Starting today, paid users of Vimeo's Pro and Business services have access to new tools allowing clients and collaborators to annotate video projects. The company says it's the first part of a push that will see Vimeo developing into a "workflow solution," rather than just a distribution platform, over the course of 2017.
Users can now create review pages that can be securely shared to solicit feedback from any number of collaborators around the world. Reviewers click on the video frame to add a note with time-coded feedback. All notes on a video are aggregated in a feed that allows users to manage discussion and create "to-do" lists from their feedback.
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"Our goal is to build a true end-to-end workflow solution for video creators," Anjali Sud, general manager and senior vice president of Vimeo's creator platform, told StudioDaily. "This launch is the first in a seris of product rollouts we will be making this year. The goal is to make Vimeo a one-stop shop for video collaboration across creator workflow."
Sud said enabling feedback only via time-coded notes, rather than allowing users to mark up video frames with shapes and symbols, was in part a deliberate strategy to keep its implementation easy for reviewers to understand and use. "Part of our goal with this launch is to provide the cleanest, simplest and most accessible version of video review," she said. "There are no immediate plans to add those bells and whistles, but we will be actively improving the product based on user feedback over the next weeks and months."
But she underscored that this is not an experimental or beta feature. Rather, she said, it's based on Vimeo's observations of how its customers use the platform and directly informed by feedback from the user community.
A Vimeo Pro membership is $204/year for three seats and includes the new video review tools, advanced player customization options and analytics. A Vimeo Business membership is $600/year for 10 seats and adds the ability to include clickable calls to action in the embedded player, along with the ability to collect leads and interface with email marketing software.
