VAM & DAM

I'm Al Falaschi+. I’ve been with Widen Enterprises, Inc. since October of 2006, but my roots in dealing with digital audio and video date back to the late 1990’s. I’ve built numerous audio recording and video editing facilities and continue to be an independent music producer/engineer and video...

A coworker recently asked me: "What is the next big format that will hit after 1080p? I'm curious what is on the horizon." There are a number of ways to answer that question. In terms of factual numbers, 1080p is a "resolution." The next logical larger sizes are 2K and 4K. But those exist already......

The growing popularity of video is well documented... There are a number of reports available. They explain the power and attractiveness of using video, specifically in the enterprise environment.More than 65% of companies are using online video and that number is expected to continue increasing...

In light of a recent post that zappos.com reported a 6 to 30% increase in sales on items that are accompanied by a video, I wanted to talk about “why” that is. There are a number of research reports on the rise in popularity of online video publishing use within the enterprise. Aside from the...

Unfortunately, my wife lost her battle to cancer earlier this year. In her memory, myself and other local musicians organized "Funk Out Cancer" a memorial benefit for Kate Gates Falaschi. All proceeds were donated to the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center for cancer research. When I...

I had a little fun with the 12-second Widen segment from the SIIA OnDemand 2009 Day 1 in Review video. In this video segment, Widen CEO Matthew Gonnering, preaches “Service is equally, if not more, important than the technology itself” when it comes to delivering Digital Asset Management Software as...

I have been asked by many potential clients as to what is the best way to store video in a digital asset management system. There are a couple different ways to answer this. "Highest res," "high enough," and "this is all I have." Highest Res: Whether the video is HD, or standard definition, it was...

As I field questions from potential customers about adding video to their digital asset management system, I tend to field the same type of question. “I have a QuickTime file. Is that good?” That is really a loaded question. The next statement is….”It is 100 Megabytes. Is that good?”I will attempt...

With the proliferation of tapeless video camcorders, the entire video management industry is currently facing a fundamental shift in workflows and processes. It started with the shift from analog to digital video, but has really become a hot topic in video asset management with the widespread...

Being the gatekeeper for video here at Widen, I decided to piece together some clips of our client interviews that deal with how Digital Asset Management and Video Asset Managment has helped our clients reduce costs, increase efficiency and increase capabilities.  In the current economic climate, we...

We recently interviewed Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at InSinkErator.  There are six segments to his video, but I was truly impressed with one comment that he made about their brand recognition and brand asset management systems and processes. InSinkErator - Brand Control...

Video is the hot new topic and tool for marketing departments everywhere. Many dream of a viral video that costs next to nothing to make, yet vaults your company image through the roof, with sales increases being able to be directly attributed to your little "video idea." While most realize how rare...

Coming at'cha from Streaming Media West again. It has been a great conference and I have learned a great deal about one of the destinations of the video files that we store for our Digital Asset Management clients. While it seems that DAM has not been mentioned much, it is implied when talking about...

I'm coming to you from the Streaming Media West Conference in San Jose, CA. I have never heard the letters CDN mentioned more in one day. However, I did notice that most sessions focus on the mad dash of many enterprise marketing efforts to create and distribute online video. Most mention nothing...

Before anyone deals with video asset management systems, or plans strategies for adding video to digital asset management systems, standing at the edge of Lake Itasca in Minnesota where the Mississippi river begins, stands a person with a video camera ... the beginning of the video stream. When...

We all know beavers build Digital Asset Management systems, right?Beavers are best known for their natural trait of building dams in rivers and streams. In our case, the rivers and streams are the flow of marketing materials to and from Marketing, Sales, engineering, development, production...They...

Funny story.  When I began my video position at Widen and introduced it as a marketing tool.  It made quite the impact ... so much so, that it started to take on the feel of Duct Tape ... our marketing department wanted to use it for everything. You know what I'm talking about guys, tell me you...

Widen Enterprises' Digital Asset Management, or DAM SaaS, has taken great strides to add Video into it's mix of marketing assets that it manages. I previously wrote a blog about Mezzanine formats as a way to maximize video management. Video files are huge in file size, and Mezzanine formats are a...

To take a step beyond rich media management and specifically tackle publishing of video files, Widen will be adding embedding technology to our digital asset management software. Instead of managing videos in DAM, then uploading to a CDN, embed codes will allow you to use the previews of videos from...

...in more ways than one. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I traveled to New York this year for the Henry Stewart DAM and Marketing Operations Symposium.  Along with participating in the vendor shootout panel on Brand Asset Management software, I was also joined by Jim Magruder, Director...

Omri Duek from InfoTrends stopped by Widen's booth at the Henry Stewart DAM Symposium in New York this year to conduct a video interview with Jake Athey and I. Our booth was promoting the Widen Appliance - "A New Twist on DAM." Traditionally, in Digital Asset Management, there are 2 main delivery...