[videoblogging] Re: HTML5 Webinar tomorrow
Yes youtube now has some auto-adaption so long as people use the right code to embed youtube videos. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Joly MacFie j...@... wrote: It uses iframe to do the html5, like this plug in.. but doesn't youtube also auto-adapt to client? http://www.clickonf5.org/internet/iframe-and-flash-embed-code-supporting-html5-for-youtube-compared/8517 http://www.clickonf5.org/internet/iframe-and-flash-embed-code-supporting-html5-for-youtube-compared/8517 j On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 2:00 PM, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.dedman@ wrote: Great news! Vimeo came out with a universal player for embeds. So what did Vimeo to allow this? Im confused why everyone (youtube. blip, etc) doesnt have players and codecs that work everywhere. Whats the secret sauce? Jay Right now, considering the much discussed issues with what video format different browsers are supporting in conjunction with HTML5 video tags, they are doing what some other sites are doing, namely serving a h264 video either wrapped in flash or not, depending on the browser. You can certainly encode a h264 file with certain settings and have it play on most devices, although some services may choose to encode multiple different versions for certain mobile devices, high def etc. Either way most of the magic is in having the embedded code for their videos look at your browsers capabilities, and then decide whether to embed a flash player or use a native browser/html5 method. As to why not all of the video sites are doing this yet, it will either be because they havent had the engineering resources to do it yet, or they have been waiting to see what happens with the likes of WebM (although thats not a great reason to delay this stuff especially as things like the iPad have sold quite well), or they havent seen that much demand/have had higher priorities, or their existing flash player offers features that they cant do in html5 yet and they dont feel they should offer a player with less features. The last point has extra weight if they are struggling to get their advert platform working with a non-flash player, as they wont be to keen to lose revenue generation. I expect most sites will get there eventually. Cheers Steve Yahoo! Groups Links -- --- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org --- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: WebM Project
Regarding flash: It certainly got round the nightmares with OS differences, install this plugin, etc etc, and played a massive role in videoblogging and other video on the web going mainstream in a big way. Its kinda hard to imagine vlogging taking off to the extent it did without flash, but in the early years of this group this was not at all obvious. This is partly because RSS podcasting was a large part of the early videoblogging wave, and there was quite a sense that people would be aggregating video more than watching it in their browser. Up till recently the reasons to dislike flash and long for it to be displaced were hugely outweighed by the compatibility issues it overcame in browsers. This is slowly changing for a few different reasons but not to the extent that flash is suddenly 'the bad guy'. Main gripes about flash: Performance and stability issues. Performance much better on the desktop/laptop with video now, but on mobile devices it looks like its going to suck for some time to come. Stability issues remain, although they get a tad overstated sometimes. Development: Better if developers dont have to shell out a fair amount of cash for the tools to develop stuff in flash. Better if the tech is based on standards that are well beyond the control of one company. Cross-platform compatibility: Apple almost single-handedly created this issue by refusing to support flash on iphone ipad. Easy to work round if the underlying video is already h.264, and for all the hate that Apple get over this issue, poor Flash performance in next Android may well show the practical reasons Apple took this stance. The whole debate about opensource and its merits gets a bit messed up by being confused with open standards. And there is confusion over difference between open standards and standards that may have licensing terms that bite us on the bum one day. Some examples of these various phenomenon: Developer or advanced user wants to modify a web video player, either a little or a lot, beyond the config options that are provided. But its written in Flash, they may not be able to see the underlying code, and if they can then they probably need to spend money on tools to author flash. If the player was made using HTML5 they would be able to see the source and they would have greater choice of tools to modify it. Some big advantages here potentially but wont be apparent to users who arent going to mess around under the bonnet themselves, that is until developers do something great that they can use, that wouldnt otherwise have happened. Developers and users want a really smooth UI experience and less battery drain on their mobile device. Assuming their mobiles OS has been written to make good use of hardware acceleration, HTML5 or native apps with H.264 can take advantage of this and deliver a better experience than flash. This may change in future, eg there could be WebM hardware decoding one day, Andriod can get more polished etc. Developers of Firefox browser cant take advantage of H.264 using HTML5 video tags because the nature of the licensing terms for H.264 is incompatible with the way they make distribute their browser, eg for a start there is a cost involved that they cannot absorb. So H.264 becomes the bad guy and WebM the great hope. Large media company, large website owner, producers of certain kinds of content want to avoid H.264 licensing costs, so WebM starts to look attractive. Joe Vlogger or Joe public may like the sound of WebM either because they are worried about being stung for fees from the h.264 patent holders at some point in the future, or they object to some aspect of h.264 patents on an ideological basis, or because they want a popular browser like Firefox to be ok, or they like the sound of completely open and free, and/or they dont want HTML5 web standards in general to clash with the murky world of patents. The problem with H.264 certainly isnt whether it is open source or not, or whether its a standard that anyone can learn about. Its certainly a standard, a very successful one indeed, and there are plenty of opensourced examples of encoding decoding with h.264, its when you come to actually use this H.264 suff in your app that you could get in a mess for purely legal/licensing/cost reasons. As for real-world examples of opensource being a good idea, a relevant example for this group would be the FireAnt aggregator. Soon after its birth the claim that it would be opensource was bandied about, which caused me to rant here at the time because the source wasnt actually open and I dont like to see phrases being used meaninglessly just because they are the cool thing. And tragically my worst fears came true, they changed their mind about opensourcing it at all, and strategies for commercialising it via a closed source model failed. Maybe it would have failed anyway due to massive competition from the lieks of iTunes,
[videoblogging] 720p HD and video editing on the iPhone 4
OK so finally the iPhone reaches a stage where it can start to live up to our expectations for what a powerful mobile device should be able to offer for video. Obviously not the only device in the world that can do these things but if Apple have designed the editing app very well and the camera quality is good enough, it should be quite a lovely experience. I held off from getting a 3GS and stayed with my no-video 3G iphone, so Im really looking forward to upgrading - Ive long missed the video that the Nokia N95 offered me before I got the iphone, but not the UI workflow of Nokia etc phones, and now I should finally be able to have a much better device on all fronts. I look forward to some clever video editing capabilities on the iPad too at some point, but it may take some time for this to be done really well.
