It doesn’t take long to notice that not all of the videos posted on YouTube are of Hollywood-caliber quality. Google hopes to solve that problem with the recent acquisition of video technology company Green Parrot Pictures.
The tech giant’s online video service YouTube has purchased the Ireland-based company for an undisclosed sum. Green Parrot Pictures specializes in providing intellectual licensing and high-quality picture manipulation technology.
Founded by Associate Professor Anil Kokaram at the Engineering School of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, Green Parrot Pictures’ small team of engineers has built cutting-edge video quality improvement technology that has been used in major studio productions from Lord of the Rings to X-Men to Spider-Man. What’s more, the company’s technology helps make videos look better while at the same time using less bandwidth and improving playback speed.
According to a YouTube blog posting, “Some of YouTube’s most popular or moving videos are shot using low-quality mobile phones and video cameras. Take, for example, videos of recent protests in Libya. Although emotionally captivating, they can be jerky, blurry or unsteady. What if there was a technology that could improve the quality of such videos -- sharpening the image, reducing visual noise and rendering a higher-quality, steadier video -- all while your video is simply being uploaded to the site? You can imagine how excited we were when we discovered a small, ambitious company based in Ireland that can do exactly this.”
Edited by
Tammy Wolf