The Olympic Games: Digital Media’s Coming of Age

The just-concluded Summer Olympic Games featured an unprecedented amount of coverage over an equally unprecedented number of digital video formats and distribution types.



Some of the pre-event statistics, cited publicly, were:

• A minimum of 3,600 hours of broadcast coverage
• A minimum of 2,900 hours of live programming
• A minimum of 2,200 hours of streaming coverage on NBCOlympics.com
• All footage acquired in HD; also converted to 4:3 aspect ratio consumption
• Coverage of all 302 unique Olympic events
• U.S.-based coverage on NBC, USA Network, Universal HD, Oxygen, CNBC, and Telemundo
• Supplying content to a myriad of partners like Google, which streamed content on YouTube
• Supplying content to Amazon, NBC2Go, and mobile phones
• Video on Demand (VOD) of noteworthy coverages: "Highlights," "Rewinds," and "Encores."

Just the ability to cover 302 events, all in HD, was complex enough. But adding all the different digital video formats and distribution types to the efforts required a staggering amount of work to be done to ensure that the correct content was in the proper resolution, frame rate, aspect ratio, and scan type.

Simultaneously feeding multiple distribution venues with the right content in a timely fashion was crucial. Mistakes -- like sending a full HD clip to a telecommunication provider for distribution to their mobile phone customers -- had to be avoided. That's why the content requirements for each provider had to be, and were fully specified well in advance.

To ensure that this process ran as smoothly as it actually did, the whole operation was automated as much as possible. This translated into scripting routines that moved the content from ingest, through transcode, and to distribution. Content was moved in the most efficient manner possible, utilizing the latest file transfer acceleration technologies. Also, having visibility into all transfers and being able to prioritize transfers as they were "in stream" were necessary in order to react to developing stories as they occurred.

The Olympics we just enjoyed has also proven that we now have the infrastructure and technology for Internet TV to cover global events in real time. Congratulations to IBM and its Chinese and numerous other partners for a job so well done!

VideoCast Your Way with ScreenCast

The updated Screencast.com from TechSmith is a place to upload, organize, and share your high-quality videos, presentations and images. You are in complete control of your content and can decide who can or cannot view it, all in a secure, easy, and highly-dynamic way. Here is what Brad Fallon of FreeLineReport says about Screencast (amongst other things):





Screencast is designed to help you share information in any way you wish:

* Email
* IM
* Your Web page
* Blogs
* iPod-compatible video and audio
* RSS feed
* iTunes

Screencast.com site is integrated with Camtasia Studio to create and post professional-looking presentations. What you see is what your audience will see.

What will all these cost me?

A 60 day free trial gives your 200 MB storage and 1 GB transfer bandwidth. The basic plan comes with a generous allotment of 25 GB storage and 25 transfer bandwidth, which should be enough for most of us, and costs 6.95/month or 69.50/year. With all the tools and amenities built into the service, I consider this a fair price.

How about maintaining the original quality of my video?

Screencast doesn't compress or re-encode your files into a "one-size-fits-all" format. The integrity of your original content is protected, so what you upload is exactly what your viewers see.

Do I control the rights to my content?

Anything you upload to Screencast.com still belongs to you. This also means that you can delete files you've uploaded to make room for something new.

You CAN decide who views your content

Using Screencast.com's permission features, you can decide how secure you want each of your folders:

* Public
* Hidden
* Password
* Authenticated.

Yes, they have stats too

Meaning that you can look up, at any time, how many times a specific file has been viewed and how much bandwidth each file is using. So if you already have your video in different formats you can keep or show only the one that has the best quality and least bandwidth requirement.

Cybercast credit: YouTube

Video Pirates Beware!

A startup called Anvato ... I'm still not getting used to all the weird names people choose for their new web ventures ... is launching a new video search service that helps publishers find copyright-infringing videos online.




The Mountain View, Calif. company says it uses “perceptual signature” technology that works like the human eye, identifying scenes, objects and movements in a video without requiring any digital watermarking. Cool, could save time, sweat, and money for all of us big web video/tv producers!

Limiting its search to programs aired during prime-time on just one broadcast network during the last six months, Anvato claims "it already found 2,000 infringing videos." Cool - if yours wasn't one of them! (I won't tell you about mines if you don't tell me about yours ....)

