Every year we go to the International Sportsmen's Expo in Sacramento to see the latest new gear for fishing and hunting. We also talk to outfitters about trips we might want to take in the future. Going to this show is like a time warp, it doesn't seem to change much over the years - the same people, in the same booths, with the same stuff every year.
But this year a new outfitter caught my eye with this amazing display of Boar mounts. There must be a niche market that finds this display compelling...
Pleix is a virtual community of digital artists based in Paris who have done some really cool video work including this slow motion view of dogs jumping, titled Birds.
Another remarkable film is Netlag, what appears to be a map of the world is formed from time-lapse videos made from a web cams around the globe.
In a Beet.tv interview Scott Donaton, editor in chief of Advertising Age, talks about how viral ad campaings require "careful thought and consideration". That goes for encouraging user generated ads as well. Nalts, in his Will Video For Food blog, cajols Apple to reward Happy Slip for her clever Mac ad parody. The other day I stumbled upon the opposite, or Yin, to Happy Slip's Yang. First the Yang, more than any company can hope for in a viral ad ...
and the Yin, a company's worst nightmare for a viral ad ...
Ok, the genders are crossed in this Yin/Yang comparison, so maybe "Beauty and the Beast" is a more apt description of this pair?
I just ran across a very clever filmmaker, Mitchell Rose, on YouTube. He and his film company have created some great short films which you can see on his web site via streaming QuickTime. My favorites are his "Daydream" series
It's surpising that they haven't had many views on YouTube. Maybe it's because their pace and style require a bit of patience and investment by the viewer. That may be something most YouTubers are unwilling to give. He began posting to YouTube in June, but has not had a large number of views, but his "Learn to Speak Body" film was featured today on YouTube. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Which video sharing service should I use? Over the past several months I’ve tried several sites to see which one best meets my needs. I write and sell time-lapse software, so I need a video library to demonstrate what my software can do. Rather than doing advertising I post videos of my work to drive traffic to my site. People like to watch my videos, so I might as well make some money off of that too.
1) For my video library I need good video quality, easy and fast uploading and an attractive and flexible video player. 2) To drive traffic to my site I need a site with a big audience. 3) For extra revenue I need a site with an ad revenue sharing business model.
I haven’t found a site that meets all these requirements, so I use several. Here are my main choices, I've embedded a player for each one for comparison purposes...
BrightCove for my video gallery – Videos are encoded the excellent Flash 8 codec and are available for viewing within a few minutes of uploading. The player looks great, easily hosts a video gallery and has a neat interface for sharing and embedding videos. Titles are grouped into lineups, and lineups are grouped together into a player with tabs for each lineup. This makes for an easy to set up a video gallery or channel to hold multiple videos. Their content management tools are well designed (in contrast to YouTube). BrightCove is well financed (with a $59MM C round announced today), but the site is still in beta. It doesn’t have a big audience and its ad revenue sharing isn’t running yet. Uploaded files must be Flash8 and 480x270 in size with a 512kbps data rate. You can also upload WMV files for sale or rental at 1.4Mbps and 720x480 (I haven’t tried this yet).
YouTube for the high traffic – In less than six months I’ve had over 2.5MM views of my YouTube channel. Despite the poor video quality (Flash 7 codec) it drives a ton of traffic to my site. If they only had revenue sharing, this could have generated a lot of cash. A major downside is YouTube’s error prone interface. I get multiple notifications when a fan posts a comment or video response. Replying to a message or video response can be frustrating because of the system errors. But uploading is quick and easy. Uploads should be mpeg4 (including Divx) at 320x240 with MP3 audio. The file limit is 10 minutes or 100MB.
MetaCafe for extra revenue – I had the good luck to get my first video mentioned in the MetaCafe blog and that translated into some cash (I wish YouTube paid as good). Quality (Flash8) and uploading are good, but they take a couple of hours to approve because of their concern for copyright. One clip of mine got lost in the system took two weeks to get approval. It required a personal email and documentation from me to convince them that my music was royalty free. This is puzzling to me because many of the clips on their site use copyrighted music tracks. My last upload was approved two hours so maybe they have fixed their approval process. When someone plays one of my videos, they can click on my name to see my channel page (and then RSS subscribe). But for some reason my channel can’t be found by searching for my user name. Best upload format is mpeg4, but files can be mpg, mpeg, avi, divx, flv or wmv with a 100MB size limit. Rather than uploading a thumbnail image, you pick one from a number of choices generated by their software. Notice how the player gets it wrong and stretches this 16x9 content to fit a 4x3 aspect ratio...
I’m also uploading to some other sites to hedge my bets…
Zudeo for its 720p HD quality – This is a bittorrent site for the distribution of large video files. It’s one of the only ways to distribute HD quality video at this time. It doesn’t have a large audience and downloading content requires a high geek quotient (you have to download and install a client package), but I figure the audience is a good demographic fit for my GBTimelapse software. I haven’t found a way to create a channel yet and I’m not sure they have one. HD quality file uploads should be WMV at 1280x720 and 4Mbps.
Stage6 for its high quality – It uses the DivX codec at a 640x360 SD resolution so my videos look much better than the other sites, except Zudeo which requires a lengthy download. Uploads take 30 minutes to appear on the site and when selected, Stage6 videos play quickly. The site is still in alpha and has a small audience. My hope is that with the DivX codec and high quality it will catch on.
Revver for extra revenue – I’ve made a few dollars here, but it’s hard to get any traction. They don’t seem to have a very large audience (compared to YouTube). Quality is good, but the approval requires the video be watched by a human which delays the process. Uploaded files can be mp4, mov, mpg, wmv, or avi (including DivX) with a 100MB size limit. They are converted to Flash8 and QuickTime.
Google Video – Just because it’s Google. The web upload doesn’t have a progress bar, just a busy indicator; so it’s not clear what’s happening during an upload. But, the downloadable “Google Video Uploader” client application will batch upload a bunch of files with good progress feedback.
VideoEgg – Good quality, fast upload, and immediately playable. A quick and easy way to embed a video into a web site.
If you think there are better choices, please let me know.
One more thing about the Khronos Projector I mentioned in my last post - You can play with it in real-time on the web. Click the image to the right and you will be directed to a page with several examples. Choose one and it will load an applet that lets you perform the time-warp with your mouse.
Alvaro Cassinelli, University of Tokyo, has created a fascinating new technology called the Khronos Projector. "The Khronos Projector is an interactive-art installation allowing people to explore pre-recorded movie content in an entirely new way. By touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time."
I created two custom time-lapse videos for him and he has processed them with his technology and included them as part of his demonstration.
So how do you create content for this beast? It's easy, and cheap, just connect your Canon digital still camera to your computer and run GBTimelapse and you can create ultra-HD time-lapse content. A $500 Canon G7 camera can capture 3,648x2736 images every 3 seconds when tethered to a laptop computer. Feed those images into Adobe After effects and you can create a visually stunning ultra-HD movie. I can't wait to give it a try.
Beet.TV is my favorite blog for keeping track of the latest in the world of video on the net. In a recent post I particulary liked the humorous way Anil Dash of Six Apart described the process of getting more "Google Juice" for you blog. He talks about how Google's search engine is a mystery to many bloggers who think that it's an "angry rain god that you have to sacrifice to"..."or your crops won't grow". See his short interview here.
Mike Posehn is an avid time-lapse photographer and creator of the GBTimeLapse software allowing anyone to make time-lapse videos using a digital still camera.
