TVU Networks Partners With Stringr

TVU Networks, a global technology and innovation provider of live IP solutions, today announced a partnership with Stringr, a video marketplace for custom, high-quality, video content. Stringr’s network of professional and amateur videographers is now available through the TVU Global Grid, the cloud platform for content owners to contribute and pull video, enabling assets to be shared and sold on a global scale.

The relationship leverages Stringr’s robust network of videographers and the established global presence of the TVU Grid distribution platform.

TVU Grid is an IP-based switching, routing and distribution system. With TVU Grid, stations can route live video streams over IP networks to one or more Grid-enabled news stations anywhere in the world with sub-second latency.

Using its TVU Global Grid platform, users can exchange, share and sell video content. Users can view public video sources that are available around the world, and request to take the stream and make it available for their own viewing audience.

Stringr allows users to access its content library and request custom footage from more than 90,000 videographers around the world. In addition, broadcasters, publishers and brands in the U.S. and U.K. can access Stringr’s livestreaming function, which launched earlier this year. Users will now be able to put out requests through TVU Grid, and as a videographer in Stringr’s network begins sharing live footage, it will be transmitted directly to TVU Grid.

“The TVU Grid is used by thousands of newsrooms around the world,” said Brian McNeill, COO and co-founder of Stringr. “Integrating Stringr will give TVU users all the benefits of our platform, without having to flip between the two, therefore saving time, cutting unnecessary costs and maintaining content quality.”

The companies said the Stringr/TVU Grid workflow is seamless. “A joint customer requests video from Stringr. When one of Stringr’s 90,000-plus videographers goes live with video matching the request, the feed is sent through Stringr, straight into TVU Grid. From there, the joint customer can take the feed just as they would for any other TVU content.”

“By incorporating Stringr’s network through TVU Grid, our customers have the best of both worlds — high-quality, low-latency live video distributed through TVU Grid with the extensive Stringr videographer marketplace,” said TVU Networks’ CEO Paul Shen. “The combination enables our customers to deliver breaking news faster than ever before and opens up monetization opportunities for their own content. It makes the live production process much simpler with a streamlined workflow while providing greater flexibility and more options for dynamic content.”

The companies said a mutual customer brought the two companies in touch with one another, and the opportunity to partner grew from that initial connection. Both TVU Networks and Stringr executives saw the value in a solution combining TVU Grid’s access to global live coverage with Stringr’s ability to source live footage. “The combination of these two products allows our partners to get more live coverage, quickly, cost effectively, and within the same workflow they’ve always used,” added McNeill.

TVU Networks and Stringr are currently working with a major cable network and plan to expand to other partners shortly.