[videoblogging] Re: Projekktor Wordpress Video Plugin
Ta for the info, I see the ipad issue is shown on their issues list so hopefully they will fix it soon. ( http://code.google.com/p/projekktor-zwei/issues/list ) I gave it a go with some old videos on my worpress site and it seemed to work well, although I could not get the playlist feature to work in wordpress, think this is a known issue too. Meanwhile here is a pretty good summary of most of the other html5 player options, including one or two that have wordpress support: http://mashable.com/2010/05/18/html5-video-tools/ Quite a few of them have been mentioned on this list before, Im sure they will be mentioned again as they mature, get WebM support, etc. Hopefully my ipad arrives in about 5 days (Uk launch) and then I will be doinga lot more with this stuff working out which player works best with ipad offers easiest skinning/theming customisation. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Kevin Lim brainop...@... wrote: Impressive. Since the point of HTML5 video is accessibility, I just tried accessing the site on my iPad and it plays the video well. Only thing is, I can't seem to bring up the video controller, so once it finishes playback, it's dead in the water, no replay. -- Kevin Lim Cyberculturalist http://theory.isthereason.com // @brainopera This email is: [ ] bloggable[X] ask first [ ] private On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 11:17 PM, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: I noticed that this HTML5 h.264 (with flash fallback) video player now has a wordpress plugin: http://projekktor.com/ To quote from their site: Basically it provides shortcodes allowing you to easily insert HTML5 video into your posts by using a simple [video] tag. To add the pleasing touch of Projekktor it also installs the projekktor.js (wordpress edition) and a tiny admin backend. But the best thing is that the plugin automatically generates a playlist out of your videos posted which allows you to provide a stunning telly like experience. I havent tried it yet but am going to give it a go later today. Anybody else tried it? I would expect players like this to add WebM support, though perhaps not till Flash WebM support is out. Cheers Steve Elbows [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: WebM Project
Yeah I shall give it a year to see hwo it does before reaching any conclusions. At this stage by biggest problem is how much CPU it uses to playback, quality seems ok to me but CPU use is not. Hope that can be improved substantially and the hardware (eg GPU) decoding stuff happens quite quickly. As for the whole page as a canvas for videos, I guess there is quite a lot of potential there, either through multiple videos or different parts of the page playing back different periods of time from a single video file. Quite what uses fo this will be discovered Im not sure, hope there is plenty of experimentation with this and other stuff that is ossible via CSS animation and fancy javascript manipulation of HTML5 video. My initial experiments on this front will be done using H.264 for CPU use reasons and also because Im going to get an ipad. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: Interesting to read, but I would make note of the source. anyone invested in H264 will obviously do what they can to lay down fear. Remember when Google bought Youtube and there was all the fear of copyright lawsuits? Google has the lawyers to figure it out. The more important issue to research is how well WebM works. Hows it look, how smooth is it, how well does it compress and transcode? If Google gives developers all the resources they need, let's give people 3 months before we see some cool expeirments. In my mind, the whole idea is to break out of the idea of the video in the player. What if you could use the whole page as a canvas for your videos? Stan is right that creators need the tools to do this. As Verdi said, http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/, is a nice free tool to transcode to WebM for tests. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: WebM Project
It always takes some time for developers to work their magic and create stuff that end-users can use. I expect there to be a good mix of free low-price encoders, along with integration into many existing tools. Its very early days, and the lack of encoders isnt much of a problem at this stage where there arent too many people with suitable browsers either. However it would be good to start experimenting with encoding settings and seeing what sort of filesizes are achieved, so I will try to see if there are any options out there. Meanwhile apparently someone that knows a bit about the tech of video codecs had an initial look at VP8 and was quite concerned about some similarities in certain functions to h.264. This leaves the door open for patent woes for WebM, although it is far too early to tell if that will become an issue at some point. At the very least we should not get too complacent about WebM, its future is not completely assured, but hopefully it will all work out ok. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, stanhirson shir...@... wrote: I'm getting concerned that although VP8 is open source, it is not accessible to the unwashed content creators (videomakers) but only to corporations and developers. At some point there may be some trickle-down, but it won't be free. Stan Stan Hirson http://PinePlainsViews.com http://hestakaup.com
[videoblogging] Re: WebM Project
Here is an article about the developer who has looked at VP8 and found various problems. Hopefully the reality is not as bad as the article suggests, but in the rush to something free and open it would be all to easy to overlook or dismiss these issues, and then maybe suffer pain later: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/05/19/x264_developer_says_googles_new_vp8_webm_codec_is_a_mess.html Page 2 of that article is where the depressing stuff lurks. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: It always takes some time for developers to work their magic and create stuff that end-users can use. I expect there to be a good mix of free low-price encoders, along with integration into many existing tools. Its very early days, and the lack of encoders isnt much of a problem at this stage where there arent too many people with suitable browsers either. However it would be good to start experimenting with encoding settings and seeing what sort of filesizes are achieved, so I will try to see if there are any options out there. Meanwhile apparently someone that knows a bit about the tech of video codecs had an initial look at VP8 and was quite concerned about some similarities in certain functions to h.264. This leaves the door open for patent woes for WebM, although it is far too early to tell if that will become an issue at some point. At the very least we should not get too complacent about WebM, its future is not completely assured, but hopefully it will all work out ok. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, stanhirson shirson@ wrote: I'm getting concerned that although VP8 is open source, it is not accessible to the unwashed content creators (videomakers) but only to corporations and developers. At some point there may be some trickle-down, but it won't be free. Stan Stan Hirson http://PinePlainsViews.com http://hestakaup.com
[videoblogging] Re: WebM Project
And here is the developers original post: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377 There is a lot of very technical info in there, which is too much for me, but Im certainly concerned about some of the issues he highlights. yay for open. Boo for the messy possibly premature launch spec,the waste of electricity the potential patent nightmares down the road. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: Here is an article about the developer who has looked at VP8 and found various problems. Hopefully the reality is not as bad as the article suggests, but in the rush to something free and open it would be all to easy to overlook or dismiss these issues, and then maybe suffer pain later: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/05/19/x264_developer_says_googles_new_vp8_webm_codec_is_a_mess.html Page 2 of that article is where the depressing stuff lurks. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, elbowsofdeath steve@ wrote: It always takes some time for developers to work their magic and create stuff that end-users can use. I expect there to be a good mix of free low-price encoders, along with integration into many existing tools. Its very early days, and the lack of encoders isnt much of a problem at this stage where there arent too many people with suitable browsers either. However it would be good to start experimenting with encoding settings and seeing what sort of filesizes are achieved, so I will try to see if there are any options out there. Meanwhile apparently someone that knows a bit about the tech of video codecs had an initial look at VP8 and was quite concerned about some similarities in certain functions to h.264. This leaves the door open for patent woes for WebM, although it is far too early to tell if that will become an issue at some point. At the very least we should not get too complacent about WebM, its future is not completely assured, but hopefully it will all work out ok. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, stanhirson shirson@ wrote: I'm getting concerned that although VP8 is open source, it is not accessible to the unwashed content creators (videomakers) but only to corporations and developers. At some point there may be some trickle-down, but it won't be free. Stan Stan Hirson http://PinePlainsViews.com http://hestakaup.com
