Thursday, May 29, 2008

Streaming Media East Videos Now Available on Streamingmedia.com

Dan Rayburn announced on his Business of Video blog that a number of the videos from Streaming Media East have been edited and archived, thanks to ScribeMedia, and available at www.streamingmedia.com/videos.

Dan says, "Thirteen sessions are now available for viewing with more being added each day... We welcome anyone to use the videos on their site or in their blog in anyway they like as long as it is non-commercial in nature."

So with that, I've embedded the player below. Enjoy!
UPDATE: Well, I tried to embed the player here but it didn't work. I did get it to work when I tested it outside of Blogger using straight html in Dreamweaver and posting to a web server, but I couldn't get the player to appear here... so again, I've included a still image which also links you to the actual player on Streamingmedia.com...
[smvideos.jpg]

Be sure to check out the Streaming Media East Conference Program page to download the presentations that are available there.

UPDATE 2: If anyone knows a workaround on embedding the Brightcove player, please let me know. @mrpinkspot I need you help!

Mogulus Launches Google Overlay Ads Today

Starting today at 3pm EST, Mogulus will begin inserting overlay adverts in all Mogulus Free channels. A May 28th email to Mogulus channel producers along with a post the Mogulus blog said, "The adverts are provided by our partner Google and are content and viewer location targeted text adverts. They will be shown on the Mogulus channel page and all embedded Mogulus players (for Mogulus Free channels only)"

This Beet.TV
video by Andy Plesser was recorded last week at Streaming Media East, and is an interview with Max Haot, CEO and Founder of Mogulus who discusses the launch of Google overlay ads.




The email/blog post continued, "We hope you will agree that the ads are not too intrusive and, particularly in this first phase, we sincerely hope that you will leave them enabled. Advertising on Mogulus Free channels will help us to offset some of the high hosting bandwidth costs we are incurring every month and allow us to keep the free platform exactly that...free! We'll also be evaluating just how effective the ads are and this will help us plan a future release of advertising revenue share programs for selected Mogulus producers."

To see the adverts in action visit "The Digital Lifestyle".

http://www.mogulus.com/tdl
http://www.thedigitallifestyle.tv

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The Kids Are Alright: Streaming Media East Panel on Young People's Attitude Toward Online Video

The hits just keep on coming, and in regards to Streaming Media East, that means more news coverage from the conference. Here's another new video from the conference courtesy of Scribe Media. If you're a parent of teenagers, like me, you should find this an interesting panel discussion.

"Peter Cervieri of Scribe Media conducts a focus group on young people's attitudes toward online video."
- Scribe Media video description



Here's the panel session description from the Streaming Media East Program:
Focus Group: Young People's Attitudes Toward Online Video
In this special session, a panel of high school and college students will discuss their online video consumption habits. Learn what types of online video content they like, what sites they get their content from, the devices they are playing it back on, and how they interact with video advertising. Find out what their perspective is on pay media and portable content, as well as what they think the future holds for the next generation of viewers on the web. Bring your own questions for a lively Q&A session with the students at the end of the session.

Moderator: Peter Cervieri, Director, Scribe Media
Presenter: Dylan, Creator, Co-Producer, DylansCouch.com

It's a frank and honest discussion with the panel members who ranged from high schoolers to a recent college graduate. Embed tags for the video are not available yet but Micheal Cervieri of Scribe Media assured me that they will be available soon.

UPDATE: You can click on any of the photos to link directly to the video.
UPDATE 2 (6/01/08): The photos have been removed and the video is now embedded.
UPDATE 3: (6/08/08): I updated the link of the video to Scribe Media, Kids Have The Darndest Video Consumption Habits, where Peter Cervieri has some interesting background information on this panel and research project on young people and their viewing habits.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Streaming Media East 2008 Wrap Up Podcast

Tim Siglin's Streaming Media Podcast Episode #17 is a wrap up from Streaming Media East and is now available on Streamingmedia.com. Or you can listen to it here embedded below.



