VideometerLab
VideometerLab is a benchtop multispectral imaging instrument paired with machine-learning software. It captures 19 wavelengths from 365 to 970 nm to measure the colour, surface and chemical properties of seeds, grain, food and pharmaceuticals without destroying the sample.
What is VideometerLab?
VideometerLab is the flagship benchtop instrument of the Danish company Videometer A/S, built for multispectral image acquisition. It photographs a sample under 19 strobed LED wavelengths spanning 365 to 970 nm, capturing reflectance as standard and, optionally, fluorescence and transmittance. An integrating sphere distributes the light evenly, which suppresses shading noise and specular reflections, while strobed illumination extends the dynamic range. The camera records 12.3 megapixels per wavelength at 30 µm per pixel across a field of view of roughly 120 by 90 mm, connected over USB 3. The instrument is inseparable from the VideometerLab software, which the vendor calls its heart. That software covers three distinct jobs: exploratory analysis of a new problem, construction of calibration models, and routine quality control once a method has settled. Its machine learning is deliberately data-efficient, folding domain knowledge into the models rather than demanding vast training sets, and an artificial intelligence layer guides users towards optimal settings. Because the models incorporate knowledge of how the image was acquired, variation originating from anything other than the sample is suppressed. Named tools include the Workspace Manager, the Image Processing Tool, the MSI and Blob toolboxes, a Pixel Classifier, a Feature Generator, a Session Manager for automated workflows, a spectra database and a Script Tool for writing custom modules in C#. Analysis is non-destructive and quick, at five to ten seconds per sample, with calibration handled by a three-minute wizard using two reflectance targets and one geometric target. A VideometerLab ships complete with hardware, software, installation and training, and all its parts are optimised and tested together so that many sources of variation are absorbed into the calibration model before the customer ever measures anything. The system extends through add-ons: an Autofeeder with hopper and conveyor for granular products, VideometerLiq for stability in liquids, VideometerLab Agile for skin and hair, and Videometer SeedLab, which adds a pick-and-place robot for physical sorting. Videometer reports more than 500 peer-reviewed papers published on the use of its systems, more than 25 years of activity, and in-line sorting installations running since 2002. Food and agriculture and pharmaceuticals are its major application areas, alongside microbiology, dermatology, heritage, forensics and textiles.
What it does
- Acquire multispectral images across 19 wavelengths from 365 to 970 nm, with optional fluorescence and transmittance
- Measure colour, surface and chemical properties without destroying or altering the sample
- Build calibration models and supervised classifiers with the Pixel Classifier and Classifier Design Tool
- Automate repeatable quality control protocols through the Session Manager and workflow control
- Sort and classify granular products automatically using the Autofeeder and a pick-and-place robot
- Document and trace every analysis for audit and decision-making
- Detect counterfeits, contamination, defects, freshness and authenticity depending on the application
When to use VideometerLab / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if VideometerLab is the right fit.
When to use VideometerLab
- Seed laboratories testing purity, germination and vigour, health and treatment coverage
- Grain and cereal quality control teams, including malting barley intake and trading labs
- Food manufacturers inspecting fruit and vegetables, meat, seafood, dairy, chocolate and baked goods
- Pharmaceutical and microbiology laboratories doing quality control, counterfeit detection and colony counting
- Academic and industrial R&D groups that need a method they can cite, backed by 500+ peer-reviewed papers
When not to use VideometerLab
- Anyone looking for software alone: the analysis requires buying a physical instrument
- Teams that need to try before they buy, since there is no free plan, no trial and no public instrument price
- Buyers who need results quickly, given delivery of up to eight to twelve weeks and a no-return, no-cancellation policy
- macOS or Linux users, and anyone without a dedicated Windows PC with an i7 12th-generation processor and 32 GB of RAM
- Developers wanting to integrate quality data programmatically: there is no public API and no mobile app
How to use VideometerLab
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Request a quote from the webshop or the contact form; no login is needed to ask for one
- Place the order as a business customer, supplying a company name and, inside the EU, a VAT number
- Receive the instrument, allowing up to eight to twelve weeks for delivery of physical goods
- Unpack it following the dedicated videos for the VideometerLab and, if ordered, the Autofeeder
- Install the software on a Windows 10 or 11 Professional 64-bit PC, connect the instrument over USB 3 and download the licence file from My Videometer
