Analyzing, Indexing, Reading and Interpreting Online Digital Video Content

The advances in online video keep coming. It's a good thing, too, since video is quickly becoming one of the most popular online pastimes. As comScore notes, three out of four American Internet users regularly watch videos. In September, 146 million people watched an average of 86 videos each.

With so many videos online, new tools are popping up to help users sift through it all. For example, VideoSurf (see photo above), will actually analyze every frame of online videos from YouTube, Hulu and numerous other popular sites. The software analyzes faces and elements in the videos so that when users search for something like Johnny Cash, the results will bring the user right to the exact frames of video where Johnny appears. It works great.

Another spooky technology is from a company called called DigitalSmiths who describe themselves as follows, "Digitalsmiths is an innovative video indexing and digital content publishing technology provider serving major Hollywood studios, web video destinations, media companies and advertisers. The company’s proprietary computer-vision based video indexing, search and interpretation algorithms empower content owners and publishers to efficiently monetize their digital video content, and advertisers to automatically target ads to thematically relevant video content."

The New York Times has written a review of such sites called "Zeroing In On Your Favorite Video Clips".

Also, check out the video below from the PBS series Wired Science. Scientists are using facial recognition software to help Autistic kids learn how to interpret emotions by reading facial movements and visual cues. Wild stuff.

Cinematic Crowdsourcing with Netflix

A great story from On The Media aired today. Check out the full audio above. "For Netflix, and a host of other online companies, being able to recommend another film, book or song you might like has become the holy grail of Internet business. As the New York Times Magazine’s Clive Thompson explains, the information is so valuable that Netflix is offering a million dollars to the first person who can know you better then you know yourself."

Clive also wrote about this in today's NYT Magazine, dubbed "The Screen Issue". If you haven't seen this issue, get it now. For anyone interested in the future of movies, TV and the Internet...check it out.

Start-Up Junkies

This Mojo HD reality-TV series was shot in Seattle. It chronicles the inner-workings of a start-up called Earth Class Mail. As someone who has experienced remarkably similar circumstances, I can tell you that this series is spot on. They really capture it. I know why I like watching this stuff. Does anyone else care? Apparently so...people are watching.

Above is a clip from Episode 3 which is described as follows; "With plans to sell his home, his planes and other valued possessions, Ron charges ahead and hunts for office space in downtown Seattle."

All this is courtesy of Hulu.com which keeps getting better and shows us what the future of "TV" might look like.

Hulu and Joost: Head-to-Head Video Battle

Hulu and Joost, two of the top online video entertainment sites, are improving their services at a very fast rate. Hulu is allowing viewers to embed videos in their personal blogs while Joost has dropped the stand-alone software and launched a browser-based player. Below are some articles about the two companies. Also check out the recent Nielson video census chart (above).

Free, Legal, and Online: Why Hulu Is the New Way to Watch TV (Wired Magazine)

Hulu Launches All Kinds Of Stuff To Keep You Defocused On Joost (TechCrunch)

New Widgets At Hulu; We Talk To CTO Eric Feng (TechCrunch)


About time: Joost to launch browser-based player (CNET)

Free Online Movie from Michael Moore

Today Michael Moore is releasing his latest documentary "Slacker Uprising" for free online. Get it here. The election-focused movie can also be bought on DVD and will eventually be released via more traditional channels. It is an interesting exploration of delivery methods. We'll see more experiments like this in the coming months.

The distribution is being organized by Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films (the company behind "OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" and "WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price").

"This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans. The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November." - Michael Moore

Online Video 2.0: Rules of Engagement

Check out the latest white paper from PermissionTV. (Download PDF: "Online Video 2.0: Rules of Engagement") It is a great overview of the state of online video.

"A recent study from ABI Research estimates the number of viewers who access video via the Web will nearly quadruple in the next few years, reaching at least one billion in 2013, while Forrester views streaming video advertising as the fastest growing segment of the interactive ad market and predicts it will hit $7.2 billion in 2012."

The Future of Online Video

On the occasion of Google's 10th birthday, Chad Hurley (CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube) commented on the future of online video. Did you know that 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute!?

Chad says, "In ten years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected. Even more people will have the opportunity to record and share even more video with a small group of friends or everyone around the world."

Top Technorati Techie Talks TV at TED

Entrepreneur, blogger, marketer and digital culture historian Peter Hirshberg gave a great talk about computer/TV convergence at a recent TED-related conference, EG 08. In addition to being an executive and a writer, he also serves on the advisory board of Technorati. Check out the video above where he charts the history of the internet along side the history of TV.

Read his blog about disruptive culture and technology.

He is also a trustee at The Computer History Museum.

Internet Meme Timeline Widget

This is a fun little widget that has been floating around the web. Zoom in and step thru the history of internet-based memes that have virally traveled cyberspace. Then go out and start your own memes.

Remember The Dark Side of the Rainbow, The Spot, All Ur Base, Subservient Chicken and The Tron Guy? And have you been Rick Rolled? Study up!

Make your own timeline at Dipity.com.

