Anyone with a smartphone can do a form of live video broadcasting on social media. Anyone with a drone can rig up a version of their own news chopper.
But as live, amateur video proliferates, professional broadcasters need to both distinguish their content with higher production values, and incorporate the myriad video streams washing over the media landscape from new sources.
Make.TV, a German company relocating to Seattle as part of a $8.5 million funding round led by Voyager Capital, provides cloud-based and mobile software that promises to do that and more.
The company’s software enables video producers to acquire and combine video streams from social media with ones shot using professional cameras, mobile devices in the hands of random contributors and professional reporters, and all manner of online video sources. It can function as a dashboard for producers monitoring the location of reporters in the field. Make.TV’s Acquire smartphone app is designed to replace much of the camera and communications equipment that a TV news crew packs into a van today.
Make.TV’s Live Video Cloud is a content production environment to refine an end product from the many video sources producers have available. From there, the company’s technology allows broadcasters, online publishers, and others with valuable video content to distribute to online destinations such as Facebook Live and Twitch, content delivery networks including Akamai and Limelight, and broadcast networks.
Seven-year-old Make.TV says its customers include Viacom; ESL, an eSports broadcaster; BAMTech/MLB; FOX Sports Brasil; and others.
In addition to Voyager, Microsoft Ventures, Vulcan Capital, and Arnold Ventures invested in Make.TV, which is moving its headquarters to Seattle, while maintaining offices in Los Altos, CA, and Cologne, Germany. Voyager general partner Erik Benson and former Adobe Systems CEO Bruce Chizen join Make.TV’s board as part of the financing.
Seattle-based Voyager has paid close attention to digital disruption of video over the last decade, with software and commodity devices replacing costlier hardware and bespoke equipment. The firm’s other investments include Elemental Technologies, which makes software-defined video processing technology and was acquired in 2015 by Amazon.