"Tim Siglin wraps up Streaming Media East 2008 coverage with a series of interviews: Angelina Ward with Focal Press, Gerard Virga, COO at CDN Powerstream and Dr. Harsh Verma from R Systems." - Streamingmedia.com Podcast description.

About The New Streaming Media Podcasts
  • "Tim Siglin and Jose Castillo have taken over the podcasting helm, and bring you insightful and lively interviews with some of the biggest names in online media. Interested in appearing in a Streaming Media Podcast? Contact editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen at erics@streamingmedia.com." - Streamingmedia.com

Monday, May 26, 2008

Streaming Media East Interviews: Kevin Towes on Flash Player 10

This rounds out a week of coverage on Streaming Media East. Many news stories have been posted and the videos from the conference sessions are starting to be available. Andy Plesser of Beet.TV was on the conference floor doing a live 2-hour broadcast that featured a number of shakers and movers in the online video publishing industry.

Kevin Towes from Adobe was on hand to discuss the latest release of Flash Player 10 of which Hank Williams of Why Does Everything Suck.com says will change the economics of internet in his post Adobe Introduces P2P Flash Player, Kills CDNs.


About this video, Williams says, "While Andy interprets Kevin's answer as being a refutation of what I said, it is clearly not. Kevin actually doesn't give a direct answer. He says "Hank makes some gross assumptions in all his diligence, its sort of interesting. But what we announced is something called RTMFP." But what he does not say is, "you will not be able to make a p2p network with Flash." Also, neither has the Flash Player Product Manager Justin Everett-Church been categorical about it here or here." - Hank Williams, Why does everything suck? May 21, 2008

Hank Williams has several follow up posts:
Andy Plesser also recommended this related post P2P in Flash 10 Beta — the Questions Facing a YouTube, Skype, and BitTorrent Killer by Adam Fisk as well as this one Flash P2P: Now That’s Disruptive by Om Malik.

UPDATE: You can also Kevin Towes' blog Flash Media here.
UPDATE 2: Another good related post: Adobe Flash Player Now With Built-In Peer To Peer Capabilities | Flash 10 Has Arrived » Web TV Wire

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Streaming Media East 2008: Keynotes Online at Scribe Media

Scribe Media is already starting to release the videos from Streaming Media East and the keynotes from Day One and Two are among the first. Although they haven't provided embed tags for the video you can still view videos from Day One here and Day Two here or click on the photos below. If they become available anytime soon I'll replace the frame grabs with the actual videos. The entire conference will be archived and available at Streamingmedia.com at a later date.

The first keynote video, Chief Digital Officer of NBC Universal: free content online could end up being very expensive to consumers is a sit down conversation with George Kliavkoff, Chief Digital Officer of NBC Universal moderated by Dan Rayburn, Conference Chairman and Executive VP of Streamingmedia.com, the keynote from Day One of the the conference.

[sme_rayburn_kliavkoff.jpg]

Here's the video description, "Kliavkoff talked about many of the digital challenges facing NBC Universal, a $16 billion (top-line) behemoth that produces the hit series “Heroes,” among many other shows, and is bracing for the Beijing 2000 Olympic Games. Kliavkoff also discussed online piracy; proper pricing for delivering intellectual property online; the connection between “predictive marketing” and online content and why giving away content for free on the Web may ultimately be quite costly to consumers. A Q&A session, including audience members, followed Rayburn’s interview." - ScribeMedia.org

Online Video Watch has a summary of this keynote that you can view here.

The second keynote video is, CNNMoney.com starts to cash in on viewers; Executive Producer for Video tells how, is a presentation CNNMoney.com's Caleb Silver who shares how they went from launch to 20 millions streams in 90 days.