[videoblogging] Re: WebM Project
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Brook Hinton bhin...@... wrote: Yes, there are apparently big time issues with not just functions but out and out code shared with h.264, and with some inefficiencies in the current implementation. But it's early. I'm actually not all that happy about this announcement. If I had any confidence that VP8 would be quickly, universally adopted as the future by all concerned (and that we could rest assured that it would soon be at h.264 quality and have the long term ability to surpass it) I'd be thrilled. But for now it's yet another codec entering the wars, open source or not, patent free or not, that are in my mind bringing us back to having to encode everything in multiple formats just to insure browser compatibility. Yuck. HTML5 video holds so much promise, and its just so depressing seeing it hobbled by all of this. Well you know I have multiple concerns and whilst I can appreciate the joy of open and some of the concerns about h.264, I think people sometimes allow that love of open to obscure the many practical realities which could make a mess such as you describe. I would say the format battles arent quite as complex as you fear, because although Google only recently started some Theora initiatives, I think we can pretty much forget about that format now, WebM is taking its place. And I believe Flash will support WebM so it should not complicate the picture too much but rather continue to offer solutions for browsers that dont support either h.264 or WebM with HTML5. If WebM avoids any patent ugliness then my main issue with it will be efficiency - I shall watch closely to see how much hardware-accelerated support comes out for it on both desktop and mobile, and will be extremely annoyed if the era of low-energy web video playback, which is only just coming of age, is spoilt by WebM for too many years. Cheers Steve Elbows Best case scenarios to hope for in the short term: 1. Apple and MS welcome VP8 with open arms, not necessarily as THE HTML5 codec, but fully supporting it with the HTML5 video tag in their browsers. And/or: 2. The consortium controlling h.264 releases it free in perpetuity as a goodwill gesture. Alas, I don't think either have any chance in hell of happening. Instead I fear we're entering into a competing, non-interoperable proprietary era, where open source is forced into being non-universal by default. So my pessimistic take on the news is: now instead of h.264 vs. Theora, and html5 vs. flash, we have h.264 vs. Theora vs. VP8 complicated by flash, with various parties siding with one or two but never all three, and Adobe, Apple and Microsoft playing politics with the good name of open standards. I desperately want to be wrong and hope all the optimists are right. Brook
[videoblogging] Re: WebM Project
Here is the project website: http://www.webmproject.org/ I hope it does well and they can make the encoding and decoding efficient quite quickly, and that lots of tools sprout up quickly. Its almost still to early even to do some initial testing, but I shall give it a go in the coming days. Yay no more need for me to rant about Theoras downsides anymore. I'll give webm a year or 2 to get somewhere before I start ranting about it. Cant decide if I like or hate the name. At least its short and hasnt got any numbers in it. Despite my constant multi-point rants about why h.264 is so dominant now, I still think this is a good day. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Joly MacFie j...@... wrote: Google have launched the VP8 project http://www.isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=803 -- --- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org ---
[videoblogging] Open and decentralised social networks
Slightly off-topic but Ive ranted here before about wanting servies that are not tied to one corporate entity. There seem to be a few different projects working on this sort of stuff, Ive not had toime to look at the detail yet but here are their sites: http://onesocialweb.org/ http://www.joindiaspora.com/ Hope! Cheers Steve
[videoblogging] Re: Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA
I dont think its anything to do with NDAs, the issue for opensource projects is not about the code being open, but the cost if the license fee for using H.264. And certainly there may be an issue with them not being able to control how many copies of their OS/app are out there due to allowing everyone to redistribute it, although there may be an arrangement where they can just pay one fee regardless of exactly how many users there are, although this fee would likely be very large indeed. As for the commercial use issues, there is far more pragmatism than the language of the license might suggest. If you dont charge for your stuff now then its not an issue until at least 2016. If you do charge then it is an issue already. For the grey areas such as whether advertising counts, its likely that the burden falls on the video host, although again there are some grey areas that currently dont matter but in a strict legal sense may theoretically matter. As I mentioned when I first responded to the post about that article, it does raise some interesting issues, Im not trying to dismiss all of them completely. Im just saying it went well over the top, but I suppose if thats what it takes to get peple to pay attention then so be it. And dont get me wrong, Im not happy that the state of online video formats has gone this way, Im just keen not to get carried away, to remember what different problems we used to have before H.264 dominated, and to separate the theory from the reality. My view is also coloured by the inevitable legal realities we have due to the state of intellectual property rights in general in the world, and dont get my hopes up that any of the alternatives offer a simple hassle-free alternative. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, tom_a_sparks tom_a_spa...@... wrote: --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Heath heathparks@ wrote: I didn't think OSNews story was hysterical, I thought it brought up some valid points and after reading the Endgaget article there are still very valid concerns. To repeat the point: as an end user, you'll never have to think about your legal liability over H.264, because there's no need for you to be licensed unless you're distributing commercial content to other end users or building an H.264 encoder. We'd venture a guess and say you're probably using a licensed camera and software and uploading to services like YouTube or Vimeo or Viddler, and that means you're totally in the clear. What about the linux/FLOSS communtiy that wont get a license because of the NDA (Non-disclosure agreement)? the end-user pays So what if you self host your videos and have ads on your site, is that commercial use? What if you create a DVD of your independent movie and use the codec and then sell the DVD? Have I just distrubuted commercial content? ( yeah, I know like the article said, get a lawyer) or use bittorrent to distrubuted the video, where dose non-commercial use end and commercial use start?
[videoblogging] Re: Fwd: Online Video Monetization Summit, May 5th in NYC
What are you going on about? Protecting your copyrighted works via takedown notices is not the same as signing up for the site in order to upload content. And other people cannot claim to be the copyright holder and start throwing takedown notices around on your behalf, that we be bogus and an abuse of the DMCA. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, daredolls dared...@... wrote: so go there, claim our rights, use our name, see what happens. dyna-flix.com --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Mark Villaseñor videoblogyahoogroup@ wrote: Steve Elbows: I very much doubt that you have to be a user of the service in order to file a takedown notice under the DMCA. I agree. 17 USC §1203 is clear about this, as is ample supporting case law. Being banned from a video ISP (YT, Yahoo, etc.) cannot and does not preclude one from defending copyright. Mark Villaseñor, http://www.TailTrex.tv Canine Adventures For Charity - sm http://www.SOAR508.org
[videoblogging] Re: Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA
Well I think that article raises some important issues. Its more than a tad hysterical in some respects though. Lets face it, there is no end of legal smallprint issues, if we paid attention to every last one and assumed worst case scenarios as that article does, I could hardly get out of bed without infringing. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, tom_a_sparks tom_a_spa...@... wrote: http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA it looking more and more like GIF/LZW/Unisys, but it called Microsoft/apple/MPEG-LA/etc
[videoblogging] Re: Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA
