including the Google Mini or Google Search Appliance (GSA), with our Google Onebox support.

Some improvements to our existing features include:

• Real-Time Closed Caption Indexing - The Enterprise Server now begins indexing new recordings immediately. Search results are available 15 minutes after the start of recording.

• Improved Search Results - Search Results are now shown in absolute time, instead of relative position within a video. (i.e.: Monday 4:44 pm instead of Monday 0:14). Duplicate search results have been eliminated, and results within the same show are now easier to recognize in the search results.

• Search by Channel - searches by channel using the specific number (“channel:12”), network (“network:ABC”), or call sign (“callsign:KHOU”).

• Clipping-In Progress - Clips can now be taken from a show while recording is still in progress.

• H.264 - SnapStream's ShowSqueeze feature now includes support for the H.264 format, whch delivers high video quality in a compact file size. All Enterprise features are supported for H.264, including search and clipping.

• Time-based Expiration - Recordings can now be deleted automatically after a time period of your choice.

• Recording Stats - Better manage your storage capacity with at-a-glance recording stats, including average hours per day of recordings, based on your recording schedule.

• Library advanced display options - New display and sorting options are available for the library.

• Faster Library and Scheduler - New optimizations in the library and scheduler make them faster for large recording schedules and large recording lists.

We’ve tweaked and added to the Enterprise TV Server, making version 4.8 faster and more reliable when recording and monitoring television. Click here to view the full release notes.

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