Linius Whizzard is located at the University of Newcastle’s GLAM-x department. You’re probably thinking that’s bugger all, however the University of Newcastle’s archive extends beyond its own videos into videos from the wider Newcastle region.
The most notable name included in here is NBN Television. NBN is an independent affiliate of the Nine Network. NBN consistently achieve the highest ratings for any station in a major television market across Australia. About Us | NBN News
“NBN Channel 3 television began broadcasting in Newcastle on 4 March 1962, providing locally produced programs and news. This television Archive from the 1980s- 2018 has been digitised and is an invaluable visual record of six decades of life in this region and became an integral part of life for everyone in the region, and also includes Index cards, Cue sheets and scripts. The archive contains News, Sport, Documentaries, Variety, Motoring, Events, Telethons, Children’s programs. Students can play a unique role assisting with editing, identifying content and creating metadata relating to this significant cultural and social resource. The Linius Whizzard project is a world first search tool of video content, and current project involved video file upload and curation.”
The NBN have digitalized 4 decades worth of video. Together a total of 222,000 mins or 3,699 hours of magnetic tape containing over 112,000 local stories recorded by NBN Channel 3 has now been digitized by the 30 June 2021 deadline.
The University of Newcastle is a gateway where Linius can promote its Whizzard Archive Search & Edit product both inside and outside of sports.
This is a direct quotation from the coordinator of University of Newcastle’s GLAM-x, Dr Ann Hardy, when asked about possible future applications for Whizzard:
“I think overall I’ve used a lot of search tools for cultural heritage and one of my favorites is TROVE, which brings a lot of special collections and archival online resources together. I’ve often thought what’s missing from TROVE, which is hosted by the National Library of Australia, is there’s nowhere you can go to search audio visual content. So for me, I can see the future when we do have a lot more access to open historical footage there is going to be quite a need for people being able to find and locate what they want – that big hurdle.”
Based of Dr Hardy’s comments, it sure sounds like the National Library of Australia is a potential large-sized Linius Whizzard customer. Home - Trove (nla.gov.au)
Why stop there though?
Ostensibly, the UoN’s video library digitization was a response to Deadline 2025, the national call to arms from the National Film and Sound Archive to digitize audio visual tape formats before it is too late. According to the National Film and Sound, “there is now consensus among audiovisual archives internationally that we will not be able to support large-scale digitisation of magnetic media in the very near future. Tape that is not digitised by 2025 will in most cases be lost forever.”
The National Film and Sound Archive would make another massive Linius Whizzard customer. They described themselves as Australia’s living archive containing almost 4 million items including Australian movies and 3,000 Commonwealth documentaries spanning 100 years.
Don’t forget Cricket Australia have already signed up with Linius Whizzard to monetize their enormous video library archive, so now the company is in a much stronger position to approach other larger sized customers about deploying Linius Whizzard. (Cricket Australia’s Archive search and edit tool is effectively Whizzard with the added functionality of being able to render the final video and upload it onto social media.)
It’s stupefying there is still alarmist type posting that the tech is all bs or it works but has no market use. It is worth repeating the words of @Amontillado, who not only knows the industry, but has actually helped build out the Linius LVS solution via contractual work with Hemisphere:
“In summary, the LNU tech is not unique, but it is as good or better than any of its competitors. One would not invest in LNU because it's a magical unicorn; one would invest in LNU because it has good tech that can do what it says it does.”
I’d add too much debate has focused on the search aspect of Linius’ tech because others’ search engines such as Panopto can do this although maybe not as vastly as Linius. As others have stated, it is not a USP. Linius tech’s marketability is it can effortlessly deliver an endless number of personalized highlight reels (MatchVision) with a few clicks in seconds, or alternatively it can be deployed as an efficient, eco-friendly and extremely easy to use editing system (Whizzard).
That’s likely why JB stated in the webinar both Cricket Australia and the whale came back and said they could not find a competitor that can do what Linius can. He was mentioning both companies in regards to archives, so it must be Whizzard he was talking about – archive search and edit.
Linius Whizzard solves pain points for the everyday person; it speeds up the workflow process while removing headaches. By stark contrast, what will take days of hassle with Panopto will take less than an hour with Linius; and probably at a much cheaper price too because Linius leaves the videos in the original place instead of uploading them onto a separate video content management system like Panopto.
Focus on the total package offering: user friendly, eco-friendly, faster, and cheaper.
So, if Linius’ tech is the greatest thing since sliced bread why aren’t there more deals?
There is no more important question.
The irony is sliced bread didn’t take off either for 5 years; no one wanted it until the company Wonder came in and figured out how to spread the idea. Like Seth Godin stated “it’s not always about what the patent is like … it’s about whether you can get your idea to spread.”
This is the point where Linius has been stuck. It's not the product.
Who better to spread the idea than a whale?
Imho, Dyor & Gltah
LNU Price at posting:
0.3¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)