The US armed forces have launched an upload-auteur vidshare site for troops, their families and supporters along the lines of YouTube. The move comes eighteen months after the Defense Department decided to restrict access to commercial video sites and others deemed to be 'bandwidth hogs'.

The new site is called TroopTube and users can register as armed forces personnel, family, civilian Defense Department employees or supporters. Members can upload personal videos from anywhere with an internet connection, but they are only posted after DoD screening for good taste and lack of national-security breaches.

The tech provider for TroopTube is Seattle startup Delve Networks. The site reportedly processes video formats automatically, and plays back at a bitrate which suits viewers' connection speeds.

But Delve's special TroopTube sauce is the soundtrack search function. As vids are processed, words said are scanned by voice-recognition software and used to tag the file. Delve believe they've allowed for inevitable voice-recog errors by also including a Web check of each sequence of words, looking for words commonly used close together. The company believes that the TroopTube vids will thus be searchable by dialogue.

Delve CEO Alex Castro, speaking to AP, called TroopTube a "retention tool" aimed at a generation of soldiers who bring laptops to the front lines.

"A lot of people are excited in the company to be doing something for the people who make sacrifices," Castro told the wire service, apparently in tears.

"We're proud of this." ®

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• US forces to block YouTube, MySpace on DoD network (14 May 2007)
• Coalition forces offer Iraq action footage (10 May 2007)