YouTube Now Has a Screening Room For All of You Indie Filmmakers

Now you can use YouTube's new Screening Room to bring your SERIOUS film work to a global audience.

As a filmmaker you most likely use YouTube to kick-start your viral marketing campaigns already. This new feature gives you a VERY easy-to-find home — and makes you a partner in drawing new ad revenue. Watch this - that's what Google gets out of its investment.

Sara Pollack, YouTube’s film and animation manager puts it this way: “Hopefully as they see thousands of people watching their films, it’s going to be a very eye-opening experience.”]

The Screening Room will feature four new films a week, chosen by YouTube's editorial panel. Here is a truly amazing animated piece, Last Time in Clerkenwell from Igli Migli Productions. Even their name is funny!





The panel also will scour film festivals and work with partners such as the Sundance Channel to identify talents.

Among the first eight titles showcased are “Love and War,” a stop-motion puppet movie by a Swedish director; the Oscar-nominated short “I Met The Walrus,” about an interview with John Lennon; and “Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?” by performance artist Miranda July.

As a filmmaker, you will also have a “Buy Now” button attached to your work to sell DVDs or digital copies. They will also collect a majority share of ad revenue generated from views of their work. SWEET!

YouTube says people whose clips regularly attract a million viewers can make several thousand dollars a month. However, an even bigger bigger prize can be exposure.

When YouTube featured the nine-minute short “Spider” by Nash Edgerton in February, it became the fifth-best selling short on iTunes, Pollack said.

The creators of the full-length feature “Four Eyed Monsters,” Susan Buice and Arin Crumley, got their break when more than a million YouTube views helped land them a TV and DVD distribution deal.

Cybercast credit: YouTube

Do You Know How to Monetize Your Video?

WHEN YOUTUBE LAUNCHED, it enabled everyone to become a video producer. However, until recently, the production quality of most user generated videos have been entertaining at best but not something a big brand would want to call you about sponsorship.




Now, it seems that every day content producers with stellar broadcast production credentials are asking for an opportunity to pitch. It's almost as if all of Hollywood has become unemployed and is looking to peddle their ideas for a video series. If it's not the producers, the indie video sites jump in to fill the void. There's another Funny Or Die, YuMe or strike.tv eager to partner with Nike and company to bring great, original, and not-for-the-faint-of-marketer-heart content to the world.

So, how do we compete with the pros?

As a first step, we need to define what we consider success. The challenge resides in measurement options being limited and lacking visibility. Here are three measures that are easy to capture without incurring incremental cost:

1. Total streams

2. Average viewing duration

3. Click-through data from clickable placement in or around the content

It is safe to assume that success is achieved if your show hits a "feel good" number of streams/views. However, monetizing traffic has proven very hard even for Google / YouTube which know a thing or two about the subject. So, for now, producing a hit show in your specific niche and rounding up sponsors for it once you hit this "feel good" number of views seems to be the way to go.

Star Wars Redux : The Coolest Laser Destruction Video You Have Ever Seen

This video shows the Israeli and US Air Force working on laser defense systems:





In field tests, U.S. and Israeli laser guns have shown the ability to melt holes in all kinds of munitions, rockets, international ballistic missiles, and what have you. Several American defense contractors are working to translate these results into battlefield tools in a hurry. Israel’s “Iron Dome” system -- or should they should call it Laser Dome? -- is already under construction.

Some thirty years after President Reagan brought us SDI, a.k.a. Strategic Defense Initiative, a.k.a. "Star Wars," we are actually at the threshold of achieving its main goals. And not a minute too late, I might add.

I’m sure everyone will enjoy this video except the mullahs in Teheran….

Cybercast credit: YouTube

Stoned and Out of Line? This Video Surveillance Camera Will Catch You

Courtesy Tim Wilson in the Dark Reading section of TechWeb.com, 7/30/08:

Now, here is something different - and scary, if you happen to be stoned and misbehave - that I expect to show up in web cams in a few years.

"The problem with video surveillance cameras is that, usually, there are too many of them for one security staffer to monitor.

'To be honest, it's sheer luck if a security officer spots something in an environment like that,' says John Frazzini, a former U.S. Secret Service agent and IT security consultant.

Frazzini recently signed on to serve as president of a new company -- Behavioral Recognition Systems, or BRS Labs for short -- that aims to stop that waste.





