muvee Technologies
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| muvee Technologies | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Type | Private |
| Founded | Singapore (1999) |
| Headquarters | Bugis Junction, Singapore |
| Key people | Terence Swee, CEO & Co-founder Peter Kellock, Chief Strategist & Co-founder |
| Industry | Computer software |
| Products | muvee autoProducer, muvee autoProducer unPlugged, muveeNow, muveeShow, muveeKiosk, muveeOnline |
| Website | muvee.com |
muvee Technologies is a Singapore-based software company that produces automated video editing software for the consumer PC market.
muvee software relies on media analysis technology that edits video in accordance with user-specified themes, transitions, music tempo and other variables.
The company was spun out from Kent Ridge Digital Labs (now the Institute for Infocomm Research, I2R), part of A*STAR, in 1999.
muvee claims to be the first organisation to have produced commercially available software that performed automatic, as opposed to manual, video editing. The company is also thought to have been the first to provide automatic movie making for the mobile phone platform.
muvee Technologies’ flagship automated video-editing product is autoProducer, which generates “instant home movies” from input videos, pictures, music and themes. The latest commercial (retail) build is version 6.1, released on 5th June 2007.
Contents |
[edit] Products
- muvee autoProducer (Win XP, Vista)
- muvee autoProducer unPlugged (Windows Media Center)
- muveeNow (Win XP, Vista)
- muveeShow (for mobile)
- muveeKiosk
- muveeOnline
- muvee Reveal
[edit] Technology
Automatic video editing software transforms pictures, videos and music, without user intervention, into what is intended to be a professional-looking audiovisual presentation.
The muvee core editing technology is based upon a three-stage process:
Stage 1: Music and Video Analysis
The software uses image analysis techniques to recognise shot boundaries, human faces, blurriness indicating movement, colour spread, brightness levels and low quality material in photographs and videos.
It also analyses the rhythm, tempo, cutting beats and overall rhythm/drive of accompanying music chosen by the user.
Once both the music and the video have been analysed, the resulting information is passed to the construction stage (see below).
The software saves time by analysing the content just once and using the data gathered from this analysis for any subsequent repeat-edits.
Stage 2: The Construction
At the construction stage, stylistic “rules” are applied to the information gleaned from analysis of the video, photographs and music. These rules include user defined parameters (scenes that must be kept/discarded, video that must be kept in sequence etc.) and software design parameters. In the case of muvee software, these software parameters are called “muveeStyles”. Each style contains a mix of effects and transitions that are applied to video and photos in synchronisation with the music. Users can choose from various styles to give the video a different look and feel.
The output of this stage is what is known as an “Edit Decision List”: a set of editing instructions such as “fade to black over 3 seconds at 4 minutes into the video clip”. These instructions are passed to the rendering stage.
Stage 3: Rendering
At the rendering stage, the instructions from the construction stage are applied to the original video, pictures and music, and rendered into a video file, such as an Audio Video Interleave or MPEG-4 file.
Automatic video editing software has not, so far, found widespread application in the broadcast video industry, but it has proved popular with amateur home moviemakers who find that time spent editing their footage is substantially reduced.
muvee technologies have coined the phrase “making a muvee” to describe the above process, meaning “to make a video using the muvee automatic editing software”.
[edit] Company History
muvee Technologies was formed by Terence Swee, a Singaporean electronic engineer and Pete Kellock, a Scotsman with a doctorate in electronic music. The founders began working together in 1999 at Kent Ridge Digital Labs (KRDL), a technology business incubator sponsored by the Government of Singapore.
Together, the two founders developed the muvee autoProducer product from initial concept to the first version, which was released in September 2001. After that the company tripled its revenue for three successive years. They posted positive cash flow and a full year of profit in 2004.
The expansion in size prompted a move out of the KRDL incubation space and into dedicated offices in the Arts and Heritage district near to Bugis Junction in Singapore.
[edit] muvee In Singapore
In recent years, the government of Singapore has taken active steps to increase the number of innovative information and communications technology companies emerging from its shores [1],[2]. muvee Technologies is often cited by government officials as one of the flagship new media success stories resulting from this policy.
muvee is notable in Singapore for its unusual office space. In 2006, muvee staff were surveyed to discover what features they would like to see in their new office. More than 90% of these suggestions were incorporated in the final design, which includes a 1950s-style American diner, a cinema, a sleeping room, a camouflaged bunker (for “strategic’” planning) and a man-made beach.
[edit] Books Featuring muvee
World Conquest in Progress, published by Marshall Cavendish Business
ISBN 978 981 261 390 5
ISBN 981 261 390 0
Microsoft: Faster Smarter Digital Video, by Jason R. Dunn
ISBN 0-7356-1873-9
B2B Branding, by Dr. Paul Temporal
ISBN 981 05 3672 0
Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2nd Pacific Rim Edition, by Michael Schaper & Thierry Volery
ISBN 0-470-81082-3
PC Magazine: Guide to Digital Video, by Jane Ozer
ISBN 0-7645-4360-1
Digital Video Manual, by Kyle MacRae
ISBN 1 84425 126 8