[sme_caleb.jpg]

Here's the description. "Money, it’s a gas. And the folks at CNNMoney.com are probably having more fun these days. The Web site has seen a surge in viewers since it embedded a video player on the home page back in January. Beforehand, the Web site, which launched in 2006, wasn’t garnering many eyeballs. During a keynote address at the Streaming Media East conference this week, Caleb Silver, Executive Producer for Video, talked about how CNNMoney.com turned things around." - ScribeMedia.org

Streamingmedia.com
has a summary of this keynote that you can view here.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Streaming Media East: The Coverage Continues - More Beet.TV Videos

Andy Plesser has been editing his video interviews from his live Mogulus broadcast from Streaming Media East and making them available on Beet.TV.


The videos include interviews with veteran Microsoft engineer Charles Finkelstein,who runs the Expression Encoder team, Bhaskar Roy of Qik the live mobile broadcasting platform which is used by pioneer video blogger Steve Garfield. All the videos featured in this post are courtesy of Beet.TV and there are more available here.


Charles Finkelstein of Microsoft on Debut of Silverlight 2.0 for Summer Olympics



Qik's Business Model Revealed: Subscription, Ads and Rev Share with Carriers and Handset Makers.....Steve Garfield Explains How it Works



Friday, May 23, 2008

Streaming Media East 2008: The Coverage Continues - Dan Rayburn on the Outlook of the CDN Industry

Dan Rayburn, Executive Vice President, StreamingMedia.com spoke with Beet.TV about the inevitable shakeout of the CDN Industry in this Streaming Media East interview, Beet.TV: There Will Be Blood: Shakeout Inevitable in Crowded CDN Industry, Dan Rayburn.

Rayburn has been running the conference the last 5 years of it's 11 year history. When the show started in 2002, Streamingmedia.com focused on the enterprise market and business of video delivery but in the last few years it has opened up to content creators and producers. He says people are talking about business within the larger video ecosystem. He told Andy Plesser he's been hearing a lot about syndication and how best to target and monetize it.



"It's another bubble that will burst. The number of companies and entering the content delivery network space is not sustainable, says Dan Rayburn, director of Streaming Media and an authority on the content delivery network business. According to Dan's reckoning, some $282 million in venture funding has been raised over the past 12 months for CDN players in an industry that has total revenue of $410 million in the U.S. He says a dramatic consolidation is inevitable within the next 18 months." - Beet.TV

Dan presented a talk on Tuesday, CDN Pricing: The Going Rate for Video Delivery which will be available as a video archive and he published this follow up post on his blog, CDN Pricing Stable In Q1: Drop In Price Only Seen At Highest Levels | The Business Of Online Video.

Link to Dan's slides: Download the presentation ( PowerPoint 261.5 kb )

"This presentation will offer real pricing numbers from large, globally focused content delivery networks and show you the average going rate when you outsource delivery to a third party. The session will also cover some of the variables that determine the final price and how you should accurately compare the delivery services of one CDN to another, and it will give you a list of providers in the market today." - Streaming Media East Conference Program

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Streaming Media East - The Making of a Podcast

Here's a little behind the scenes video of Jose Castillo and Tim Siglin recording the Streaming Media Podcast #16 at Streaming Media East captured and broadcast live by Steve Garfield on his Nokia N95 using Qik on May 20, 2008 . Video Courtesy of Stevegarfield.com and podcast courtesy of Streamingmedia.com.




Podcast description from Streamingmedia.com: "Jose Castillo and Tim Siglin talk about highlights from Streaming Media East in New York, including AT&T's re-emergence as a CDN, a jaw-dropping mobile video webcasting demo by Steve Garfield, and interviews with show attendees."

You can listen to their podcast below which I downloaded and embedded in the Divshare player (it's a little trick that Jose taught me!)

Streaming Media East Lifecasting Panel

It's streaming live right now courtesy of SteveGarfield.com. I'll be back to fill in more details. Sarah Meyers is streaming it as well via Pop17.



UPDATE (5/21 10:38 PM): The panel session ended up a changed a bit. Jose Castillo stepped in for Chris Brogan as moderator, Steve Garfield joined the panel with Sarah Meyers (now Austin), Scott Monty of Crayon and Sarig Reichert of Flixwagon.

