SnapStream Blog

What’s New in SnapStream 9.3

August 21 2019 by Tina Nazerian

SnapStream 9.3 brings you clipping across recordings, new task notifications, 3x playback in the web player, and more than 75 bug fixes and improvements. You can see these new features in action by watching our on-demand webinar. Here’s what we’ve added and improved: 

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A few of the highlights:

  • Clipping Across Recordings 
  • New Task Notifications 
  • 3x Playback

Clipping Across Recordings

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SnapStream 9.3 lets you clip across recordings without missing a frame. Did your show start early or late? No need to worry. As long as you’re recording a feed continuously, you’ll get a merged timeline in the player. 

To get started, load the recordings you want in the player and clip across them. The result? A seamless clip from point to point.

 

New Task Notifications 

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The revamped notification system in SnapStream 9.3 lets you minimize, dismiss, or even retrieve tasks later. You can control how much of your screen notifications cover. 

To minimize a notification, click the “-” bar on the top-right pane.

 

3x Playback

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Save even more time watching clips with 3x playback in SnapStream 9.3. 

Every single frame will play at 3x the speed. And the pitch corrected audio means you won’t hear chipmunk voices. 

To play a clip at 3x the speed, go to the playback speed settings in the player and select “3x.”

 

More

SnapStream 9.3 has over 75 other bug fixes and improvements, like improved HLS recording. Please read the full release notes

 

Schedule Upgrade to 9.3

(Usually 1 hour) 
SnapStream’s support team will perform the upgrade via a remote session.

 

Watch On-Demand Webinar: SnapStream 9.3

See SnapStream 9.3 in action. 

Make the Most of Posting Constraints in College Athletics: Tips from LSU Athletics’ Todd Politz

July 22 2019 by Tina Nazerian

It’s not enough to post a video clip directing fans to a livestream


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If you're part of the digital media team for the athletics department at a college or university, it’s likely that you’re working with restrictions—your conference probably has an agreement with a television rights holder (such as ESPN) that limits how many videos can go on social media feeds while a game is live. And if you work in pro sports, you know that some leagues have their own posting rules. 

Todd Politz regularly navigates those types of restrictions. As the director of digital media at Louisiana State University Athletics, he oversees best practices for all of the social media accounts for the school's 21 varsity teams. 

For each of those sports, there are one or two individuals who actually make the social media posts, as well as multiple others (such as photographers, videographers, and secondary communications assistants who are clipping from SnapStream) who contribute to content during a live event.

Throughout his 20 years at LSU Athletics, Politz has seen social media change how fans engage with their favorite college sports teams. He’s also mastered how to smartly work within the social media restrictions LSU Athletics faces as part of the Southeastern Conference’s agreement with ESPN so he can create genuine connections between fans and the LSU Tigers and Lady Tigers

Here are his top tips on how you can do the same for your college or university’s athletics department to drive your fandom.

 

Use Video Clips to Drive Fans to the Livestream

A Twitter post with a video clip of an LSU Baseball game and a link to the livestream.

Specifically, ESPN dictates that the Southeastern Conference schools in its agreement can only post 10 videos and GIFs per live game for each sport, with the exception of football and men’s basketball, for which schools can’t put any videos or GIFs directly to their social media accounts during the live event window. 

Politz notes that he and his team do their best to promote ESPN’s livestreams of their events. Typically, they’ll include a link to the livestream on WatchESPN (or the platform the game is being played on) when they post to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

And although some sports at LSU can’t be streamed live, Politz says “there are certain allowances ESPN makes to let us use clips from a game that is going on as part of our social media strategy.” 

Politz often uses SnapStream to clip parts of a live game and put those clips on different social platforms to drive fans “to either the livestream or the fact that an event is going on.”

 

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A look at the social media universe of LSU Athletics.

 

Be Selective About the Clips You Post

A video clip LSU Baseball posted on its Twitter account during a a game. 

Politz notes the importance of being selective about the clips you post. Just because you can post 10 videos per live game for some sports doesn’t mean you should. He brings up LSU baseball as an example. 

“It’s rare that we will have 10 really strong moments in a game,” he explains. “Of course, we’re trying to not dilute our feed with every strikeout.” 

He and his team look for moments that they think fans will appreciate, such as home runs, touchdowns, and other game-changing plays that put an LSU Athletics team in the lead. 

 

Be the First to Get your Game Clip out There

LSU was the first to post this video clip (ahead of other organizations). 

Politz says that he and his team can put out a clip of a memorable moment within 45, 60 seconds of it happening and engage fans. 

“By the time they're finished cheering and enjoying it with their friends, we can have it where they can relive it on social media.” 

However, he stresses that getting the clip out quickly isn’t enough. You have to be the first to post the clip. Timeliness matters. 