- Work through the Pre-Training Module videos, then the four basic training modules with a Videometer expert on Microsoft Teams; sessions can be recorded to train later users
- Calibrate with the wizard, using two reflectance targets and one geometric target, in about three minutes
- Acquire sample images, at five to ten seconds per sample
- Analyse with the IPT, MSI and Blob toolboxes and build classifiers, then automate the routine with the Session Manager
- For problems, use the troubleshooting guide and knowledge base, then email videometerlabsupport@videometer.com with logs and screenshots, or accept remote support through the built-in TeamViewer
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Non-destructive: the sample survives the measurement intact and can be used again
- Fast, at five to ten seconds per sample, with large samples analysed in minutes
- Removes the subjectivity of manual visual inspection, giving objective and repeatable results
- Exceptionally well documented, with more than 500 peer-reviewed papers and a published patent
- Delivered as one complete solution: hardware, software, installation and training, all optimised together
- Very broad application coverage, from seeds and grain to food, pharma, microbiology, dermatology, heritage and forensics
- Structured onboarding, with four basic training modules typically included plus an academy, webinars and a knowledge base
Cons
- No public price for the instrument: the webshop shows a 1.00 DKK placeholder and requires a quote request
- No free plan, no free trial and no evaluation version, so the tool cannot be tested before purchase
- Delivery of up to eight to twelve weeks, with a no-return and no-cancellation policy on confirmed orders
- Windows only, with demanding PC requirements: an i7 12th-generation processor, 32 GB of RAM and a USB3 SuperSpeed port
- Total cost runs well beyond the instrument, as service level agreements start at 11,190.00 DKK and crop application models cost 14,920.00 DKK each
- Warranty limited to one year after installation, and after three months the burden of proof shifts to the customer
- Weak legal documentation: US governing law in the terms of a Danish company, a privacy statement citing the wrong European regulation, and no published DPA or subprocessor list
Pricing & Plans
There is no free plan and no free trial. The VideometerLab instrument carries no public price: the webshop lists all twelve instruments at a placeholder 1.00 DKK — one of them even reads "Free" — beneath an invitation to request a quote without logging in, so the route to purchase is a quotation. Real prices are published only for software and services, in DKK excluding VAT, on a business-to-business store. The cheapest published item is a VideometerLab Software Data Package at 900.00 DKK; the stand-alone VideometerLab Software licence costs 11,190.00 DKK and the Classifier Design Tool licence 22,380.00 DKK. Service level agreements start at 11,190.00 DKK, crop-specific application models cost 14,920.00 DKK each, a two-hour remote training module 4,476.00 DKK and a three-hour on-site service visit within Europe 9,700.00 DKK. The Videometer ImageConverter utility is free of charge.
- VideometerLab instrument — price on request through Request Quote
- no public figure
- VideometerLab Software stand-alone licence — 11
- 190.00 DKK
- Classifier Design Tool stand-alone licence — 22
- 380.00 DKK
- VideometerLab Software Data Packages — 900.00 DKK
- VideometerLab Service Level Agreement — from 11
- 190.00 DKK
- VideometerLab with Autofeeder Service Level Agreement — from 12
- 682.00 DKK
- Crop application model
- eleven crops available — 14
- 920.00 DKK each
- Remote two-hour basic training module — 4
- 476.00 DKK
- Service visit within Europe
- three hours on site — 9
- 700.00 DKK
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how VideometerLab handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no explicit claim of GDPR compliance anywhere on the site. The privacy statement does grant data-subject rights — access, rectification, portability and withdrawal of consent without retroactive effect — but bases them on Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, which governs the European Union's own institutions rather than private companies; the applicable text would be Regulation (EU) 2016/679. Rights are exercised by writing to Videometer A/S directly at mail@videometer.com. No data protection officer is named, and no Article 27 representative appears, the publisher being established in Denmark. A mandatory GDPR consent box sits on every contact form, a cookie banner offers accept or decline, Matomo handles analytics and a Pandectes consent app runs on the Shopify store. No data processing agreement and no subprocessor list are published.
Who owns the data?
The website Terms of Use state that Videometer does not claim ownership of the materials users provide or submit. Ownership is not the whole story, though: by submitting anything, the user grants Videometer, its affiliated companies and any necessary sublicensees a broad permission to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat that submission, and to publish the submitter's name alongside it, without compensation. Those clauses govern the website — its forms and communication services — not the images captured by the instrument, for which no ownership clause is published at all.