It's like dueling lifecasters between Steve and Sarah who was also streaming live to her Flixwagon page. Her video is also below.



Sarig Reichert's blog post: Streaming Media East - Life Casting Panel - The Flixwagon Blog

Streaming Media East News Coverage from Day One

Streaming Media East kicked off day one the conference in New York City Hilton yesterday with day two about to begin in just a few short hours. I found a small sampling of news coverage which I've listed below and I'm sure more will appear in the coming days and weeks.

Dan Rayburn noted on his blog yesterday that, "In addition to the many sites who are producing video on-demand content from the Streaming Media East show, we've also got a few folks broadcasting live from the show today and tomorrow.
  • Beet.TV will be broadcasting live from the show floor on Tuesday from noon-2pm EST on their Mogulus channel.
  • TVWorldwide will be broadcasting live from the show floor and from some of the conference sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday from 11am-3:30pm EST.
  • ScribeMedia.org will be filming and recording every session on both days and we'll be making all of the content available on-demand after the event."
Steve Garfield shot a number of videos from the exhibit floor and from his panel presentation with Bhaskar Roy of Qik and Max Haot of Mogulus. You can see them on on his Qik page.

UPDATE: Here's one that I missed:

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Beet.TV Broadcasting Live from Streaming Media East


Beet.TV is broadcasting live from Streaming Media East today from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM EDT. I'm watching the live stream right now via Beet.TV's Mogulus channel and Andy Plesser just interviewed Max Haot CEO of Mogulus, Charles Finkelstein from Microsoft Expression Encoder and is now interviewing Kevin Towes from Adobe who is discussing the release of Flash Player 10. They are set up for live chat or call in live questions.



On2 Technologies also has a live feed from their booth via Justin.tv.

UPDATE:
No sooner than I published this post Andy caught up with the Steve Garfield who discussed his style of live streaming he calls "Storycasting." Here's a Qik video from Steve which includes a tour of the show floor with a nice greeting from Dan Rayburn, Executive Vice President of Streamingmedia.com.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Streaming Media East in NYC This Week

The annual Streaming Media East Conference now in it's 11th year rolls into the big Apple tomorrow. The pre-conference workshops are on Monday and the conference sessions run from Tuesday through Thursday.

"The Streaming Media East show is the number-one place to come see, learn, and discuss what is taking place with all forms of online video business models and technology. Content owners, viral video creators, online marketers, enterprise corporations, broadcast professionals, ad agencies, educators and others all come to Streaming Media East to see and hear the latest online video technology but, more importantly, to discuss the business models that are coming of age.

I've gone to Streaming Media West for much of the last 10 years and have seen a lot of changes in the online video and streaming market. This year in particular is a really pivotal time for video on the web and the market is exploding with new innovation. It seems like there's a new API everyday that better integrates our video tools into our mobile and connected lifestyles.

A lot has changed in the last 6 months with advances in Flash delivery and H.264 streaming, improved video quality on YouTube, Adobe Air applications, mobile streaming applications like Qik, Flixwagon, video conversation platforms like Seesmic, branded widgets by Kyte, the emergence of advertising revenue models, CDN mergers and acquisitions, Hulu, HD on the web, the end of DRM and new notable music distribution models tried by Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails and the companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and the lot all trying to capture their market share.

The pre-conference sessions kick off tomorrow with workshops on "Using Adobe Media Server to Deliver Live and On-Demand Video, Comparing and Using Online Video Codecs, Deploying On-Demand and Live Media Experiences with Microsoft Silverlight and Planning, Building, and Launching a Successful Podcast."

The two conference days are packed with keynote sessions by industry leaders, panel discussion with CEO's, product managers, producers, bloggers, technology and social media strategists, engineers, content creators and so many others. You can see the final program here.

