I was impressed by the little demo I received a short time ago of the PortalVideo Internet-based video editing technology (which company president Len Sitomer showed me at the company’s booth, C155-AA at the Content & Commerce Pavilion in the Central Hall) if for no other reason than it addressed an issue I had never thought much about. That issue: the time and mechanics of the rough cut.

PortalVideo’s solution is to save both producers and editors time and aggravation by allowing them, and anyone else involved in the process, to collaborate online on building a rough cut—the basic bones of a video project’s storyline—by linking transcripts and video clips together. Sitomer says the company spent over two years developing the product based on the notion that, especially for documentaries and reality shows, one of the most time-consuming parts of the process involves culling through material to build the basic storyline. It’s also based on the premise that producers and editors probably wouldn’t be upset if they had to spend less time physically linked in the edit suite for hours on end. Thus, PortalVideo offers its technology for producers to be able to have a transcript readily available as they go through material and indicate preferences at that stage just before editors move deep into offline mode using any traditional platform they prefer—Avid, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, or whatever. Once video is uploaded, PortalVideo’s software can encode it and transcribe and organize it so that producers can simply mark the sections they would like to see included.

“It complements the traditional editorial process, because the producer can put online their vision and colalborate with the editor on their story’s details, but they don’t have to spend as much time together to do that, and editors can locate their material faster,” says Sitomer. He indicates several documentary and reality TV productions are already using the tool.

–MG