Looking at Video on the Web with Ken McCarthy

Amazon has long used its customers comments to help sell books. Customer reviews and recommended book lists have led the way. (I wonder if that makes them a pioneering web 2.0 company?)

Now Amazon has joined the video age.

Go to Amazon, pick any book and select the "review" option and you’ll be given two options: 1) the standard text option and 2) the new video option.

Just like with YouTube, you get an easy-to-use interface to upload your video to Amazon.

Interestingly, Amazon recommends the PureDigital line of video cameras we first reported on a year and a half ago.  I remain amazed that Google/YouTube hasn’t made a similar deal with PureDigital (or bought the company.)

PureDigital seems to be thriving in spite of their low profile. New cameras with new features. Where’s Apple? Micro video cameras is a cool niche that fits their mission to a ‘t.’

When I started this blog two years ago (after patiently waiting eleven years for Internet video to catch on), one of the first companies I featured was a modest little start-up called TurnHere.com

I really liked TurnHere.com’s model which was to take video into neighborhoods and small businesses and give those otherwise unheard voices a chance to "be on TV."  Video  is, for better or worse, the ultimate marketing medium, but until the cost of producing – and distributing – video messages was prohibitive, for all by the most deep pockets organizations.

No more and I’m happy to say that TurnHere has turned out to be one of the true movers and shakers in this movement. When I first profiled them, they had a network of less than 50 videographers. Now they have thousands.

This video features a somewhat rare interview with Brad Inman the mastermind behind TurnHere.com. Before taking a leadership role in the Internet video world, Brad was – and still is – deeply involved at the intersection of the Internet and real estate. He’s the preeminent publisher in the field and his traveling conferences on the subject are top notch.

Listen to what he has to say about the opportunities in Internet video. The door is wide open, especially for people who are smart about finding niche markets to serve.

VideoPiggy is an Application for Windows XP and Vista that will let you download videos straight from YouTube, Google Video, and Metacafe. This program even has built in Video Conversion to watch videos on your PC, iPod, PSP, or Cell Phone!

Internet video has created some interesting new business opportunities.

Viacom pays $100,000 per month to have its copyrighted videos scrubbed from YouTube. "Video analysts," the employees who spend their days searching YouTube and other online video services for copyright infringements, get paid $11 per hour. 

You’re going to hear a lot on this topic in the months and years to come.

In a way, it’s an old concern. The web’s inventor was reportedly furious with Marc Andreessen for creating the image tag because he was afraid that the increased bandwidth demand of transferring tiff and jpeg files would crash the Internet.

It  didn’t happen. Then again, video files are exponentially bigger than graphics files and video watching on the Internet is evolving into a very popular activity with a hockey stick like growth curve.

Here’s a video produced by an industry group that has a stake in the outcome. Great example of using video to make complex ideas more easily comprehensible.

In advertising, we call them "testimonials," but in truth customers couldn’t care less about them.

What they really want are real life case studies if they’re business buyers, or product reviews from other customers, if they’re consumers.

When we, the advertisers, say something, or even relate a customer comment second hand in the form of a "testimonial," our much-abused and rightfully skeptical prospects take it with a grain of salt.

On the other hand, when a real person says it, credibility skyrockets.

Since I started my latest round of writing about Internet video in 2005, I’ve often repeated my hunch that one of the slam dunk uses of video was going to be to capture customer reviews. In fact, as far back as 2000, I was making sure that every time I did a live event I grabbed video from customers. This video has been, far and away, my most effective selling tool.

Now the studies are coming in and guess what? About 80% of consumers put more faith in advertisers who present customer reviews than those that don’t.  Over thee out of four customers say it is extremely or very important to read customer reviews before making a purchase.

And not just any old reviews. They want customer reviews and prefer them 6 to 1 over "expert" reviews. 44% of online shoppers say that consumer ratings and reviews are the most useful e-commerce  feature.  No other eCommerce shopping feature came even close.

Another study came up with different but similar numbers.

First, 85% of consumers research big ticket purchases like travel, electronics and cars on the Internet before they make their purchase. And what do 63% of them most want to see on a web site? You guessed it: customer reviews.

In the consumer electronics category, Amazon and Circuit City  are the most trusted vendors, Amazon because it’s familiar and Circuit City because it’s the easiest to use. Less trusted, at least in terms of online buying, are Wal-Mart and BestBuy. Guess who doesn’t provide customer reviews…

But that’s just changed. Last week, Wal-Mart started offering customer reviews on its web site. Wal-Mart’s own self-reported numbers state that 85% of their customers are Internet users. Sounds a little high to me, but then again, Wal-Mart’s got a pretty good record of tracking customer behavior (an understatement actually.)

General Motors is also getting into the act with big media buys at Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers, in case you didn’t now, is one of the granddaddies of user generated content sites. Members ask questions and other members answer them. Yahoo claims 90 million users and 250 million answers posted worldwide. Notice the theme: people talking to people without the mediation of pesky "experts."