Unlike current video surveillance gear -- which requires a human to monitor it or complex programming that can't adapt to new images -- BRS Labs's software can 'learn' the behavior of objects and images in a camera's field of view, Frazzini says.

'It works a lot like the behavioral software that many IT people use on their networks,' Frazzini says.

The BRS Labs software can establish a baseline in anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, depending on how much activity the camera recognizes and how regular the patterns of behavior are.

Once the software is operational, it can "recognize" up to 300 objects and establish a baseline of activity.

'The great thing about it is that you don't need a human to monitor the camera at all,' Frazzini says.

Because there are so many possible images that might cross in front of the camera, the BRS Labs technology will likely create a fair number of false positives, Frazzini concedes.

Overall, however, the new technology should save money,because security officers can spend their time diagnosing alerts and less time watching their screens for anomalies.

Minority Report Holo-display Is Now the Real Thing

Here is an anything but obscure demonstration of Obscura Digital’s new display technology, dubbed a “multi-touch hologram:”





The demo shows the presenter interacting with holographic images projected before him, moving them around and resizing them, much as you would on Apple’s iPhone multi-touch screen or Microsoft's Surface.

Unlike Apple’s and Microsoft's pet products, all the images are projected in the air, bringing you fond memories of Minority Report.

"We call it VisionAire. Get it, 'vision' and 'air' with a little European flair," says the company on its blog, with understandable excitement.

"Basically, we were looking for a new way to allow a presenter to interface with visual data. This uses our standard multi-touch framework and integrates it with the Musion system we have in house. The result is a truly interactive way to give presentations."

But before you start debating how waving your hands in the air could actually be multi-touch the company quickly goes on to add: "Alright, alright, it is not really 'multi-touch', because you really don't touch anything. The system just senses where the presenter's hands are and allow him to interact. Multiple people could be doing this too."

So I guess it's a multi-personal touch?

3D holographic display technology seems to be advancing rapidly - I recently had a post about Musion Eyeliner, the high-definition video holographic projection system used by VisionAire to project spectacular freeform 3D holographic effects into the air, using “Peppers Ghost” technology. And there are rampart rumors about floating 3D ninjas (the Chinese version, I guess), whales, and who knows what, showing off Chinese mastery of this type of technology at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Cybercast credit: YouTube

DTV4PC Promises 1056 Live TV Channels on Your PC

DTV4PC is another digital TV offering for PCs, coming from a new company by the same name.





For $30 (until further notice…), you can download the software - strictly Windows - that comes with the following features:

• Instant video downloads
• Immediate viewing
• No hardware to install
• No monthly fees or subscriptions
• Automatic channel updates

Their pitch is that the DTV4PC proprietary technology plugs you directly into hundreds of world-wide LIVE digital television channels right over the Internet. No TV tuner or any other hardware to install. You can:

- Have more channels than cable & satellite
- Watch in full-screen mode
- Navigate through an easy-to-use interface

DTV4PC promises to deliver more channels than satellite TV and cable combined without all the hardware charges, pay-per view cost, and monthly fees. Unlimited news, sports, entertainment, weather, and more from around the world ... who can ask for more ... as long as it works!

Open Your Own Virtual Movie Theater and Become a “Filmanthropist.”

At SnagFilms.com you can watch full-length documentary films for free. That’s fine - BUT they also make it easy for you to “take them with you,” and put them anywhere on the web. Just embed a movie widget on your web site or blog to open your OWN virtual movie theater. You will automatically become a “Filmanthropist,” as SnagFilms calls their “Snaggers.” By donating your pixels, you support independent films. A win-win deal, no matter how I look at it.

When you click on the “info” button on any widget, it will show you details about that film and the related charity you can support. With a starting library of 225 documentaries, growing daily, that you can browse by topic, channel, or alphabetically, you’re bound to find films that resonate with you. There is a widget for EVERY film, so any film you like can be snagged right onto your site or blog.

Here is one - the famous, or if you are MickyD, infamous Super Size Me:





Why Should You Snag?

For one thing, it’s a great way to share something you love with your friends. But there’s another great reason to do it.

Documentary films rarely get the audience that big-budget Hollywood films do. And chances are, if you like a film, your peers will too! It’s a great way to support filmmakers and get the word out about issues you care about. So go for it!

Cybercast credit: SnagFilms