“If you get your video out there first, you’re probably going to have the best opportunity for it to go viral,” he says.

 

Use GIFs to Turn Small Moments into Big Ones

An example of a GIF on LSU Football's Twitter account.

Capturing and posting the “little things” that happen during a game can be extremely impactful. 

“You can have a small moment that we create a GIF out of that is very ordinary,” Politz says. “However, it ends up having a big impact.” 

He brings up a hypothetical example. If LSU’s baseball players stack hats on top of one of their teammates in the dugout, it would be great to create a GIF out of that moment. 

“They stack 30 hats on top of each other, and you make a very quick GIF out of that to talk about baseball traditions or superstitions or things like that and use it not necessarily right after it happens, but later on, to talk about [it] being…. time to rally,” Politz says. “You can use something like that to re-engage what was a great moment from a previous rally into today's game.”

And sometimes, certain moments that happen in a game can go on to define a narrative amongst fans, like the “rally possum” baseball game LSU played against the University of Arkansas in 2016. LSU was losing when suddenly, a baby possum ran onto the field. After LSU facilities staff captured the possum, LSU ended up winning the game. In fact, they won 12 out of their next 14 games.

“It’s still referenced when our team is behind,” Politz notes. 

He says he and his team use SnapStream to create GIFs as much as they use it to create video clips. One benefit of GIFs? 

“You can hold onto those moments that will be instantly recognizable to your fanbase, but you can use them two, three years later, and they still resonate.” 


At SnapStream, we make video social, whether it's from TV or an in-stadium feed. We're what LSU Athletics and other college athletics and pro sports teams use to grow their fandoms by instantly capturing, creating, and sharing high-quality video clips, GIFs, and images to a variety of social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

3 Ways the Arizona Coyotes Celebrate and Grow Their Fandom

July 11 2019 by Tina Nazerian

Marissa O’Connor, director of social media strategy at the Arizona Coyotes, has tips on how you can do the same for your team 


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If you are part of the marketing or communications department of a sports team, chances are you’re busy growing your team’s fandom (fans’ enthusiasm about your team)—and you know that social media plays a growing and critical role in doing so.

However, social media “never sleeps,” says Marissa O’Connor, director of social media strategy at the Arizona Coyotes, and some brands fall into the trap of “trying to do too much.”

O’Connor has several tips on how sports teams can use social media in a smart, strategic way to build their fandoms. 

 

Know Your Audience 

An Instagram post showcasing some Arizona Coyotes players doing community service.

Some brands try to create social media posts or comments around a national event, trending topic, or popular meme. But O’Connor says that brands can’t “take advantage of every topical conversation.” Not everything will resonate with a team’s particular brand or fanbase. 

She says that to narrow down what content to focus on, the sports team’s social media strategists should start by examining whether they have a “brand bible” or a mission statement they can circle back to. 

Next, they should consider who they’re talking to. Ultimately, a team’s social media posts should please fans, whether they are fans of the team or one of the players in particular, or the sport in general. 

“You’re not trying to please the entire internet,” she says. 

A huge part of the Coyotes’ brand is giving back to the community, she explains. When she and her coworkers are making their content calendar, they keep that in mind. If their players will be doing a community service project, or if the team will be donating money to a cause, they add it to their content plan for the week. 

“Remind yourself and your team of your mission and what you're really trying to do,” she says.

 

Tailor Your Message Based on the Social Media Channel 

A video the Arizona Coyotes social media team made with SnapStream and then posted on Twitter.

Different social media accounts have different audiences. O’Connor stresses that it’s important to put each audience first and tailor your content appropriately. In the case of the Coyotes, their Facebook audience is the oldest, while their Instagram audience is very young. 

So on Instagram, she says she and her team “might have a little bit more fun” and “use more emojis and be more engaging.” 

As for Twitter, she says the followers there are “hardcore hockey fans” who “truly can’t get enough of the Coyotes.” She doesn’t think there’s such a thing as “giving them too much information or talking to them too much.” 

She also notes that it can be beneficial to use analytics to see which players people want to see posts about. “We cater to what [fans] want, not necessarily what our marketing team wants, or what our ticket sales team wants.” 

 

Don’t Forget about Customer Service

An example of the Arizona Coyotes' social media team answering a fan's question on Twitter. 

O’Connor believes that customer service is an underrated part of social media for companies. 

“We live in a world where people want instant gratification,” she says. “If someone is driving to the game and wants to know what time doors open, or where they can find a gluten-free beer, or how much parking costs, [they] want to know that information quickly.” 

Offering good customer service through social media platforms can help a brand grow its fandom, because fans will see that the organization really cares about them. 

An Arizona Coyotes game experience, she says, is much more than just what happens from “whistle to whistle.” 