In the online video arena, one company is making business of video customer reviews: ExpoTV.com. These guys are harnessing the two biggest forces on the Internet today: consumer-generated content and video.  Currently, the site has over 50,000 product reviews, all provided by consumers who shoot, edit and upload their own videos.  ExpoTV then turns around and syndicates this content to sites like Smarter.com, Buy.com, AOL and Yahoo.

ExpoTV pays its visitors $5 for every video they submit that’s accepted. Interestingly, the company says that  only 5 to 10%   of videos submitted by its users have to be rejected on purely technical grounds like bad sound or lighting. Clearly, huge portions of the world are now not only comfortable watching video on the Internet, they’re also comfortable and capable of shooting and uploading their own videos. (Thank YouTube for kicking that revolution into high gear.)

So what’s the take away from all of this?

1. Are you making it possible for your customers to post reviews of your products and services so other prospects can see them?  If not, you may be missing out on a huge credibility builder.

2. Don’t think that text-only "testimonials" are enough. Consumers are getting used to the idea of seeing video customer reviews.  The first player in your niche to take advantage of this lesson will quickly leave the rest of the competition behind. 

Remember the numbers from the surveys:

1) Prospects value the opinions of customers over "experts" 6 to 1, 
2) Well over half of all Internet users believe that customer reviews and ratings are extremely or very important, and
3) The single most popular feature on eCommerce sites, by a very wide margin, is the availability of customer reviews.

Bottom line: Customers want to get their product information from each other. Not from advertisers. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Ken McCarthy

P.S. For a free highlights version of this blog go to:

http://www.InternetVideoMarketingLetter.com

Internet video continues to demonstrated its effectiveness and superiority over text.

As proof of this, you can hardly find a single big numbers Internet marketer who has not made a serious investment in mastering the medium.

What about you?

I know from first hand experience how expensive and time consuming it can be to sort this stuff out.

That’s why I’m always on the lookout for good *educators* in this field.

Here’s one I recommend very highly:

Jay Douglas.

He may have put together the best, most comprehensive, lowest cost way to get up to speed and fluent in
Internet video fast:

http://www.thesystemseminar.com/jaydouglas/

Enjoy!

Ken McCarthy

P.S. I’m of the opinion that the tools for Internet video production have become so cheap and easy to use that everyone should at least look at the potential of  making their own sales videos.

You wouldn’t hire a typist to write your e-mails and sales letters for you, would you? That would get awfully burdensome.

It might makes sense to run up the learning curve on video, just the way you did on typing.

Here’s a great resource to do just that:

http://www.thesystemseminar.com/jaydouglas/

I recently asked Google this question not too long ago and found nothing but misleading information in the top ten results. There are very few resources out there that spill the beans concerning which video format you should use for the web. If you turn to the video sharing sites for information, you may find nothing but a half-assed manual that reads like stereo instructions. What’s even worse, is that even if you do know which video format is good for YouTube or Google Video, getting the video to that point and making it look good is another struggle.

What do I mean by video format? What I am really saying comes in two parts: the "video container" and the "video codec". Perhaps you’ve seen some of these containers online: Windows Media Video (WMV), Quicktime Video (MOV), or Flash Video (FLV) to name a few. Maybe you’ve heard of some of these codecs: MPEG, DV, Sorenson, H.264. These are just the names, but what do they mean?

Think of the "video codec" as if it were the brand of film you would put into a 35mm camera (the container). The camera needs the film to take pictures and the film needs the parts of the camera to expose properly. Professional photographers often use different types of film for different situations. Black and white for weddings, slow speeds film for astronomical imaging, fast speed film for sports events. Codecs like DV are suitable for videotaping, editing, and uncompressed Master Tapes. Codecs such as H.264, MPEG4, and FLV are made for streaming on the web. But all of these codecs can be found in a container like Quicktime or Windows Media.

So which codec and container is the best for my website? This really depends on a few key factors: your website’s content, audience, and server capabilities. It is best to consult a professional when attempting to provide video content on your own server. But if you use video sharing sites to host your content and then just embed the videos on your site, this question then becomes "Which video codec is best for the video sharing site I am uploading it to?". 

When providing video on your own server, the best answer I can give you is to provide multiple containers and formats at varying data rates. The worst number in video streaming is 1. If someone cannot view your video and they get a message saying "please download plug-in here", say goodbye to a potential viewer.

Make the same video available in 300kpbs FLV, 150kpbs WMV, and 300 kbps MOV. This setup will ensure that anyone using any Operating System will be able to view your video content.

I will be providing step by step tutorials over screen captures in the future about the specifics of outputting video in various applications in Windows and Mac OS X. If you want to know how to output video for the video using a specific program, just shoot an email to me at videopro@iuseapple.com. I cannot promise a return email, but I will try my best to reply in the form of a blog post.