Oh I dont know. Considering that the companies who hold the patents for things like H.264 are also companies that need us to both consume and create media in order to make a profit from us via sales of hardware, software services, I dont really think it is in their interests to try to extract more money from everyone in silly ways that would cause a massive backlash, especially those who cannot afford to pay. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Heath heathpa...@... wrote: I agree about the worst case scenarios usually, however, given the state of on line media and given the very real and intense battle going on over copyrights, copyright protections, the RIAA suing everyone, the big media corporations working harder than ever to buy legsislation, the inability of our elected leaders to actually look at an issue, the outdated laws, the judges who have no idea about new media, etc...and it's kinda hard NOT to go worst case Heath http://heathparks.com/blog --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, elbowsofdeath steve@ wrote: Well I think that article raises some important issues. Its more than a tad hysterical in some respects though. Lets face it, there is no end of legal smallprint issues, if we paid attention to every last one and assumed worst case scenarios as that article does, I could hardly get out of bed without infringing. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, tom_a_sparks tom_a_sparks@ wrote: http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA it looking more and more like GIF/LZW/Unisys, but it called Microsoft/apple/MPEG-LA/etc
[videoblogging] Re: Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA
Yay here is a very sensible article that is the perfect antidote to the hysterical OSNews story: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/04/know-your-rights-h-264-patent-licensing-and-you/?s=t5 Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Sullivan sullele...@... wrote: Their should just be a formal written statement of exclusion. maybe content creators and consumers are excluded while manufacturers of hardware and software are not. Then content creators would know that this will not and does not effect them. Maybe the fight should be for exemption policy and then rightly let the owners of the technology pursue their monetization in the right direction. Is this the elephant in the room? Do they even care about content creators? How much money is there? Not much. And even if they think their is, publishers will surely switch to other formats and it will be cat and mouse. Ridiculous to even conjure up. Some idiotic unlikely future scenario when the content police pounce. I like so-called Open technology. But I am not going to be concerned about my dinky little camera that outputs h.264. So if their should be a focus moving forward, I do believe that it should be in the form of formalized statement of exemption by MPEG-LA. Put the ongoing concerns to rest. In 5 years, it might not even matter. H.264 could be obsolete... or have modified license terms that clearly allow free use etc etc. How I feel at this particular moment in time and space under current normal brain function. Sull On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 11:52 AM, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: Oh I dont know. Considering that the companies who hold the patents for things like H.264 are also companies that need us to both consume and create media in order to make a profit from us via sales of hardware, software services, I dont really think it is in their interests to try to extract more money from everyone in silly ways that would cause a massive backlash, especially those who cannot afford to pay. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com videoblogging%40yahoogroups.com, Heath heathparks@ wrote: I agree about the worst case scenarios usually, however, given the state of on line media and given the very real and intense battle going on over copyrights, copyright protections, the RIAA suing everyone, the big media corporations working harder than ever to buy legsislation, the inability of our elected leaders to actually look at an issue, the outdated laws, the judges who have no idea about new media, etc...and it's kinda hard NOT to go worst case Heath http://heathparks.com/blog --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com videoblogging%40yahoogroups.com, elbowsofdeath steve@ wrote: Well I think that article raises some important issues. Its more than a tad hysterical in some respects though. Lets face it, there is no end of legal smallprint issues, if we paid attention to every last one and assumed worst case scenarios as that article does, I could hardly get out of bed without infringing. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com videoblogging%40yahoogroups.com, tom_a_sparks tom_a_sparks@ wrote: http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA it looking more and more like GIF/LZW/Unisys, but it called Microsoft/apple/MPEG-LA/etc [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: Fwd: Online Video Monetization Summit, May 5th in NYC
I very much doubt that you have to be a user of the service in order to file a takedown notice under the DMCA. You being banned from youtube should have no bearing on your your ability to protect your copyright. Cheers Steve we can't even protest use of our video by others because our company name is banned from youtube and to file a copyright complaint it has to be in the name of the rights holder.
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
Jobs cant really say much about VP8 until oogle make an official announcement about it can he? When that time comes, I predict the main argument will be along the lines of lack of VP8 hardware decoding. As for Quicktime,if we care about open standards then thank god Quicktime multimedia development hasnt gone anywhere, or we'd still be trapped in the 2004 battle between Apple Microsoft for codec/plugin dominance. HTML5 is the best hope on that front, regardless of which codec is used for the video audio. There are already some basic tools in Adobe CS5 to enable some limited sorts of flash stuff to be turned into HTML5, and within a few years this stuff should explode in a vendor-neutral way, leaving the video codec as the only issue. So clearly I disagree that Apple are the biggest offender when it comes to 'dumb video blackbox' stuff. As for FUD, lets be honest, there is plenty of FUD about H.264 too. There are legit issues for the future but its pretty telling that people who are against H.264 took little comfort when the H.264 patent-pool managers pushed back any woe for years. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert Howe rup...@... wrote: In all Job's attacks on Flash, he didn't really talk about the technical limitations of Flash video for animation/interactivity/media synchronization - which is telling, since Apple systematically ignored Quicktime development interactive Quicktime for years - and have basically just chopped Quicktime off at the knees. For 10 years Quicktime has been able to handle things that Flash still can't do. If Jobs had made interactive Quicktime Interactive Quicktime development a priority 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago when video was obviously about to happen in a big way, he might have avoided the explosion in Flash video and the problems he's getting now, so he's made his own bed AFAIC. And now come a bit late to the party to push a 3rd party patented codec that's not a great deal more useful than Flash, and dependent on HTML5 or Apps for interactivity. The ignoring and lack of development of Quicktime, one of their most powerful technologies, is the biggest of the growing number of things that (as a longtime Mac user) are making me dislike Apple more more. On another list, Adrian Miles talked about his frustration at industry 'innovators' wanting to treat video as a dumb object and devices for playback as blackboxes. Apple is the biggest culprit in this. Re the theora patent pool thing - as Verdi noted, it's the usual patent Fear Uncertainty Doubt, with absolutely no idea of whether there's any substance that would allow an action to be brought, let alone won. It's the passive voice that I noticed - it's the present continuous tense - *is being* rather than *has been* or *was being* - - so it's something that's still underway, and presumably - since theora is not new - has been going on for a while. And I find it quite telling that VP8 hasn't featured in Job's letter or response. I hate the expression elephant in the room but really, the fact that he can't even bring himself to mention it says to me that it undermines his argument about H.264 v Flash, even though I agree with most of his points about Flash. Rupert http://twittervlog.tv On 2 May 2010, at 08:15, Joly MacFie wrote: A fair point is made in the comments in that article, that it isn't worth the patent trolls time and money unless someone deep-pocketed like Apple gets involved, but then they coud well come out of the woodwork. Another comment does, however, note his use of the passive tense to describe this process. http://www.isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=789 On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 12:56 AM, tom_a_sparks tom_a_spa...@... wrote: --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Verdi michael@ wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Joly MacFie joly@ wrote: I also noted Jobs recent statement that Theora is not free of potential encumbrance. the same comments were give about vorbis, where are the court cases? Yahoo! Groups Links -- -- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