Aside from many of the familiar topics few highlights I'm looking forward to are the new tracks on H.264 Convergence, lifecasting and live mobile streaming. I heard from Steve Garfield who said that they will doing live streams on Qik and Mogulus for his session on Tuesday.
  • Live Broadcasting Over Mobile and Wi-Fi Networks (C104) 2:45 PM - 3:30 PM EDT Moderator: Steve Garfield, Mobile Video Journalist, SteveGarfield.com
    Presenters: Max Haot, Founder, CEO, Mogulus
    and Bhaskar Roy, Co-Founder, Qik.com
I imagine there will be more live streaming for the lifecasting session that social media guru Chris Brogan is moderating on Wednesday.
  • Lifecasting: The New Broadcasting Platform (B201) 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM EDT
    Moderator: Chris Brogan, VP, Strategy and Technology, CrossTechMedia & Co-Founder, PodCamp

    Presenters: Scott Monty, Consigliere, crayon; Sarah Austin, Founder, Pop17.com and Brad Hunstable, Founder, Business Development, Ustream.tv
I'll be keeping my eye out on Twitter, Friendfeed and my RSS feeds for updates from the show and share what I find as it becomes available. As in the past, the conference sessions will be video recorded and available on Streamingmedia.com following the conference.

Congratulations Streamingmedia.com on your 10 year anniversary and kudos to Dan Rayburn and the conference organizers and contributors for another year of great conferences and publications! I'm looking forward to attending the Streaming Media West show in September.

More from Streamingmedia.com:















Saturday, May 17, 2008

Seesmic Scores Hollywood A-Listers

By now you may have heard that several famous Hollywood A-listers paid a visit to Seesmic, the popular "Twitter for Video" discussion site founded by web entrepreneur Loic Le Meur. The celebrities included movie directors Steven Speilberg, George Lucas and actors Harrison Ford, Shia Laboeuf, Karen Allen and Cate Blanchett who joined a discussion on the upcoming release of the new Indiana Jones movie.

Jemima Kiss from the Guardian was one of many who posted several questions to the movie directors and stars and got direct replies from Mr. Speilberg himself. In her post, Spielberg pops up on Seesmic, Kiss said, "It's a simple enough idea but incredibly exciting; I just posted a few direct questions to Spielberg and Karen Allen... and it's quite a buzz watching them reply directly to your own questions. Seesmic is quite intimate too - like most people, I just use my webcam and was still wearing my pyjamas when I recorded."

Kiss asked Speilberg about his plans for the small screen and he replied that he was working on a web project he can't talk about (which Kiss thought it might be a paranormal social network), a games company and a few TV projects.

Kiss said that Picture Production Company put the event together and added that, "Beneath the froth, though, there's a directness and energy about this that really works, though lord knows how much engineering (both technical and bureaucratic) must have gone into this. The best thing about it is that it bypasses the Hollywooid/Cannes schmaltz and gets straight into a conversation."

The web exploded this morning with bloggers reporting on the big news. A publicity event like this will the make popular video discussion site even more popular and mainstream for video conversations as word gets out. Look at Oprah, she's using Skype all the time.

Loic Le Meur has behind the scene details on his blog with photos of their set up and links to all the videos.

He explained that, "I wish we would have given some notice to our community but we did not know obviously until the last minute if it would happen or not and the production team had requested the videos being posted in private first, then unlocked, which would not have allowed us enough interactivity. Some videos were posted in real time, but it was a good surprise and not planned, so no way to tell people to show up. (more...) This experience illustrates how video on the net and Seesmic can be a fantastic way to get our community closer to celebrities and ask them questions directly. They would not have accepted live and the asynchroneous Seesmic format worked very well. They took many more questions from journalists that they would have in face to face as Seesmic passwords were distributed to journalists around the world."

In his VentureBeat post, How to mainstream a web app in a hurry: Get Spielberg, Lucas and Ford aboard, MG Sigler said, "Is it a publicity stunt? Sure. But really how many things aren’t in this day and age? Yes, it might have been more interesting to see Spielberg or Ford in their pajamas answering questions rather than it being a fairly obviously more professional set up (camera on tripod, chair in front of backdrop, off-camera interviewers, etc), but we’ll take what we can get. Remember, Hollywood celebrities also have an image to maintain."