YouTube’s founders, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, were in Paris last week where they announced they’d be creating "localized" YouTube in seven languages: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Polish and Dutch.

This comes a month after SytemSeminarTV started posting video content in French, German, Russian, Lithuanian, and Ukranian.

Why foreign language content?

Simple. That’s where the growth is.
More Int

Many people around the world speak English, but if want to hit them where their heart is, speak to them in their own language. Or at the very least introduce yourself in their language and then continue the conversation in English.

Here’s a sample in German

More International videos here

Howdy,

My name is Steve Blue. I am a Video Pro who will guide you through the stormy seas of Internet Video Creation. I am a jack of all trades when it comes to video production. I’ve edited and shot it all: commercials, documentaries, music videos, wedding videos, artistic video installation, professional sports videography, even large marketing multi screen presentations for CES. I help Ken McCarthy edit and post videos online for The System Seminar.

I will be posting to SystemVideoBlog, in the capacity of a Video Pro.

Trends in Internet Video are shifting everyday it seems. It can be quite difficult to keep up with the latest video technologies and services out there.   I hope this blog post will be your yellow brick road to the future of internet video. As "The Wizard of Oz" transformed movie screens from black and white to color, companies like Google and Apple, Inc. are changing the quality and delivery of Internet Video right now.

If you are a business owner, you probably outsource video creation to a professional. Some professionals, even those in the business for twenty years, may not know a single thing about internet video. Most professional videographers are concerned with the latest quality innovations, such as DVD and HDTV. Some even denounce internet video right off the bat, saying it looks horrible, so why would anyone even use it?

Picture quality doesn’t matter to the average viewer. Everyone is wowed and amazed by HDTV at first, but still content to watch the worst quality video of some guy skiing off a jump on YouTube.

But what if I told you I can create a video designed for streaming over the Internet that has close enough quality to broadcast, that the casual viewer can’t even tell the difference? I will show you how in upcoming blog posts.

Internet Video has grown up and is now moving out of the house. If you visit Apple’s iTunes website right now, you will be greeted with a message that says "YouTube, meet AppleTV". AppleTV viewers will soon be able to view thousands of YouTube videos right on their television sets. Did you know AppleTV also supports 480P, which is the standard for DVDs right now? Internet Video and Broadcast Quality are converging right now. But at the same time, YouTube also struck a deal with Verizon Wireless at the end of 2006, establishing a cell phone television-like channel for the most popular videos on YouTube. Now YouTube is moving onto the iPhone too, which means AT&T has access to the Internet Video Giant. Internet Video is now available on millions of digital devices out there. Internet Video is spreading like a virus.

It amazes me how YouTube is the most popular video sharing service by far. YouTube has 44% of total internet viewership. YouTube also has the worst interface out of all the video sharing sites I have encountered. I upload maybe 10 clips at a time to YouTube about a certain topic. It is one huge pain in the butt when I have to change preferences about them. In contrast, what makes a good video sharing site? Well, the ability to upload multiple videos at once for starters, with a large file size and duration on each clip. It’s called Google Video, which is still in fifth place lagging behind MSN, Yahoo, MySpace, and of course YouTube.

Upload videos to a cocktail of sites. I upload videos to YouTube, Google, MySpace, and iTunes. In future posts, I will detail step by step instructions on the best methods of uploading videos to these services.

When you are ready to upload to the internet, output the best quality video with the smallest filesize possible from your editing program. This can be a struggle. I use Quicktime H.264 for this task, others go straight into Flash FLV. Most of the online sharing sites use FLV and will convert most anything you give them to this format. Make sure you upload the best quality video possible to services like YouTube or Google Video. Those sites will make your video look crappier. But do not fear. Because of the Apple’s efforts to upgrade the video quality in iTunes, all the other internet video sharing sites will follow suit and gradually improve the quality of online videos. YouTube did it just the other week. If you view a movie on YouTube using their new beta interface, you will find a slightly larger screen for the video. YouTube just switched over to the H.264 standard probably because of their dealings with Apple. Why would the Internet Video Giant think of switching over their entire library to a new standard? H.264 is not just a standard for the Internet.  H.264 can handle everything from the crappiest looking online video to full HD quality 1080i.

Broadcast and Internet Video standards are converging right now.  So, in addition of making your video suitable for current online conditions, make sure you always have a master copy available that is Broadcast Quality.

I hope you just gained some nuggets about Internet Video. I will be writing articles on SystemVideoBlog.com, even with step by step instructions, that will get down to the nitty gritty about all different aspects of internet video creation. If you have questions that you’d like to see me address on the blog, please mail them to me at videopro@iuseapple.com. Due to the volume of mail I won’t be able to respond personally and I won’t be able to answer every question, but I’ll do my best.

Steve Blue