Paramount Pictures has come up with a novel way of leveraging its old movies – it has started a new service that allows users to search films frame-by-frame for specific clips and buy them.
According to the New York, the site called Paramount Clips.com debuts today, but will initially just be for commercial customers, such as ad agencies, wanting to licence clips for business use.
In time, however, it will be opened up to consumers, so yes, you'll be able to snag that Star Trek clip and embed it on your site.
The site uses VideoSense technology, developed by Digitalsmiths. It automatically indexes the movies, making it easy to search by actor, line of dialogue, or several other parameters.
Once selected, the clip is then delivered in the format and resolution the customer requests, with most available in multiple languages. As yet there are no details on pricing for clips.
Will clips be popular?
Whether people will want to pay for movie clips remains to be seen. But as DVD sales keep falling, the studios have to become creative in order to make money.
They face competition, though, as many clips are already available on sites such as YouTube.
Still it could succeed, with Bobby Tulsiani, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, telling the NYT: "This Digitalsmiths technology is very impressive because it gives the ability to slice and dice and remodify content in a safe, automated way.
"It remains to be seen if it opens up a new business opportunity, but we didn't think people were going to pay for ring tones, either."
Via New York Times
