Like an inbox but much better. Better because it designed to handle huge amounts of video and image content and to make it is as easy as possible for you to evaluate and distribute the best assets.

It has been used for short-term marketing projects for SONY and Virgin Media as well as providing a regular fixture within the workflow of some of the largest news organisations such as the BBC and more recently Reuters.

  • Talk to someone about the User Generated Content (UGC) Newsdesk Transcoder
Newsdesk Transcoder Crowdsourcing Tool from Stream UK

What can it do?

It's a simple yet elegant online application that allows publishers and brand owners to capture incoming content from a variety of locations in a variety of image and video formats.

The inbox can accept a variety of formats sent via email as attachments, mobile phone MMS/SMS messages or via ftp upload. The Stream Crowdsourcer can also transcode the various formats on the fly into one universal format for easy integration to your website.

At the core of the product are comprehensive moderation tools , allowing you to modify, approve content at a variety of levels.

  • Ingest and Capture

    Getting connected to accept a variety of digital media typesContent in a variety of standard media formats - images, video, audio (jpegs, giffs, mpegs, wmv, movs, 3GPP to name but a few) - can be ingested by the system in a variety of ways. Accepting a wide variety of media types ensures the widest possible net is cast to attract and accept the most amount of content. The submmision process should be as unrestrictive, simple and accessible as possible.

  • Mobile Submissions

    Mobile Phone image and video submissionSubmitting content via mobile phones represents an exciting method of submission and will probably evolve into the most popular method in the near future. Camera quality on mobile phones is improving rapidly and the mobile internet, with the more recent handsets, is really becoming a reality.

  • MMS

    MMS Text MessagingPresently the system accepts incoming media content from mobile phones via MMS. The present filesize limit imposed by the networks is currently around 100kb. Depending on the quality of the video this equates to around 10 secs of video. There is an expectation that as data revenues become more significant for the mobile network providers that this restriction will be lifted.

  • Live Mobile Recording

    Live Mobile RecordingFor 3G phones it is possible to make a video call to the system and for this video call to be recorded directly into the system. This avoids the restrictions placed by the networks in relation to sending MMS messages.

Reuters News use the Crowdsourcer

ReutersReuters used the ingest, moderation and transcoding capabilities of the Newsdesk Transcoder to power the Times Square billboard as part of their 'Your Smiles' campaign.

The entire system allowed users to send in photos directly from their phone, the best were selected by moderators and these were converted into an RSS feed which fed the sign directly. Users were given confirmation of their choice by SMS and the images on the sign were captured for use within the online galleries.

The system is also being used by:

BBC News for their global crowdsourced content

Reuters to power their Times Square video board in New York

BBC World Service for 11 of their language websites

The Guardian Hay Festival to drive their online festival

The Jerwood Trust for their Moving Image Award

The Portland Hospital baby scan project

BBC UGC