Magnifi Inc.

Magnifi Inc. - 1997

Principal Consulting Engineer - QuickTime and Video for Windows, Multimedia and Video Search

In the late 1990s, Magnifi was a digital asset management (DAM) company that developed innovative and patented solutions for handling digital media. The company provided services to major clients, including Boeing, AOL Time Warner, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, and Disney.

Magnifi’s products were designed to help organizations store, organize, distribute, and monetize their digital media assets more efficiently. One example was its work with CNN Interactive, where it helped improve the management and delivery of CNN’s digital content.

Magnifi also developed a content-based multimedia search engine as part of its DAM solutions. This technology allowed organizations to quickly search and retrieve images, videos, and other media files by analyzing their actual content, rather than just relying on metadata or file names. By recognizing visual and audio patterns, the search engine made it easier for companies to locate specific media assets. This approach streamlined digital media management for clients like CNN Interactive, Boeing, and Disney.

I was tasked with developing multimedia search capability for Magnifi, with the specific objectives of extracting any available text from multimedia assets and adding those pieces of text to the search database. This engagement lasted a few months, part-time, while resulting in the integration of the most popular multimedia formats into a contextual search engine. I also developed a suite of fully automated tests which validated the ability of the search engine to find all of the relevant content.

Magnifi was purchased by Proctor & Gamble in 2001.

C
C++
PPC
x86_64
x86_32
QuickTime
QTML
QuickTime VR
Video for Windows (Microsoft)
QuickDraw
GDI
DirectDraw
DirectShow
Direct3D
HTML