Media release: UGC video platform Vloggi now available in full HD

Video uploads from latest high definition phones now supported
Highlight compilations available to download in 1080p full HD
Feature request from event organisers and others using Vloggi for video walls

SYDNEY, 22 July 2021 – Australian user-generated video platform Vloggi Friday completed its latest feature upgrade based on customer feedback, with the platform now supporting full high definition upload and downloads. The upgrade came after feedback from event organisers and other users of high definition video.

The platform makes the collection and compilation of video messages from an organisation’s community as easy as sending out a link. After monitoring customer usage over the past four months, the proportion of high definition clips arriving on the Vloggi cloud servers rose to over 10%, necessitating the upgrade.

â€œToday’s smartphones like the iPhone 12, Samsung Galaxy S21, OnePlus 9 Pro and the Google Pixel 5 all have best-in-class ultra high definition video cameras right on board, so we needed to support this leap in technologyâ€ said Justin Wastnage, founder and CEO of Vloggi.

The platform upload limit was doubled to 160MB, which is large enough to accommodate up to 40 seconds of video recorded at 4K resolution, at 60 frames-per-second. This is the highest resolution video accepted by any user-generated video curation platform on the market.

â€œOur CTO Jeremy Giraudet was tasked with tweaking all the back-end infrastructure as well as our proprietary encoding technology that applies corporate branding onto video clips the second they hit our servers. As usual, he rose to the challenge and implemented the upgrade effortlessly,â€ Mr Wastnage added.

Vloggi was recently selected to power Australia’s largest fan-powered video project with the pre-launch of Hamilton the Musical in Melbourne inviting the audience to upload videos of themselves lip-syncing to the killer track “My Shot” from the musical.

â€œA project like Hamilton Rise Up was always going to receive not only a high volume of video submissions, but many of them shot in high definition, so that was the final impetus we needed to upgrade our systems,â€ said Mr Wastnage.

Hamilton the Musical collecting video on Vloggi

Hamilton the Musical (Australia) uses Vloggi to crowdsource audience videos

In addition to high definition uploads by contributors, Vloggi has also turned on true high definition 1080p downloads of the compilation videos the platform produces. The increased use of the videos at physical events on large displays was the prompter for this upgrade, explains Mr Wastnage.

“We have just signed with a major university and the requirement for 1080p final video compilations was central to their performance issues, but we had had the request from other event organisers wanting to display instant reactions at conferences from delegates. For this, displayed on video walls, the higher the definition the better,” Mr Wastnage added.

The technical challenges do not lie in the encoding, but the transfer of large video files over wireless networks, Mr Wastnage said. The initial version of Vloggi used a proprietary compression algorithm to pre-process the video prior to transmission over cellular networks. “With today’s ultra high definition phones, we no longer need to pre-process the video, but we do need to deploy some of our smart compression tools to ensure we receive and encode full high definition video clips for our customers to transform into professional video compilations,” he said.

Full 1080p video download is available on all paid tiers of the Vloggi platform, while the free tier is restricted to 480p web resolution.

About Vloggi

Vloggi is a video production platform that combines a smart video upload tool with sophisticated cloud-based video automation tools for businesses to manipulate and license this content.

Through the combination of a smart video uploader for end users and cloud-based server-side video assembly, the platform can reduce the cost of video production by a factor of one hundred. Vloggiâ€™s USP is making crowdsourced video marketing campaigns effortless.

Vloggi enables the creation of authentic video content at scale. Vloggi is the first crowdsourcing platform to integrate a data-led video upload tool into the ecosystem. The platform also ensures all content is licensed for re-use, eliminating the pain point of chasing IP rights.

Founded in 2018, Vloggi is the worldâ€™s first collaborative video production platform using AI to process, sort and annotate user-generated video for use by businesses and social groups. It is a registered trademark of parent company, tech investment vehicle CinÃ© Souk Pty Ltd.

The company was founded by Justin Wastnage, a former director of the Tourism & Transport Forum, and founder of the Flight TV aviation video channel. Wastnage started his career with interactive digital television pioneer Static 2358 (later PlayJam) before creating video content for Microsoft. The companyâ€™s technical team is headed up by co-founder and CTO, Jeremy Giraudet who developed podcasting distribution and storytelling software for global technology companies. Vloggi is based in the Sydney Startup Hub.