Scoble called it a huge win for Seesmic and pointed to heavy discussion threads FriendFeed. He also added that you can view the individual pages here:

http://seesmic.com/cate
http://seesmic.com/georgelucas

http://seesmic.com/harrison
http://seesmic.com/steven
http://seesmic.com/karen

On a sour note though, the publicity on this was kept secret and the surge of viewers to Seesmic actually created outages at sites like TechCrunch who recently turned on video comments which are powered by Seesmic. Michael Arrington, who is also a Seesmic investor, ripped into Le Meur for not giving investors a "heads up" and has since disabled the video comments plug in as it caused outages on his site by the server reboots.

There were a share of exchanges on Twitter on this subject and Le Meur posted a statement and an apology video that he'll do a better job in the future of communicating with investors, partners and users.

Regardless of the controversy it created through the system outages,
this is another example of the power that video conversation can create, and it's by far the most direct form of communication.

A round up from Techmeme as of 4:20 PM PDT:
UPDATE: Added to Loic's quote.

UPDATE 2 (on 5/22/08): Added Seesmic du jour 149: Indiana Jones 4 in Seesmic


Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Chris Pirillo's Video Tip... Buy a Flip!

I actually don't have a Flip Video camera myself, but Chris Pirillo has convinced me that I need to get one.

Watch his video, you'll want one too!


Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

For more information and recommended reading, check out his blog post: Flip Video Camcorder Tip: Get One

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Presenting the Online Video Toolkit by Jim Kukral

Veteran internet marketer and video blogger Jim Kukral has produced a new series of educational videos he calls the Online Video Toolkit, which he says is, "a free guide that will tell you everything you need to do to make high-quality web videos... without having to spend a fortune to get it done! The best part is... it's totally free!"

If you're like me who is someone on a constant search for new and useful information (with a caveat on "free"), then you should check out Jim Kukral's Online Video Toolkit. He covers all the bases for you to get your video blogging studio up and running on a shoe string budget, like choosing a camera (he uses the Flip Video), lighting tips, set design, indoor and outdoor shooting, editing, attire, audio and more.

Here's his introductory video...



I've featured Jim on my blog before regarding his Daily Flip video blog I think he's doing a real service to the community by making his toolkit available free of charge. Thanks Jim!

You can contact him directly at:

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Blip on Blip #24: Brett Pettis on How To Make Internet Video

Blip.TV posted this new video on their blog, Justin and Bre get to the bottom of this whole internet video thing. In the video Blip.tv’s Justin Day interviews Bre Pettis of Etsy.com who offers some good advise on how to make internet video. I like these type of short form videos that offer practical information in an interesting way. Take a look and try to ignore the annoying on screen advertisements.



More from Bre Pettis [imakethings.com] [Etsy.com]

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

My ooVoo Day With... Recap Video, and the Good Deeds That Were Done

Scott Monty sent out an email yesterday to participants of “My ooVoo Day With..." as an update on what's new with ooVoo and a link to a fun new recap video that commemorated the "My ooVoo Day With..." event. In his email he said, "Thanks to your participation, it was a complete success. You helped fill over 450 seats in 161 video chat sessions over the course of 12 days. ooVoo was exposed to more people at once than ever before... But more than that, you made a difference to a number of charitable organizations. Last month, ooVoo was pleased to present a $30,000 check to the Frozen Pea Fund in the name of 22 of the hosts; in addition, $1,500 went to each of the following charities: Pie Ranch, the Massachusetts Air & Space Museum, the Disabled American Veterans; and $750 each went to the Ma Chien Autism School and Hands & Voices."

The video was created from recordings and screen shots made by people in the ooVoo community. I think they did a great job putting it together and the song is really cool too. You should be able to spot me in it!



Video description: "In February 2008, a group of 20 bloggers and podcasters hosted “My ooVoo Day”. The participating bloggers chatted with fans via ooVoo. To thank all the bloggers hosting the chats, ooVoo donated $30,000 to the Frozen Pea Fund, a fund established to support the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer campaign, in honor of blogger and cancer patient Susan Reynolds. Go to http://www.oovoo.com/ to download ooVoo and keep an eye out for My ooVoo Day With, Political Edition coming in June."