There is no future-proof perfect answer at this stage. VP8 may be the longterm answer but even if its a roaring success it will take years to reach the promised land. Like it or not, H264 is the answer for at least the next few years, if not longer. With one H.264 file you can cater for most hardware devices, and the browsers that dont support it can still work with H.264 by playing it back via flash. Its not perfect, but its a lot better than the format mess we had to deal with 6 years ago. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, stanhirson shir...@... wrote: I have a lot of new video go put up but I can't figure out what format to encode. I had been happy with Flash embedded with vPIP, but now I am worried about data rot. What is going to happen to all my existing videos? Oh well. I just dread the idea of having to go back to original video and re-encode hundreds of clips to something that could be obsolete in a few years Stan Hirson http://PinePlainsViews.com http://Hestakaup.com
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
Looks like things may be about to turn uglier on this front: http://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2010/04/open-letter-to-steve-jobs/ Jobs has apparently replied: 'From: Steve Jobs To: Hugo Roy Subject: Re:Open letter to Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash Date 30/04/2010 15:21:17 All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other open source codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn't mean or guarantee that it doesn't infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.' --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Verdi mich...@... wrote: On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Joly MacFie j...@... wrote: I also noted Jobs recent statement that Theora is not free of potential encumbrance. I wouldn't put much stock in that FUD. Also, all of these arguments don't (and can't really) take into account VP8 that Google is preparing to open source. Give them a few months to put it out there and let's see how good it is and who adopts it. Until then people are just fighting last year's battle. - Verdi -- Training for a triathlon and raising money for The Leukemia Lymphoma Society. http://training.michaelverdi.com
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
Im confused, this subject isnt where the thread started at all, it started with the rumours about Google opening up VP8. Most of the talk about downsides of theora has been to do with quality, hardware decoding, quantity of videos already in H.264. The potential for patent problems with theora are usually dismissed because there havent been any issues with this so far. Jobs is suggesting that there are about to be very real issues with this, and I consider that a significant development. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Verdi mich...@... wrote: On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Joly MacFie j...@... wrote: Isn't this where we started on this thread? j Yes. - verdi -- Training for a triathlon and raising money for The Leukemia Lymphoma Society. http://training.michaelverdi.com
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
Ahh right. The difference is that in his original statement Jobs was only making a point about potential theora patent woes, which quite rightly could be dismissed as FUD. But in Jobs later email reply to the open letter, he actually states that there is actually something going on with this, that patent-holders are actually moving towards throwing a patent spanner at theora. I consider this a significant development, though of course we have to wait until these patent-holders make their move to be sure. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Verdi mich...@... wrote: What he was referring to was that a day (and 11 emails ago), Joly noted a quote from the same story you just brought up and we all just had a discussion about it. On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Joly MacFie j...@... wrote: I also noted Jobs recent statement that Theora is not free of potential encumbrance. I wouldn't put much stock in that FUD. Also, all of these arguments don't (and can't really) take into account VP8 that Google is preparing to open source. Give them a few months to put it out there and let's see how good it is and who adopts it. Until then people are just fighting last year's battle. - Verdi On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 12:33 PM, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: Im confused, this subject isnt where the thread started at all, it started with the rumours about Google opening up VP8. Most of the talk about downsides of theora has been to do with quality, hardware decoding, quantity of videos already in H.264. The potential for patent problems with theora are usually dismissed because there havent been any issues with this so far. Jobs is suggesting that there are about to be very real issues with this, and I consider that a significant development. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Verdi michael@ wrote: On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Joly MacFie joly@ wrote: Isn't this where we started on this thread? j Yes. - verdi -- Training for a triathlon and raising money for The Leukemia Lymphoma Society. http://training.michaelverdi.com -- Training for a triathlon and raising money for The Leukemia Lymphoma Society. http://training.michaelverdi.com
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert Howe rup...@... wrote: Fair enough, I guess, though it seems a pretty open secret. And they've bought it, right? So it's not irrelevant, and the possibility should deserve some recognition in a full honest discussion? Yeah but I certainly wouldnt look to Jobs to provide a fully rounded totally honest discussion about all these things, and as the head of a major corp I dont think he has the luxury of speculating as to what Google will do as much as we do. As for Quicktime,if we care about open standards then thank god Quicktime multimedia development hasnt gone anywhere, Really? Ignore the possibilities it presented? Just for the sake of open standards? or we'd still be trapped in the 2004 battle between Apple Microsoft for codec/plugin dominance. Are we not still trapped in a newer version of the old battles? Only with Apple and MS aligned for h.264 use only and Mozilla for theora only - with Google, Chrome YT somewhere in between? Its not quite as bad as the old battle. For a start the present battle has practical workarounds which will do, at least until such a time as the H.264 patent pool people decide to try to extract money from people who can currently use h.264 for free. Flash was a practical workaround for the old battle, it wasnt perfect but it overcame the absolute nightmare where we used to have to tell viewers to install quicktime or whatever. So too flash provides a partial fix for browsers that arent going to be supporting h.264 natively, albeit at the expense of full HTML5 takeup. I really look forward to HTML5 being widely usable, when browser compatibility and codec tolerance allows us to make video pages that more than 50% of web users can see, but it would still be nice to be able to easily make portable interactive networked video files that aren't dependent on the HTML page they're sitting in. Sure, I would love to have such a thing, cant see it happening though. For such a multimedia file to be fully portable it needs to work with a very wide range of devices, and be authored with a wide range of tools. Modern web-based standards stuff is the only thing on my radar that fits that bill, and Im just very happy that we even have one option. So clearly I disagree that Apple are the biggest offender when it comes to 'dumb video blackbox' stuff. Why so? Glad Adobe are building tools for the inevitable HTML5 transition, but surely Apple are the ones who had QT technology which made video not dumb, and then ignored, starved killed it? I wonder whether that makes them worse than people who never had that view of video in the first place? The quicktime stuff wasnt very good, there were very few tools that made use of it, and there were numerous commercial hurdles that would likely have prevented it from appearing on mobile devices from the likes of Microsoft. I will sing Apples praises because they didnt doggedly stick to .mov as the container format of choice, they were sensible with webkit and with numerous other advances in HTML CSS which they gave to the web standards people instead of just throwing in their proprietary cooking pot. They arent perfect, and some of the HTML5 useage scenarios they are trying to promote right now, such as iADs or album extras do not seem of much use to us, but I still believe that we will gain from the by-products of this down the road. Flash was in many ways more capable of interesting multimedia stuff than Quicktime, but there were obviously some severe barriers to getting people to use this stuff, such as the cost of the tools. Adobe are actually opening up various parts of flash more than ever before, its open in some ways but in others its still far too much under the control of one corp, and obviously Apples 'no flash' stance on their trendy devices isnt helping, but then again neither are Microsoft with silverlight. I would be much happier if we had seen more experimentation and innovation on the multimedia front, along with more discussions about it on this list than all the tedious dumb-video format discussions Ive been obsessed with in the last 6 years, but its not only technology commercial barriers that have prevented this, Frankly, most of us havent actually got very far at even imagining what this amazing multimedia and non-dumb video could actually mean. Its all a bit abstract with very few real examples of what we actually mean or what else video could be. The web in general is the closest thing we have to widespread multimedia, and even then we dont have all that many ideas of what to do with it. As for FUD, lets be honest, there is plenty of FUD about H.264 too. There are legit issues for the future but its pretty telling that people who are against H.264 took little comfort when the H.264 patent-pool managers pushed back any woe for years. I
