Kadokawa Marketing, a subsidiary of this publishing and film-making conglomerate｢J], has introduced a new web video service called “kadoTV“.
Kadokawa’s new service allows its users to collaboratively add synchronized, multilingual subtitles to each anime on the site. The service is based on video retrieval technology developed by Tokyo University’s graduate tech start-up TeamLab, and allows users to search subtitles using text or audio input, and sort the results based on image similarity. Videos appearing on the site come from YouTube, NicoNico Douga[J], Ameba Vision[J] and other video sharing sites worldwide.
kadoTV is an experimental service chosen by the Information Grand Voyage Project, which was organized by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to encourage the development of next-generation information retrieval and analysis technologies.
From the service provider’s perspective, Kadokawa expects to determine the potential of what is termed the “subtitle business”, detect videos uploaded without the content holder’s permission, and identify possible film creators and business opportunities both inside and outside of Japan.
The experimental service is available until the end of February.
kadoTV’s English top page
Masaru IKEDA