Online video publishing it's truly unstoppable. As if the very recent announcements of video remixing and editing sites were not enough, a new highly innovative video service has just announced its ability to add some new and very significant additions to how we can watch and interact with video-based content online.

As a matter of fact, I have just finished my first exploration of Click.TV, a new video publishing and syndication service (in Beta) which breaks fascinating new ground in making video content more accessible and commentable by everyone.

As Mike Lanza, Click.TV founder puts it, this is really a new interface for web video which puts you, the user, in control of two key things:

1) Discover what is inside videos with much greater ease and without needing to watch videos in a traditional linear way, from beginning to end, and

2) Share your thoughts, comments and relevant references (hyperlinks) to what you are seeing in the video, in a simple and easy way.

Click.TV provides in fact a new user-interface for video on the web. Click.TV's web-based video player allows online video publishers, reporters, bloggers and subject matter experts to contribute content, links, annotations and personal comments to any published video, while being able to synch such contributions to specific video segments.

Such contributions can then be used as navigational "bookmarks" or "chapter markings" making video access and navigation enter a whole new era. While pioneering solutions employed in the recent past by ITConversation for audio, and by FlashMeeting for video did show the huge potential for such extensions, Click.TV appears to be the very first video publishing service to enable them for the public at large.

Here the details:

One of Click.TV powerful unique features is its ability to allow both editors and readers (if desired) to not only add specific comments, references, annotations, transcripts to any video clip, but to be able to bind such additions to specific video segments, making them act simultaneously as video bookmarks and valuable text-based additions.

Click.TV relies on the Adobe/Macromedia .flv Flash video format for distributing its content and making it easily available for integration on any other web site. The Flash video format is rapidly gaining status of a "de facto" video standard for online-based video, as it is very easily integrated into any web page, and it doesn't require the end user to download or install any dedicated software (as the Flash plugin needed to make all of this possible, comes pre-installed on 99% of the computers out there).

Click.TV Flash-based video content is therefore accessible by all types of computers, including PCs, Macs and Linux boxes. All you need is a standard browser.

Similar to the video publishing feature made available by YouTube, Google Video and few others, Click.TV video publishing facility allows anyone to integrate within her own web site any number of video clips by simply adding a little snippet of HTML code.

Probably among Click.TV unique and stronger characterizing traits is the ability to integrate comments, which act as video bookmarks, to any published clip. On Click.TV in fact, contributed comments are attached to the video time-code allowing them to become also specific pointers to selected video sections.

Comments can be created by producers to add index tracks or to provide commentary, context, expert advice or opinions, as well as to add translations or relevant link references to the selected video.

Comments are managed and controlled by you, the web site owner, and you can decide whether these are to be left open for anyone to comment or are left only for registered users or for your inside editorial team.

With Click.TV, when adding a comment you have the ability to select a very specific segment within a specific video clip, by utilizing the triangle-shaped red and green icons available on the timeline below the video image.

Not only.

As comments gets added to a video clip, they can also be visualized as a semi-transparent white dots grid which allows rapid and intuitive access to specific points in the video, for which the dots are representative bookmarks and comment placeholders.

Comments created by the editor or by user themselves generate in fact visual comments tracks, which, when displayed on the upper part of the video clip, allow direct-to-point navigation to correlated video clip segments.

When you hover your mouse on any of the white square dots, ClickTV displays automatically the first few words of the relevant comment/annotation associated with that video segment, while clicking on any of the dots makes the video player instantaneously advance to that very point, ready for playback.

Comments can also be displayed as superimposed captions onto the bottom part of the video clip itself. This can prove to be extremely effective for online publishers wanting to associate a transcription track, a translation or specific clickable reference URLs to the video clip being shown.

One other unique feature that is not readily apparent is the fact that comments made on Click.TV videos anywhere on the web are all sent back to the Click.TV database, opening up, in my humble opinion, the opportunity for many novel uses and applications of those across the web (searching through other comments made by others on the same video published by other sites; re-publishing of comments made on other sites to your own; comments aggregation and more) .

Click.TV search capabilities also appear to offer some unique advantages. Click.TV provides in fact a simple API that allows any partner site to enable its readers to search inside the video clips and jump directly to relevant video segments that match their search query.

For now, no-one can yet upload or share her own videos, but as Shel Holtz (acting as a PR/evangelist for the project) reported via email to me and other interested bloggers "...there will be a sharing site -- it's in development right now and does share some elements in common with the video sharing services in that individuals will be able to upload videos and share them using the Click.TV service."

While Mike Lanza, the CEO and founder of Click.TV, has an executive background with two online finance companies, much of his inspiration has come from his old-time passion as an amateur videomaker.

Here is his first video documentary, which I can easily share with you here, thanks to Click.TV own technology:

In fact, I think there may be nothing better than listening to Mike's own introductory short video tutorial about Click.TV to really get a sense of how all these features work and how easy is to use them.

Demo of news video clip utilized on ClickTV:
http://www.click.tv/news_demo.php

Demo of sports video clip utilized on ClickTV:
http://www.click.tv/sports_demo.php

Demo of video blog (Steve Garfield's Vlog Soup) on ClickTV:
http://www.click.tv/videoblogs_demo.php

Demo of marketing video clip (Steve Jobs keynote at MacWorld) on ClickTV:
http://www.click.tv/mktgvideos_demo.php

To follow Click.TV news, additions and upcoming announcements check out the official Click.TV blog:
http://blog.click.tv/

To receive updates and news from Click.TV sign-up here:
http://www.click.tv/contact.php