Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

With nearly a century’s worth of archived footage and a globally distributed team capturing new content across the oceans, WHOI was sitting on a goldmine of video assets; but had no central system to manage them. Media was stored on dusty external hard drives, scattered across desks and storage closets, with no easy way to search, share, or reuse.

This content chaos led to:

The WHOI communications team knew they needed to reclaim and activate their archive to support social, media, fundraising, and research efforts—but lacked the tools to do it at scale.

WHOI selected MediaValet to help modernize their media workflows, empower content contributors, and support global storytelling efforts. They needed a solution that was video-first, intuitive for non-admin users, and scalable across teams, departments, and external collaborators.

MediaValet is now embedded into WHOI’s daily workflows, serving a diverse set of users:

External agencies producing assets – WHOI can grant permits to ensure temporary access to approved partners, allowing them to log in, locate, and download exactly the footage they need. This eliminates the hassle of endless file transfers, bulky email attachments, or shipping physical drives.

Media relations to build press kits and pitch packages – The comms team can quickly compile curated sets of high-resolution images and video clips for news outlets, complete with captions, licensing info, and metadata. This speeds up media response times and ensures WHOI’s research is always represented with the most accurate, compelling visuals.

Social media teams to access high-quality, searchable footage – From rare deep-sea discoveries to stunning wildlife encounters, the social team can instantly locate, download, and repurpose content that drives engagement across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X.

Editorial teams to match visuals with storytelling efforts – Writers and content producers can search the DAM for visuals that complement articles, blog posts, or event presentations, ensuring every story is enriched with relevant, on-brand imagery and video.

Researchers preparing presentations or grant materials – Scientists can self-serve relevant footage and images to illustrate findings, strengthen proposals, and add visual impact to conference presentations without waiting for the media team.

WHOI relies on a comprehensive suite of MediaValet features designed to simplify complex video workflows, unlock hidden value in legacy content, and support cross-functional collaboration; from researchers in the field to editors in the studio.

Portals: WHOI builds custom branded Portals for departments, campaigns, and external partners, making it easy to share the most up-to-date curated media libraries without overwhelming users. Research centers and event teams can self-manage access to up-to-date content without needing to dig through the entire archive or request support from the core team.

Collections: For licensing requests, from organizations like Nat Geo, the BBC, and major museums; WHOI uses Collections to quickly assemble tailored selections of footage. These are shared as review galleries, complete with low-res proxies for previewing and full-res downloads once usage rights are confirmed.

Audio Visual Intelligence (AVI): Though still in early stages of adoption, WHOI sees immense potential in AVI features like automated transcription and AI-powered tagging. These tools promise to further reduce manual metadata entry and enhance discoverability across their growing archive.

Smart Search and Metadata: WHOI leverages AI-driven tagging and search to quickly locate niche footage, like dives from the Alvin submersible or coral reef studies, within a vast video archive. Even spoken words in videos are searchable, thanks to built-in audio transcription.

Video Trimming: Previously, users had to download entire video files; even for a few seconds of usable footage. With Trimming, editors can extract only the exact clips they need, directly from within the DAM. This has eliminated countless hours of manual work and significantly accelerated production timelines.

With MediaValet in place, WHOI has dramatically streamlined content access, increased asset utilization, and built brand momentum across platforms:

Next on WHOI’s roadmap: broader adoption of MediaValet across the institution, integration of AVI (Audio Visual Intelligence), and expanding use of AI-generated metadata and transcription to improve searchability. With an eye toward monetization and licensing, WHOI is also using MediaValet to streamline media requests from partners like Nat Geo, the BBC, and museums worldwide.