“The second you get to our parking lot, that's part of your game day experience and if there's anything that we can [do] to make that better, we want to do so,” she explains. “People have never had more options for how they spend their entertainment dollars, and we don't want to take for granted the ones that choose to spend theirs with us.”


At SnapStream, we make video social, whether it's from TV or an in-stadium feed. We're what the Arizona Coyotes and other sports teams use to grow their fandoms by instantly capturing, creating, and sharing high-quality video clips, GIFs, and images to a variety of social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Impactful Live-Tweeting Strategies We Saw From the First Round of the Democratic Debates

June 27 2019 by Tina Nazerian

2020 Democratic Candidates Debate - Night No. 1 - 09_02_34 PM                                                                                                                                                          Photo Credit: SnapStream 

The race for the 2020 presidential election is well underway. Ten candidates took the stage in Miami on Wednesday night for the first round of the Democratic debates. While the candidates wrangled their thoughts and policy positions, news outlets were hard at work capturing every interesting comment and meme-able reaction. Here are some impactful live-tweeting strategies the SnapStream team saw some of our media customers use Wednesday night. 

 

Let One Reporter Take Over Your Twitter Account

BuzzFeed News streamlined its live-tweeting of the first round of Democratic Debates by letting reporter Ryan Brooks, who covers the Democrats, take over its Twitter account. Brooks quickly delivered some great content to the 1.3 million Twitter accounts that follow BuzzFeed News. 

 

 

Capture and Caption Funny Moments

When Beto O’Rourke started speaking Spanish to answer his first question, many people noticed Cory Booker’s reaction. The Daily Show instantly grabbed the perfect image of the moment, added a hilarious caption, and put it on Twitter. The post has been liked more than 60,000 times, and retweeted more than 11,000 times. 

 

 


Enhance Your Video Clips with Analysis

Politico also tweeted about O’Rourke speaking Spanish for part of his first response. But rather than focusing on Booker’s reaction, the organization took a different approach. It tweeted out a video clip of the moment, and added quotes from two of its staff members above the video. Politico’s Twitter followers not only got to immediately watch the scene on their devices, but they also got to read two very different takes on it. The video has gotten over 35,000 views. 

 

Tonight, 10 other Democratic candidates will have their turn. Which live-tweeting strategies will your team use? 


SnapStream makes TV social. Our technology lets users instantly capture, create, and share quality video clips, GIFs, and images to a variety of social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. 

The results are in! SnapStream is the father... of Maury's fan engagement.

November 10 2016 by Sara Howard

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If you're not following The Maury Show on Twitter, you're missing out on some quality entertainment. The show has been around since 1991, and just aired it's 3,000th episode. The success of The Maury Show isn't waning anytime soon as they continue to make strides via social media and fan engagement. 

Paul Faulhaber is the executive producer of The Maury Show and realizes the importance of social media in the daytime television landscape.  He decided to bring in Snapstream as a tool for the digital producers, Eric Hanson and Kristin Scheele, to grow the social media presence of The Maury Show.

Kristin and Eric spoke with us about how The Maury Show is harnessing the passion of their fans to deliver real-time engagement

Q: Can you tell me a little about your role at NBCUniversal?

Kristin: I am a field producer and one of the digital producers. Eric is the head person and I help him create original content for our different social platforms. I do a lot of behind the scenes shooting during tape days and create original content with that. I also helping with the daily social posts, whether it's grabbing funny moments off of SnapStream and posting them or creating GIFs, memes, things like that.

Eric: My role is to take the content from the show and bring it to the second and third screen. Taking what the viewers experience in live TV and putting it on social. Allowing the viewers another way to experience the show.



"My role is to take the content from the show and bring it to the second and third screen... 
Allowing the viewers another way to experience the show." 

- Eric, Producer, The Maury Show


Q: How did SnapStream get implemented at The Maury Show?

Eric: Paul Faulhaber, the Executive Producer of Maury, was instrumental in incorporating SnapStream into the show.  Paul gets social media and the value it adds to our show.  When he first introduced us to SnapStream we were sold.

Kristin: Paul was so excited about Snapstream, it was contagious.  We were fired up and couldn’t wait to incorporate it into our workflow.

Q:
What does your social workflow look like?

Eric: We're kind of like a big "think tank". We throw out ideas, between the whole staff. We actively encourage everyone from the producers to the interns and the office managers to help us come up with ideas on what to post. But ultimately, I decide with our Executive Producer, Paul Faulhaber, how and when we'll encorporate that into our platform.

Q: How does SnapStream fit into this workflow?

Kristin: Over the summer, every day we would do a live chat on Twitter which we used SnapStream for. We would pull stills from the show, creating GIFs, using the live Twitter feed. 