3D Animation Gets Gooder and Gooder

A host of new 3D animators are cranking up the quality bar. Check out these examples of cutting edge technical and creative wizardry.

Emily: She's not real
Image Metrics (the production company that created the animations for Grand Theft Auto) made a splash this week with Emily, created using their new 3D modeling technology. It captures the movements and expressions of real actors and re-creates it all in the computer in a creepy way.

Oktapodi
A student film about amorous octopi from Gobelins, the French school of visual design that has produced tons of amazing animators.

Also, don't miss the "making of" video.

Big Buck Bunny
Big Buck Bunny is an open source movie made with open source software from The Blender Foundation. They created this movie under a software development type model, all to promote the use of their tools.

Check out the "making of" video.

My Morning Jacket Music Video
For their song, Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 2, My Morning Jacket had the creative team at Mixtape Club create an amazing 3D animation.

Online Video Advertising Growth

It seems that every time another research firm predicts the size of the online video advertising market, another firm turns around and makes a higher prediction. The realities of the market and the ever-increasing adoption of online video is proving that the predictions are too low. The only thing we can be sure of is that advertising for online video will be huge! This is great news for all of us content creators...if there is money in the market, funding for shows will continue to increase.

Lehman predicts $2.4B in U.S. Video Ads by 2010. See the TechCrunch post.

Parks Associates predict $6.6B in Online Video Ads by 2012. See the NewTeeVee post.

Forrester predicts $7.1B in Online Video Ads by 2012.

Fifty Percent of US Population will Watch Online Video in 2008

Not everyone agrees. "Expectations for online video ad revenue growing faster than the evidence"

Opportunities for Content Creators

Andrew Baron, creator of Rocketboom, recently talked to Beet.tv about the numerous opportunities that exist for digital content creators. Now, more than ever, individuals and small shops can make a living creating original programming for the web and mobile devices. He talks in detail about how to approach entrepreneurial efforts in the fields of digital film making, story development, online video and web show production.

The Rocketboom folks just announced a seven-figure distribution deal with Sony this week, so this is a content team that knows what they are talking about.

NYT Article Takes Pulse of Web Video Scene

A great recent article in the New York Times titled "Night Life Reprogrammed" explores the nightlife and social scene that has sprouted up around the next-generation web industry that is newly emerging. Special emphasis is placed on web video companies and their interactions with the industry and the world at large. The article mentions a bunch of great internet video content and entertainment sites such as the following:

• Wine Library TV
• Video blogs like Downtown Diary and Pop17
• Digital media production company Dinosaur Diorama
• Online video entertainment pioneer Blip.tv
• Hip Hop video blog Ill Doctrine
• NY Video 2.0

For more companies like this, check out my 4-part series about digital media content sites "They Promised Us Convergence".

Digital Media Content Business News

When I started this blog over a year ago, it was to cover stories in the still-emerging digital content industry. This world of online entertainment and digital delivery is now mainstream, and continues to grow. Popular old-school media companies have begun to embrace the new delivery channels and content-creation techniques. Take the recent examples below as proof.

• PaidContent.org parent company, ContentNext, has been acquired by Guardian News & Media.


• HBO has decided to offer digital versions of its content on iTunes.
  
  
• Media industry grand-daddy CBS Buys digital pioneer C|NET for $1.8 billion.


• Disney Online Creates New Team Focused on Online Virtual Worlds, Communities and Games


• Online-Video Firm Revver Is Acquired by LiveUniverse.


• The new Vivendi multimedia service, called Zaoza, will deliver content across multiple devices and encourage users to share


• Hollywood continues to go digital. Lions Gate Entertainment has decided to strike a deal with Google to share advertising revenue from YouTube clips of it's films.

My Interview with Brian Goldfarb

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Brian Goldfarb, Group Product Manager of the UX Platform and Tools Strategy group at Microsoft. We spoke in Orlando after his keynote speech.

We chatted about multimedia, creative teams, designers, developers, Silverlight, desk clutter and endless email sessions.

See my recent coverage of his presentation, including Silverlight video of the whole talk.

Vint 'Father of the Internet' Cerf Re: Online Video

Check out the great interview with Vint Cerf on BeetTV. He has not only won every techie award in the universe, but he's been steering strategy at Google since 2005. He has interesting things to say about the future of online video, which he predicts will involve more downloading and less streaming.

Microsoft Silverlight Presentation by Brian Goldfarb part 1

(Install Silverlight to view this video.)

The video above is part one of a keynote speech given by Brian Goldfarb of Microsoft at the 2008 CRE8 Conference. I attended the conference in Orlando and you can review my earlier posts from the show.

A cultural change is afoot at Microsoft, where the oft-neglected designer is finally getting a long-craved-for hug from the Borg. This time it really seems like they are serious about respecting user experience and good human-computer interface design best practices. For instance, Microsoft is part of the OpenAjax Alliance and they have even launched a full-on designer community.

