Videos about video technology

3/9/2009 10:00 AM EDT

We've all heard the cliche about how it's the shoemaker's kids who have holes in their soles, and a similar observation can sometimes be made about the video technology industry. How well are companies who make video chips, IP, and other related technology utilizing video themselves?

Over the years I've seen some truly great demos -- some of which I've reported on in this space -- but I've also seen my fair share of sloppy, poorly lit, sound-challenged, shaky and confusingly structured videos -- which is why, I suspect, a large number of companies involved in video technology seem to avoid the medium almost entirely.

This is too bad, because we all know what a powerful and persuasive medium video can be. On the consumer side, video's appeal is what's driving the explosion in video technology. Video has a proven track record for selling and communicating all sorts of products and technologies -- everything from soap suds to political candidates.

Sometimes, it really doesn't take much to make the point with video -- like this example of a flexible touch screen demo:

Flexible Touchscreen Demo

Or, this example from an article we ran on video analytics showing the essence of bounding objects and categorizing them:

Video Analytics Demo

But these examples are demos showing off what the product does. With most video and imaging products, the "special sauce" is a bit subtler and less dramatically demonstrable. These products need to be explained, more than demonstrated.

So I've decided to do something about it, and start a new venture producing video product announcements. These will be short videos that professionally present a product or technology to an engineering audience. My thinking is that many engineers are just too busy -- especially during this downturn in which layoffs have translated into more work for everyone else -- to spend much time and effort reading up about what's new (thank you for reading this!). Videos offer a way of delivering key information to engineers without demanding the dedicated attention of reading. Plus, as in the examples above, video does offer the obvious benefits of show and tell -- sometimes seeing is believing.

I'd be happy to hear from interested companies, from engineers and any other people who'd like to be on our distribution list -- please email me at videos@cliffroth.com. I'm also always interested in seeing how others are using video to promote video technology, please drop a line if you've got anything to share.