Reuse rights
The VideometerLab software is licensed and will not run without a licence file; a stand-alone licence costs 11,190.00 DKK. Nothing published on the site restricts what customers may do with the images, measurements and models produced on their own instrument, and the software advertises open data formats. Videometer Workspaces are offered as a place to store and organise files and to share them with stakeholders worldwide. A free utility, Videometer ImageConverter, exports the native HIPS format to bmp, png or jpeg, with the vendor warning that the converted image loses pixel-value resolution and some metadata. No clause claims a right for Videometer to reuse customer measurement data, and the site never mentions training models on it.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Videometer publishes no hosting country and no hosting region for customer data. In practice the analysis runs locally: the software is installed on the customer's own Windows PC with the instrument attached over USB 3, so images and models stay on that machine unless the customer moves them. Cloud options are mentioned without any location — the software advertises integration with Videometer server and cloud database solutions, and Videometer Workspaces are presented as a place to store, share and collaborate. The cookie policy describes Windows Azure platform cookies on portal.videometer.com and identityprovider.videometer.com, which belong to the customer portal rather than to the instrument. The webshop runs on Shopify, and its terms of sale refer buyers to Shopify's EU and EEA privacy policy. The publisher, Videometer A/S, is established in Herlev, Denmark, and therefore inside the European Union. The public website itself resolves to a DigitalOcean address in Amsterdam, but that is a fact about the marketing site and says nothing about where customer data lives. Neither a data processing agreement nor a subprocessor list is published.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting VideometerLab.
- Vendor lock-in: instrument, software, licences, application models and the service contract all come from a single supplier
- Total cost of ownership is easily underestimated, as the service agreement, crop models and advanced training all sit on top of the instrument price
- The tool cannot be evaluated before committing, with no trial, no public price and no return once an order is confirmed
- Over-trusting an automated verdict: a calibration model built on too few samples can produce results that are wrong yet look reassuringly objective
- Loss of human skill, since replacing manual inspection entirely can erode operators' visual expertise, which is slow to rebuild
- Calibration drift, which the vendor itself flags by noting the system's sensitivity to changes in operating system, network and surroundings
- Legal uncertainty: US governing law and jurisdiction in the terms of a Danish company, a privacy statement built on an inapplicable regulation, and a very broad licence granted over anything submitted through the website
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Moderate to demanding, and mostly physical. A 13.2 kg instrument is delivered and unpacked with the help of dedicated videos, then connected over USB 3 to a dedicated PC running Windows 10 or 11 Professional 64-bit with an i7 12th-generation processor and 32 GB of RAM. A licence file is fetched from the My Videometer portal, and a wizard handles calibration in roughly three minutes using two reflectance targets and one geometric target. Four basic training modules with an expert, run over Microsoft Teams, are typically included; the vendor says users should then be ready for their first routine protocols.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind VideometerLab
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is VideometerLab?
How much does it cost?
Is there a free trial or a free version?
How long does an analysis take, and does it damage the sample?
What does the instrument actually measure?
What computer do I need to run it?
Is training included?
Is there an API or a mobile app?
What warranty and delivery terms apply?
Who is behind VideometerLab?
Should you pick VideometerLab?
VideometerLab is a mature, unusually well-documented piece of laboratory equipment. More than 500 peer-reviewed papers, a published patent, twenty-five years of trading and in-line installations running since 2002 put it in a different category from most tools that carry an AI label: the machine learning here sits on top of a measurement chain that has been challenged by scientists for two decades. For a laboratory replacing subjective visual inspection with an objective, repeatable and traceable measurement, the case is strong, and the fact that hardware, software, installation and training arrive as one optimised package removes much of the integration risk. The friction is commercial rather than technical. No price is published for the instrument, no trial or free tier exists, delivery can take eight to twelve weeks and confirmed orders cannot be cancelled or returned, so the tool cannot be evaluated the way software normally is. The true cost also exceeds the instrument: Videometer itself recommends a service level agreement, priced from 11,190.00 DKK, while crop-specific application models and advanced training modules are billed separately. One genuine reservation concerns the paperwork rather than the product. The legal documentation is markedly weaker than the technical documentation: the website terms of use claim Washington State law and Californian jurisdiction for a Danish company, the privacy statement bases data-subject rights on a regulation that governs EU institutions rather than private firms, and neither a data processing agreement nor a subprocessor list is published. In practice the analysis runs locally on the customer's own Windows PC, so exposure stays low — but buyers with a procurement checklist should expect to ask for these documents directly.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.