[videoblogging] Multimedia
Just trying to extract the interesting topic of multimedia from the video format discussion. I dont really know whee to start, Ive always been interested in it, although as mentioned previously I get a bit lost when I actually try to flesh out some vague ideas into something more solid and useful. We've seen some, albeit fairly limited, attempts from the big video services to add stuff to video, in terms of being able to insert links or annotation to certain objects shown within a video. But even discounting the tech limitations, Im left not quite sure how useful this stuff usually is, is it worth the effort? Sometimes it really feels like its getting in the way, maybe a lot of the time I really just want to consume video in linear fashion and keep interactivity and communication for another part of the site. Looking ahead I wonder how much video might get mixed in with online gaming 3D. I know that some years ago some people experimented with video in Second Life but it seemed a bit like that stuff ended up as a bit of a fad? Are all the various ways that people can share different media on the web providing a good foundation and all we need is a nicer way of presenting and interacting with this stuff? I still daydream about better ways to mix microblogging, photos, video music conversations together on the web, but actual concrete ideas about how to do this seem to evade me. Cheers Steve
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
Thanks for the info Michael, good to hear that Firefox are joining the hardware accelerated fun. Some recent developments... Jobs has been justifying Apple's flash stance, Adobe have fired back, both have some valid points but are deliberately avoiding other truths. OS X 10.6.3 allows third parties to access the hardware H.264 decoding that some recent Macs support. Adobe have taken advantage of this by releasing a version of the flash player that uses this decoding, it certainly helps HD content use much less CPU. Microsoft have confirmed that IE9 will be supporting H.264 for HTML5 video, but that the only format they plan to support, causing a predictable backlash: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/04/29/html5-video.aspx Lets see how Google announce the VP8 stuff, widely expected on May 18th I think? Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Verdi mich...@... wrote: On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 1:27 PM, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: Their other main focus beyond supporting standards was on hardware-accelerating lots of stuff, be it svg or css3 or video. BTW, that kind of stuff is coming to Firefox too. One of the things I've learned since going to work for Mozilla (3wks now) is that everything is open source and usually posted on the wiki https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/2010-Q2-Goals. Want to join in (or just listen) the platform teams weekly meeting? It's on Tuesdays at 11am PST (details here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform#Meetings ) - Verdi -- Training for a triathlon and raising money for The Leukemia Lymphoma Society. http://training.michaelverdi.com
[videoblogging] Re: Markvoort
Personally I would look at it from the perspective that she originally used internet video to connect with other people that were isolated in hospital, and that once you have made meaningful connections in this way it may seem quite natural to carry on until the end. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Miles adrian.mi...@... wrote: or just not watch as you suggested :-) an appropriate closing Adrian Miles School of Media and Communication Program Director B.Comm Honours vogmae.net.au On 29 April 2010 11:33, David Jones david.jo...@... wrote: People can theorize all they like. Publish and be damned is often the easiest solution! [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: Markvoort
A partially relevant song: Tiger Lillies - Crack of Doom http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U319VzSqEU Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Richard (Show) Hall rich...@... wrote: I will say this, based on my experience over the last year, which is that our society needs to have a lot more conversation about death. Not death as presented on prime time and movies, but real-honest death, like the kind that happens with, well, all of us. I recommend that everyone spend a few minutes in an assisted living facility or rest home. You'll learn a lot about life .. and death. ...peace...richard On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 5:29 AM, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: Personally I would look at it from the perspective that she originally used internet video to connect with other people that were isolated in hospital, and that once you have made meaningful connections in this way it may seem quite natural to carry on until the end. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com videoblogging%40yahoogroups.com, Adrian Miles adrian.miles@ wrote: or just not watch as you suggested :-) an appropriate closing Adrian Miles School of Media and Communication Program Director B.Comm Honours vogmae.net.au On 29 April 2010 11:33, David Jones david.jones@ wrote: People can theorize all they like. Publish and be damned is often the easiest solution! [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -- Richard (Show) Hall http://richardshow.org [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: Anyone see this yet? Video subtitling initiative by Mozilla...
For reasons that are unclear to me, I think that Miro converter is tending to encode to mpeg4 rather than h.264, at least with the presets they provide? Yeah Android has potential, think Im going to wait a bit longer before trying it though, think it could use just a tad more polish. Would like to see android-based tablets, as I still struggle somewhat with mobile-sized screens, though in many other senses mobiles are more practical than tablets. I was reading something the other day about the relative demise of RSS compared to the likes of twitter. I guess its sort of true, though Im still a bit lost in this age of social webs, I dont find as many videos to watch this way as all the hype would suggest. There are still issues with one service coming to dominate as well, as seen recently with Facebooks 'Open Graph' Like button stuff. Any good video services built on top of twitter or facebook that people know about? Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Mike Meiser groups-yahoo-...@... wrote: Glad to see Miro is still kicking it and staying relevant. I noticed hat they also have conversion for practically any video device. http://lifehacker.com/5510682/miro-video-converter-easily-converts-video-for-your-android-psp-or-apple-device Been awhile since I used it. I also notice Boxee, which I believe is also open source or based off open source has been making good waves. Heard it was possibly coming to Android. Excited about the potentials of android, like I was fond of saying the other 99.99% of the world's first computer will be a handheld device or cell phone. The idea of a desktop computer will be laughable to geration born today...as silly as a rotary phone. Phones are already doing things computers were just a couple years ago. More importantly they've brought a whole new context to computing and do a whole lot more. FInally I'm pleased to see that podcatchers (or whaever you like to call them) are ubiquitously integrated into android phones. A half dozen or so exist of varying qualities. Most just stream, some cache. At least one does video as well. Getting a HTC Incredible this Thrs or Friday, will be digging further into this. Most interesting to me it seems twitter/microblogging ironically seems to be the mechanism by which most personal video, photo and other media is delivered. The idea of media-rss and caching and what not has served it's purposes but largely gone in a different direction... i.e. media-rss has enabled search and increased interoperability, created seemless media viewing experiences and increased general transparency of the media rich web. but it's still the simplest communication means through which most inter-personal many-to-many communication is channeled. Even facebook is to complex for many. Peace, -Mike On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Adam Warner awarne...@... wrote: I stand corrected... Sincerely, Adam W. Warner From: Joly MacFie j...@... To: videoblogging@yahoogroups.com Sent: Mon, April 26, 2010 5:37:55 PM Subject: Re: [videoblogging] Anyone see this yet? Video subtitling initiative by Mozilla... Um, it's by Participatory Culture Foundation, not Mozilla. There is an existing effort http://dotsub. com An interesti ng recent development is http://speakertext. com , where once a can pay $20/hr (I think) to Amazon Mechanical Turk to transcribe videos. j On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Adam Warner awarne...@yahoo. com wrote: http://www.drumbeat.org/project/universal-subtitles/ Sincerely, Adam W. Warner http://adamwwarner. com _ _ __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] - - -- Yahoo! Groups Links -- - - - - - - Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup. com http://pinstand. com - http://punkcast. com Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org - - - - - - [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links
