When I saw Senator Barack Obama’s annoucement video yesterday, I was impressed by the Flash video player the campaign is using.  I’ve looked into this before, and the Flash player Obama is using has the critical features I look for: (1) subtle design, (2) the ability to email the video, (3) permalink and (3) embeddable HTML code.  I’ve embedded the player below so you can take a look:

It turns out the Obama campaign is using a service called Brightcove for their videos.  I took a look at Brightcove and it seems like a great service. 

Interestingly, one of the features that sets Brightcove apart from its competitors is their emphasis on the management of consumer generated content.  Brightcove has a set of powerful tools that allow you to invite users to submit their own videos to your account.  You can then review the videos and publish the ones you like to Brightcove and/or your own website.  It is cool stuff.

Obviously you can do the same thing in homemade fashion using YouTube.  But Brightcove gives users a bit more control over the process and gives you access to the videos in a variety of formats. 

Speculating wildly, I’d say the choice of Brightcove is a decent clue that the Obama campaign might be experimenting with consumer generated video down the line.

Update: I see on Techmeme that Brightcove announced topday that they have raised an additional $59 million in venture capital money. Here is their press release and here is GigaOm’s story on it.

Update 2: It looks like I’m not the first to take notice of Obama’s use of Brightcove. Beet TV has more information. Here’s the key quote:

"Beet.TV has learned that Brightcove’s arrangement with Obama will be multifaceted.  It will include ongoing publication of campaign videos, the creation of a Obama "channel" on Brightcove and a syndication function which will allow bloggers and Web sites to have campaign clips published directly on their pages."