SnapStream is a valuable tool for us. We have three other shows in Stamford (where we're located) and they can't wait to start using it as well. We (The Maury Show) has been used a guinea pig, but it's gone so well.

Q: What other aspects/features of SnapStream do you find the most useful for Maury?

Kristin: One of the other major things that we do is put clips directly onto our Facebook page from SnapStream. It's great that SnapStream includes the closed captioning, native in the video. 

We also have an agreement with Amazon Fire, so we upload clips from SnapStream into YouTube, and that aggregates directly to our Amazon Fire account.

Eric: SnapStream has been really wonderful because we incorporate anything we want to use in our social workflow. It also allows us to stay really engaged with our fans. Content is king, and our viewers want new content, fresh content. We may be airing back episodes, but we can still create fresh social content with those episodes. 

Kristin: The search function has really been helpful. We're starting "Out of Control Teen Tuesday" this week. Now that we have a backlog of Maury shows built up in the SnapStream library, we can go in there and do a search for "out of control teens". We can see every show that we've done that includes that search term and post it directly to our social media platforms. 

We have a lot of moving parts here, and everyone is so busy. So instead of having to ask other producers or managers to go search for a clip, we can just do a quick search in SnapStream, grab it and share it. 

Eric: Another thing that we do with SnapStream is grab stills from the platform and use them in our weekly "caption this" contest. 

Q: What was the workflow like before you had SnapStream?

Eric: It was very cumbersome. We'd have to have someone go to the editing bay, mark clips, have them pulled. Then we wait 24-48 hours to have someone pull them, mark them and send them to us. 

Now, as I watch the show, I'm pulling and archiving clips, deciding when and where I can use them. A lot of people are incredibly thankful for SnapStream, because it makes our jobs so much easier.



"We were able to go into SnapStream to find all the clips of Searcy and pull those. We can continue the conversation, adding more content to fuel the fire."

- Eric, Producer, The Maury Show


 

Q: Can you think of any particular posting or episode where SnapStream was instrumental?

Eric: We just celebrated our 3,000th episode, so we played a lot of Maury's favorite episodes and guests through the years. We would pull those directly from SnapStream and share via social. 

A lot of times when something goes viral, it's not always because of us. For instance, a reddit user said one of our guests looked like Ted Cruz. So, we were able to go into SnapStream to find all the clips of Searcy and pull those. We can continue the conversation, adding more content to fuel the fire. 

Kristin: We love seeing how creative people can be with our clips.

Eric: Since we've introduced SnapStream into our platforms, it's really revitalized our social presence. It really makes us stand out in comparison to other shows. We have this immediacy that sometimes other shows lack.

It's nice to have a library, or an archive of our shows. Sometimes something will go viral that we didn't even think about. A lot of times,  you just don't know what is going to hit. Now we can go back in and add that extra content to the conversation, engaging with our followers and our fans. 



"Since we've introduced SnapStream into our platforms, it's really revitalized our social presence. It really makes us stand out in comparison to other shows."


 

Win a Year of Free Maintenance!

November 12 2009 by Rebecca

switchAndSave

Those VCRs collecting dust around your office are so 20th century — and we know you've been dying to upgrade. So we've created a cost-effective means for you to update your media-monitoring technology, and we're offering you a chance to win an extra 12 months of free service to boot.

How? Just purchase a SnapStream Server through our new "Switch and Save" program, and we’ll automatically give you a year of maintenance for free (a $1,200 to $3,000 value). Then, once you've installed your new gear, send us a picture of how you and your staff have cleverly dismantled and responsibly disposed of your obsolete systems.* We'll post the images of your handiwork alongside that of others on our Web site. Be as creative as you can, because we'll bestow an additional year of free maintenance upon whoever sends us the best shot.

What's more: Because the SnapStream Server can shorten the task of media monitoring to mere seconds, your organization will save additional time and money. Our digital technology lets you and your colleagues record thousands of hours of television to a centralized appliance, and then locate specific clips by topic, using closed captioning for search. You can copy any relevant video to your PC’s hard drive. It’s that quick and easy!

So, what are you waiting for? Click here to get more information about "Switch and Save" and the SnapStream Server.

*Please recycle. Or ship the parts to us, and we’ll recycle them for you.

How SnapStream's TV search technology works

June 27 2008 by Rakesh

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:

SnapStream Enterprise: TV search appliance

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):

A search over television closed captioning for George Carlin

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.

What is SnapStream? There's an unlimited amount of video content out there: 24/7 news channels, breaking news events, sports, talk shows, awards galas, entertainment shows, and so much more.

SnapStream makes a real-time news and media search engine that makes it fast and easy to find the video moments that support our customers telling great stories.

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