Check out his presentation to learn about Microsoft's new approach to the entire "ecosystem of developers" which involves "collaboration between teams of partners". Microsoft is not only trying to provide tools to do tasks, but they are also addressing the need for workflow solutions. How do teams work closely together, freely exchanging ideas, files and deliverables? With the new products, a designer can open up a project that has been coded by a developer and vice versa.

Goldfarb leads teams dedicated to building upon Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), their unified application framework. Among other things, it allows developers to apply basic windows functionality (like spell check) into multimedia applications.

He spoke broadly about general changes in Microsoft culture and practice. He mentioned that their server is now standards-based, and the "browser is getting better, I promise".

He shared a variety of example Silverlight sites from their Gallery, including Break.com, HSN,and the mind-bending "Deep Zoom" technology on the Hard Rock Cafe site.

At the time of this presentation, Microsoft was seeing over one million downloads a day of the Silverlight plug-in.

The new products support HD video, adaptive streaming solutions, XAML, and DRM-ready features. Read my post about a recent all-day Silverlight training event I attended at Microsoft to learn more about all this stuff.

Goldfarb stressed that they are building demand. Now they need creative people to develop the supply. To that end, they are offering 10 gigs of free hosting! The video above takes advantage of this. They are encouraging the developer network by providing a free place to get started.

Silverlight is driving plugin adoption by offering content developers a free hosting and streaming service: "Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live™ is a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich media as part of their Silverlight applications. The service offers web designers and developers a free and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows™ and Mac."

Video Publishing Platform Wars

comScore Video Metrix, the king of media statistics, tells us that more than 10 billion videos are viewed per month in the United States. In March 2008, there were more than 11 billion!

As has been written about numerous times on this blog, there are dozens of companies trying to corner pieces of this market. One of the biggest is Brightcove, who recently revamped their services and site. They describe themselves this way, "Brightcove empowers content owners—from independent producers to major broadcast networks—to reach their audiences directly through the Internet. At the same time, we help web publishers enrich their sites with syndicated video programming, and we give marketers more ways to communicate and engage with their consumers."

Recently a Seattle-area start-up has begun to challenge the mighty Brightcove. Delve Networks, formerly called Pluggd, published a direct challenge on their blog this week. They are going after Brightcove's corner of the video market and appear to be doing quite well.

The online battle for video platform domination rages on! It'll be fun to watch.

Microsoft Digital Advertising News

YuMe, a company dedicated to delivering ads across all platforms, has recently made a big deal with Microsoft to provide services and sales for digital video distribution. The video above is an interview with the Yume founder by Scobleizer.

In similar news, Microsoft just bought Navic Networks, a company that delivers advertising to digital television platforms. Read about the deal at The Seattle PI.

To learn more about the impending switch-over to digital television, read my earlier post T-Commerce, Digital TV and the Digitization of Content.

On The Media Podcast: How to Fix Tech Policy

Check out the recent On The Media interview podcast (above) with Tim Wu, Columbia University law professor and co-author of Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World.

He's written an article for Slate Magazine about Jump-Starting Our Tech Policy where he outlines his recommendations which include appointing a broadband czar.

Wu is also an advisor to Barack Obama who has a pretty progressive technology policy. The next president needs to devise a cohesive approach toward communications and media which will allow equal access and continued innovation.

Adobe Media Player for Internet TV Content

Adobe is now in competition with iTunes, Windows Media Player and Real Player. Their new Adobe Media Player is a great digital media content player that helps you organize your favorites and find great video and audio.

Adobe has also teamed up with a bunch of participating content producers and suppliers such as CBS, Comedy Central, BlipTV, MTV and Universal.

Adobe has a great history of making universal, cross-platform apps that quickly become the standard. This Media Player has a chance to become the standard tool that allows digital content consumers to aggregate and control the incredible amount of audio and video that is sprouting anew every day on the web. Check out my previous three articles on the convergence of TV and the web.

"Adobe Media Player software provides control and flexibility to view what you want, when you want — whether online or offline. You can queue up and download your favorite Internet TV content, track and download new episodes automatically, and manage your personal video library for viewing at your convenience."

DIY Video in the Age of Digital Media

Howard Rheingold has been one pixel ahead of most people for decades now. His writings and thoughts about new media, grassroots communications and virtual communities must be digested by any serious student of the digital age. Howard and I worked together at Whole Earth Catalog in the early 90s. He's the guy who came running into the office waving a floppy disc above his head screaming, "You've gotta see this." It was the first Mosaic browser and it blew our minds.

Check out the video above from the 24-7 DIY Video Summit. You'll see an intro by Howard and some video of Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Thanks to Ulrike Reinhard for the video.

The DIY Video Summit is described below in their own words:

"We are in the early stages of a fundamental transformation in how we create, share and view dynamic visual media. This transformation is enabling a new media ecology that can support widespread amateur video creation, and peer-to-peer and many-to-many distribution to audiences both large and small. Although it is clear that there is tremendous demand for user-generated and bottom-up forms of digital video, it remains unclear how best to support these creative projects, what the implications are for artistic practice and how to build bridges between old and new media."