[videoblogging] Re: Streamy disaster
The saga continues: http://news.tubefilter.tv/2010/04/26/the-truth-about-the-streamy-awards-and-the-iawtv/ http://www.rebuildthetrust.org/ There are a few mouths agape right now. The audacity! I would not be surprised if IAWTV is in need of some reform and far far greater transparency, but it smells to me like we need a weaselfilter to deal with tubefilter. Blame shifting, self-serving scumbags! Dont let them manage the image of your industry again, for crying out loud! And relax Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
Microsoft are desperately trying to stop driving web professionals users mad with their browsers. In the IE9 Platform Preview demo keynotes stuff they did a month ago, they showed youtube with html5 video working on IE9. They did not mention h.264 by name in the demo, but it clearly was. Html5 video is not working in the current preview release of IE9 but it will be supported in an update. Their other main focus beyond supporting standards was on hardware-accelerating lots of stuff, be it svg or css3 or video. They had a demo showing the CPU use for some 720P video on a machine running Chrome, which was high, and then using IE9 with hardware decoding of the video, leaving lots of CPU free, and then hey revealed that the IE9 one was actually playing 2 HD videos at once. This hardware decoding of video is something I have been going on about for years, its been a long time coming, and the devil is in the detail, but certainly its started to become more commonplace in recent years and its a big factor on mobile devices too. So far its mostly been all about h.264, and is one of the big reasons I think other codecs will struggle to displace h.264. There is no reason why it cant happen with VP8 given time, but h.264 certainly has a very big head start in numerous different ways. The bad news about IE9 is that its not going to work on XP, only Vista and Windows 7. Firefox is under some pressure, still very popular and not going anywhere in a hurry, but has serious competition from Chrome and eventually IE9 if Microsoft dont mess up. Safari, other webkit browsers, iphones ipads may only make up a small market share, but so long as there is a buzz about Apples products they will likely be given more weight when people think of what codec to use than the simple percentage of web traffic would suggest. Fingers crossed it all turns out well anyway because HTML5, CSS3, canvas, svg WebGL done right in many browsers, and hardware accelerated where possible, will deliver us a really lovely web experience that will make flash seem rather clunky. There are going to be some fun ways to navigate web video in future, some great apps collaborative possibilities. Some of the ideas that were just on the edge of peoples thoughts back in the earlier days of this group, or even beyond peoples wildest dreams, are going to blossom. Its possible our imagination will even be lagging behind the technological possibilities, presenting a rare opportunity to have a brand new frontier to dream in and make your own. I know its not a fashionable buzzword these days but I still like the term multimedia. And there could be an interesting convergence between games video online, to an extent anyway. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert Howe rup...@... wrote: Mozilla reckon that Firefox handles 30% of worldwide web access. And you can bet it's an even higher percentage of people who watch online video. Even after IE9 with HTML5 becomes widely used in a few years, that 30% lack of support for h.264 (or more by then) will be a big issue for anyone wanting to use HTML5 for video. Unless Mozilla change their mind. Interesting to see what Microsoft will do about video codecs in IE9. Have they said? I haven't seen. If they do allow ogg/vp8 to be used with the video tag, will it just be the 5% Safari users and iPad/ iPhone users who'll be left out? That'd be pretty decisive and easy to prioritize for producers. And if they fail to support it, and just support h.264 their own codecs, it'll be just the 30+% Firefox Opera users who are in the minority, tipping the balance the other way - but not decisively, just annoyingly? Given Microsoft's record of driving web professionals mad with their browsers, you have to worry that sanity will not prevail here. Rupert http://twittervlog.tv
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
Yeah one of the reasons I always throw my hat in with h.264 in these discussions is because of the practical reasons why h.264 is easier for almost everyone, at least until such a time as h.264 licensing actually sucks rather than just theoretically sucks. Im still glad Google appear to be doing this with VP8 because I never thought Theora was good enough from a technical/quality/filesize perspective, so if there is to be a truly open alternative and a prolonged struggle to get it accepted by most browsers devices, at least make it a good one. I do not recognise the sides in the battle quite like you have stated them. Whilst its true that Apple were the first to really start pushing h.264, and are the most likely not to allow other formats on their mobile devices, many other important players in this game support h.264. Microsoft already showed their hand - they are supporting H.264 in IE9. They already support it in Silverlight and the XBox360, and I believe Windows Phone 7 devices will be able to play it. It really will be interesting to see what happens with browsers, Google will certainly make Chrome attractive by presumably supporting all 3 of the formats we are talking about, some others may follow suite as a result, or if h.264 dominates html5 video on the web then Firefox may end up having to do a workaround to provide support too, such as relying on the OS or a plugin to do the job. Flash is a big winner so long as there is html5 video codec mess in the browser arena. This is another reason I dont want the battle to be too complex prolonged. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert Howe rup...@... wrote: I hadn't seen this news. But I'd been thinking about it only a couple of days ago, wondering if they were going to do it, after their move towards ogg. I'm so bored by the idea of even more epic codec battles. Apple/ Safari/iPhone/iPad in h264 versus Google/Chrome/Phones/Set Top Box/etc in ogg/vp8. Versus Microsoft and whatever they choose to do. No compatibility between browsers for HTML5. Seems like Apple are hardening their position on various things, and so are Google, Adobe, etc. Pretty boring for all of us, having to cater for all or pick sides. Great that Google Open Sourced VP8, though. A bright spot in all of this, hopefully. Rupert http://twittervlog.tv On 12 Apr 2010, at 23:55, Michael Verdi wrote: This is pretty awesome: http://newteevee.com/2010/04/12/google-to-open-source-vp8-for-html5-video/ That could seriously change the codec equation for the better. - Verdi -- Training for a triathlon and raising money for The Leukemia Lymphoma Society. http://training.michaelverdi.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
Forgot to say that its also possible that VP8 support could be added to Flash if it starts to take off, which would be a workaround for some browsers that may not support it directly. Whatever happens, h.264 remains the best option for maximum browser compatibility for a while, due to flashs ability to play it and the number of browsers that can play it directly. Couple this with the large quantity of video already in h.264 format and you have a situation where sites can start offering their videos to some browsers without using flash without too much effort at all. This at least gives html5 video tag some chance to be used for real, regardless of what happens over a longer period of time with other formats like VP8. Apple are clearly promoting html5 in quite an aggressive way as a major part of their war with flash on iphones and ipads, and have apparently been trying to convince various large websites to make versions of the site that dont use flash for video, with mixed results so far. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: It really will be interesting to see what happens with browsers, Google will certainly make Chrome attractive by presumably supporting all 3 of the formats we are talking about, some others may follow suite as a result, or if h.264 dominates html5 video on the web then Firefox may end up having to do a workaround to provide support too, such as relying on the OS or a plugin to do the job. Flash is a big winner so long as there is html5 video codec mess in the browser arena. This is another reason I dont want the battle to be too complex prolonged.
