Looking at Video on the Web with Ken McCarthy
Video, filmmaking, marketing and the web
Flash… Apple…Windows Media… Real Media
Every format has enthusiastic fans who claim their way is THE way to encode video for the Internet.
If only it were that simple.
Flash and Apple have made impressive strides, but according to Jan Ozer, the author of a recent detailed study comparing online video formats, "rumors of the demise of other codecs have been greatly exaggerated.
What do you use and why?
Some users actually use TiVo to request commercials from specific companies (see my Feb 22 post)
Google’s cranking it up a notch.
They’re offering commercials for sale.
As always, there’s a lot to learn from Google watching.
TiVo is a device that makes it easy for people to record what’s broadcasted on TV and play it back later.
Most of the discussion around TiVo and advertising is about how consumers are using the service to evade commercials. True enough.
But that’s only half the story…
Ready or not, here they come…
Sponsored links on Google that display Internet video.
Search the keyword "olympics" on Google and up comes a NBC-sponsored graphic on the top of the page.
Click on the graphic and you get a short video from their coverage of the Torino Winter Olympics.
Google: olympics
How narrowly focused can the subject of an Internet video be?
To answer this question, we need to go back about one hundred years.
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to taking advantage of a new medium is to shake off the dust from the old one…
How long should an Internet video be?
Two answers:
1. If the content is compelling enough for a viewer and he or she is properly "prepped" for the experience and there is no other source for the same information, there’s practically no time limit.
2. On the other hand, without these conditions, after three minutes Internet video viewership falls off a cliff.
I’ve gotten four rock solid confirmations of this number, two from folks who track Internet video viewership closely and two from ‘alternate’ sources, one of whom says the real number may be closer to two minutes.
Here’s a site – silly on the surface – that conveys three important messages:
1. One of the big reasons Internet video is exploding right now is that it’s finally become DEAD SIMPLE to encode and upload video to the web.
Vlogers?
Yes, vlogers.
First, there was the blog. Blog = web log.
Then came the podcast. A podcast is audio or video content you can download from the Internet and play on your PC or a personal media device like, but not limited to, an iPod.
Now, the strangest word yet: vlog. Vlog = Video blog. Vlogs are blogs that feature video posts. Sometimes daily video posts.
Did you know that the New York Times has its own Internet TV newtork?
Me neither.
How do you keep something like this secret when you own one of the most widely read newspapers in the world?
Anyway, it’s pretty good. In fact, CNN better wake up.
Note the number of "channels" they have (see the right hand column of their video home page.)
One of my favorites is the weekly technology columm by David Pogue.
http://video.on.nytimes.com
Enjoy!
Ken
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Google has been making video available for several weeks now.
The service evolved from free videos to a mix of free and paid:
http://video.google.com
The service has its own blog – http://googlevideo.blogspot.com – and its own discussion board:
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Labs-Google-Video
‘Rubber meets the road’ questions about how to use Google’s service and how to add your own videos to it is available here:
http://video.google.com/support
Most interesting to me about all this is the search question.