Located in Okemos, Michigan and founded in 1987, TechSmith creates software platforms that enable users to share ideas and information in dynamic and engaging ways.

One of TechSmith’s flagship products, Camtasia, makes video creation easier now than ever before. Yet, producing good content is still a challenge because it’s very difficult to obtain accurate feedback from viewers. Often, comments and ratings reveal very little about a video’s actual impact on viewers.

Our Video Sentiment Analysis (VSA) system records reactions of a viewer to a video without any interactions other than watching the content using our player app.

VSA determines the viewer’s emotions automatically by analyzing a video recording of the user watching the video. VSA also records the viewer’s usage of media controls including playing, pausing and skimming.

In addition to our video player, our VSA system provides a web app for video authors. Viewers are selected and sent an email invitation to view a video using our player app. As part of accepting the invitation, viewers agree to return their usage data and webcam footage for analysis.

The video author then uses our web app to analyze a viewer’s responses. By looking at a specific response, an author can see the emotional state of the viewer, and determine whether or not the video is eliciting the desired reaction.

Video Sentiment Analysis is comprised of a Universal Windows app and a website. The app is developed with C# and XAML. The website is built with ASP.NET on Azure.