The Boston Avid User Group's September meeting was held at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University. The meeting started out with some fun networking with some familiar faces. The speaker this month was Len Sitomer from PortalVideo Inc. Len is a leading digital media producer and technology designer. In 1992, he founded PortalVideo, LLC, a media consulting firm that provides new-age video communication tools, technologies and strategies to clients in the private equity industry. The company grew significantly, attracting best-of-class clients in the US, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In 2005, PortalVideo, Inc. was spun out of the original consulting firm to make the PortalVideo software and technology available to producers and editors worldwide.
PortalVideo™ is an internet-based video editing system that dramatically reduces the time and cost of creating interview-based rough cuts. Edit anytime and anywhere you find a broadband connection. Your work process is the same, only easier and faster than before. Choose the right transcript segments and place them in the right order. The PortalVideo system, with patent-pending VideoText® technology, links transcript text to video, and instantly publishes both edited video and script over the internet.
The audience, consisting manly of editors, found it to be an interesting product although they all seemed to have mixed emotions about it. This tool allows the producers to do the grunt work of rough editing the early stages of a project. It can then be exported to an Avid system for final editing. Many editors feel that good about being spared the early work but as service providers they hate to lose this part of their business.