Some of the recent updates to ooVoo include the ability to stream ooVoo live and have an ooVoo video chat within Facebook. You can check out the ooVoo blog for more information.


In related news, ooVoo was a recent Webware 100 Winner in the Communications category as one of the cool web apps for everyone.

Congratulations ooVoo!

Monday, May 5, 2008

Livenewscameras.com Aggregates Live Webcast News Feeds

If you're like me, you may be a news junkie. I admit it, I'm addicted to my RSS feeds and when I don't have access to my 200+ feeds I track in my Google Reader I start to get the shakes and break out in a cold sweat. Well not really, but I do get the feeling that I'm missing and losing track of vital real-time information that keeps me informed. If you are a regular reader of this blog you know that my focus is tracking and discussing the technology, trends and news related to online video, streaming media and collaboration. I don't usually track "top story" and "breaking news" that you'd find on TV or CNN.

But for those of you that need your minute-by-minute news fix you should check out Livenewscameras.com. I heard about this pioneering news aggregator, that's currently in beta, other day while reading the Mogulus blog. Max Haot pointed out they are using the Mogulus platform for their live moderator feed and shared a video from G4TV by way of Steve Baron at Livenewscameras.com that is featured below.



Incidentally, I was reading the newspaper today and saw an article, New Web Site Feeds News Habit, by Susan Young of the Oakland Tribune, who said that one of our local new stations, KRON was the first news station in the Bay Area tha twould be joining Livenewscameras.com.

Young writes, "Newspapers and television news are territorial. They don't like sharing. But what they like less is having a news aggregator such as Google come in and make big bucks on their work. So former KTVU-Channel 2 news director Andrew Finlayson, who now works for the Fox station in Chicago, has come up with a plan to share some of those raw video feeds that local TV news gathers and trims for their broadcasts, and turn those feeds into Web fodder... (called) www.livenewscameras.com, which currently has more than 100 live feeds. Click on any of the news logos that line up in a box pattern across the screen. Check out Tampa, where there's a fire going on. The Birmingham station has cameras pointed on a civil rights conference, or go over to another station for a live town hall meeting with Sen. Barack Obama."

Young continued that, "Visitors engage in live chats with each other, which is probably more annoying than helpful. It pops up in the middle of the screen, although you can minimize it. In the upper right-hand corner, there's a live camera often showing a person in the Chicago newsroom who keeps tabs on what's happening, and passes that info along to people logged in to the site. Or sign up for a free Twitter account (www.twitter.com) and get the alerts through your cell phone or computer." (more...)

I spent some time on the web site today and I think they are on to something here with the centralized aggregation of new feeds with a moderated chat room. As Young points out, "(Andrew) Finlayson sees the site expanding to a time when citizen journalists and others can capture breaking news on their wireless equipment and pass it on to the Web. Much like what happened last month when the Olympic torch passed through San Francisco... Finlayson says it's been an interesting experience experimenting with a news future that will be "live from the scene on any screen" and can transfer from the Web site to streaming video live from cell phones."

"Stations from different networks agreed to be part of it, even our competitors, because if we don't, someone else will," Finlayson says. "And it will probably be Google."

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Knowing Your Digital Video Formats

Digital video files come in many different shapes, sizes and formats. Whether it's for web delivery, video editing, archiving, DTV or IPTV playout, DVD or Blu-Ray disc or even simply a video clip inserted into a Powerpoint presentation, we are constrained to a specific file format and compression setting depending upon its intended use.

Although H.264 holds the promise of a single standard video format that would be scalable for all uses, we still don't have a standard file format and at times it can get confusing. I found a few helpful articles on knowing your digital video file formats:


This one is courtesy of Reel SEO and was written by guest author and long-time video professional Lorraine Grula.



UPDATE: