As you may know, Yext Co-founder and CEO Howard Lerman last week launched a new product to disrupt video production. Known as Dynascore, it automates some of the tricky A/V sync aspects of production. This could notably democratize promotional videos for SMBs… an ongoing opportunity.
Before going deeper on the SMB angle, what is Dynascore? The first product of the Lerman-chaired Wonder Inventions, it disrupts the “A” in A/V. It alleviates a common production pain point by automating the process of syncing audio tracks. This can include the instrumental background for a given video.
Modularity and Morphones
As further background, video production processes often include integrating stock music. The issue is that the length of a given stock clip isn’t aligned with a new custom video. That results in awkward fits or disjointed transitions that diminish production quality, and thus brand association.
Dynascore makes those pieces fit together smoothly, and does so in an automated way that sidesteps pro-level editing skills otherwise required to do it manually. It does this with a drag and drop interface that automatically fits a given audio track to a new video, including scene transitions within the video.
The company accomplishes this by breaking down audio tracks to smaller units which it calls morphones. When atomized in this way, a given audio asset becomes more flexible and modular. Morphones can then be reassembled to fit where they need to go, while still flowing as a cohesive song.
Dynascore starts out with a library of public-domain classic compositions and about 1,000 original compositions. As it continues to work with these and other works in its growing library, it’s possible that its AI will get better at devising and deploying morphones. Meanwhile, the democratization value is clear.
“Over the past quarter-century, video has become the ultimate storytelling medium, including for many SMBs who use TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or put videos on their Listings,” Lerman told Localogy Insider. “The best storytellers know that words and the picture only tell part of the story – music tells the rest. We created Dynascore to enable dynamic music that used to require a professional composer – accessible to all.”
TAM Right
Dynascore’s value proposition cuts a few ways, including saving time for busy video pros, and democratizing the process for non-pros. The latter brings us back to the SMB angle. As Lerman specifies in the above comment, SMBs are a targeted market segment in Dynascore’s total addressable market (TAM).
In fact, SMB video creation has been an ongoing area of development in the local commerce world. SMBs have a high demand for video because it’s a medium they understand (and it speaks to their vanity). However, video creation hasn’t been democratized to the degree that social and search advertising have.
This dilemma has led to ongoing efforts to streamline video creation for SMBs. Parallel developments in social media, such as stories and other multimedia formats, have accelerated this trend to some degree. But video remains elusive to a large segment of the SMB world, meaning there’s ample headroom.
Dynascore could help scratch that itch. The price is right, given $19/per month SaaS packaging. The software is available as a desktop app for Mac and Windows, and as an Adobe Premiere Pro extension. Dynascore will also go to market through an API that developers can use to integrate the software with their apps.
Meanwhile, Howard Lerman continues as CEO at Yext while serving as Wonder Inventions‘ chairman. Expect more products to roll out as the company ramps up.