[videoblogging] Re: Google to open source VP8
Yes I think there are quite a few potential gains along the lines you indicate. As for h.264 charging issues, I only expect them to attempt to charge people who have the ability, incentive revenues to pay. I suppose it could happen, but its more likely that those higher up the chain, eg shows/networks with huge number of viewers, and sites that encode host videos, tool providers etc will be the ones to lead the charge away from h264 long before the average vlogger will be in line to be charged a fee. In principal I am hugely in favour of a free and open video format for the web, I only sound against it because I am mostly talking about all the practical realities that exist at the moment, not the ideal we should be striving for. Cheers Steve Elbows If Google's VP8 codec forces H264 to remain free...then that's a huge win right there. The minute that H264 decides to start charging any site that uses their codec...people could just switch over to VP8. I think Flash is being forced to open up as welland continue to innovate. It's also important for video tools as well. Be great to build a video editor (legally) without having to pay fees to use the core technology. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: Streamy disaster
That depends if you include the web porn video industry. Im not going to get into a long debate about whether daredolls material can be labelled porn, in some ways no, or at least very soft, in other ways its clearly fetish stuff that will get the same sort of reaction from people video hosts as porn. I remain bemused that daredolls posts here still try to find alternative explanations for why they get banned from video sites sometimes, the reason should be pretty darn obvious and undeniable. Regardless of any disagreement about this stuff, I think its a pretty safe bet the potential to get their viewers to spend money is based on the same sorts of impulses that make people spend lots of money on porn. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Adam Quirk qu...@... wrote: I'd say at $3k a month in sales you are in the top 1% of people making money in web video. You're also not doing advertising, right? On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 10:28 AM, daredolls dared...@... wrote: this event was the first live stream i ever got to see. our lovely country setting does not come with the internet, and our lovely superheroine series routinely gets deleted for content after being flagged by pornographers who don't like our standards. i wanted to see who prevails. i was grateful for the double audio feed, as it prevented comprehension of what appeared to be being said. i was listening to the musical portions wondering if the second feed would be revealed as another big joke once the beats blended but they never did. somehow there's no money in internet video came thru loud and clear. i am beginning to think, with our measly $3K a month in direct sales that we are internet stars. --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, elbowsofdeath steve@ wrote: So I hear the Streamy's this year were a disaster in several key ways and have gotten all the wrong sort of attention as a result. There is some concern that it has damaged the image of the 'industry', although it may be easy to overstate this point. It certainly didnt help, but the 'industry' has enough other problems too, although anything that harms potential sponsorship by appearing to confirm potential sponsors worst fears (eg uncontrolled juvenile amateurish smut tarnishing their brands) sounds bad to me. Unfortunately there is a part of me that is wildly entertained and amused by the streamyfail, considering it to be some kind of justice on a certain level. This isnt fair, as no doubt lots of blameless hard working people have been hurt by the streamyfail, but I suppose its a natural consequence of my disdain for the way some of the more visible parts of the 'industry' went, shoddy emulation of the existing media. What better way to symbolise two worlds colliding, and so much wasted potential, than to have a slick awards show humbled by technical glitches and naked people. Cheers Steve Elbows Yahoo! Groups Links [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: Streamy disaster
Despite my OP on the Streamys being rather negative, and my tendency to be negative and unproductive in general, I still care rather a lot about this industry. We are well beyond the era where I would get caught up in fears that the industrial aspirations of some would harm the non-industry side of vlogging andits non-commercial potential for humans. We got through the era of insane hype and buzz, we avoided the potential tyranny of the first generation of would be new media moguls with their studio or network aspirations. We avoided the spectacle of seeing everybody sell out or go insane with product placement etc. Unfortunately most of those things were avoided due to stupid failures on the part of various people and companies that believed too much in the hype, had no clue what they were doing, or just went in the wrong direction. This may not have had too detrimental an effect on the industry if everything else had been in place to make the industry succeed and grow on the scale people expected it should, and if existing media were unable to harness internet distribution for themselves within a reasonable timeframe. But that hasnt been the case, it was always going to be a steep uphill battle, with everything from sponsorship to promotion to audience numbers and show budgets. Time, innovative solutions, a lot of talented people working well together, and plenty of good luck were needed, along with the creation of some vehicles to carry this stuff onwards. I dont think this has happened, there are talented people with passion and some useful companies and services, but as an outsider it doesnt look like the vehicles that have been built are really fit for purpose. There is no way that I am well-informed enough to really know if the International Academy of Web Television is effective, how it works, what it even is in practical terms, and I am out of date regarding what other partnerships/institutions may have been formed to further the industry. But this trainwreck of a Streamys makes me want to know. I know that if it was down to me I would overreact, assume the brands and institutions involved with the streams are soiled to an extent that apologies and 'will do better next time' is not enough, press the self-destruct button, start again with something untainted whilst taking account of the lessons learnt from the past. I dont know who or how many, but somewhere there are people or companies that should never be allowed near the image of the industry again, they dropped a ball that was so important they should not get a second chance. Personally I feel that one possible way for the industry to differentiate and succeed, now that the traditional media are reaching internet eyeballs, is to play on other aspects and potential advantages of being on the web. Its way easier said than done, but surely the internet gives people ways to organise differently to the old models, ways to come together and achieve something without passing responsibility for a few people or entities that may stumble, ways to harness the very thin line between creators and viewers that exists on the web. Not easy, plenty of perils and downsides, but Im surprised new structures havent been experimented with. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Adam Quirk qu...@... wrote: Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, Blip, Vimeo, a hundred other web video service providers, and thousands of web video producers would disagree. I've been making a living doing web video production and editing for the past two years. It's still fledgling, but it's an industry. And yeah, this was bad for everyone involved. People are rightfully pissed. On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 12:15 PM, brook hinton bhin...@... wrote: A thought re bad for the industry There is no industry. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Streamy disaster
So I hear the Streamy's this year were a disaster in several key ways and have gotten all the wrong sort of attention as a result. There is some concern that it has damaged the image of the 'industry', although it may be easy to overstate this point. It certainly didnt help, but the 'industry' has enough other problems too, although anything that harms potential sponsorship by appearing to confirm potential sponsors worst fears (eg uncontrolled juvenile amateurish smut tarnishing their brands) sounds bad to me. Unfortunately there is a part of me that is wildly entertained and amused by the streamyfail, considering it to be some kind of justice on a certain level. This isnt fair, as no doubt lots of blameless hard working people have been hurt by the streamyfail, but I suppose its a natural consequence of my disdain for the way some of the more visible parts of the 'industry' went, shoddy emulation of the existing media. What better way to symbolise two worlds colliding, and so much wasted potential, than to have a slick awards show humbled by technical glitches and naked people. Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: Crash Test Kitchen checking in
Its interesting stuff. Adobe have offered it for years providing you use their flash media server. As already mentioned Silverlight can do it, but again you need some Microsoft tech on the server side. Apple offer it via http streaming which their more recent iphones, ipad, safari quicktime can support, and the big advantage here is that you dont need anything special on the webserver. Obviously the drawback with the Apple method is that it only works on some client-side devices. All of these approaches require that you encode your video using the right tools, which will enable you to encode the video at more than one bitrate, to target users with varying bandwidth availability. Aside from the adaptive/smooth/dynamic bitrate stuff, the other advantage with this streaming is the ability to jump ahead in the video without waiting for all the earlier part of the video to download. There may be other ways to do this though, Im sure youtube does it and Im not sure what technology they use. As for the Red cameras, generally they create extremely large files compare to the cameras we are used to, its one of their strengths because it can deliver great quality but obviously causes some issues with having a beefy enough machine to do the editing etc. I cant imagine red format files being suitable for putting on the web at all, as depending on the compression settings chosen you could easily be looking at 1 second of video creating a file that is 1gb in size! Apple HTTP Live Streaming overview: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/StreamingMediaGuide/HTTPStreamingArchitecture/HTTPStreamingArchitecture.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008332-CH101-SW2 Silverlight Smooth Streaming: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/smoothstreaming/ Dynamic streaming in Flash Media Server: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/dynstream_advanced_pt1.html Red recoding FAQ: http://www.red.com/faq/category/redone/redone-recording/ Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: A friend of mine has just made a short film using the Red format. The progressive way that the compression works sounds like it might be ideal for web video. Imagine you've got a 1GB file - if you only download the first 100MB, say, you still get the whole length of the video, but in a lower resolution. That's as I understand it, anyway. So imagine a person with a slower connection being able to view your video more or less immediately at a lower resolution, or wait for the resolution to build up. I would love to get confirmation of this fact. As Quirk said, Silverlight enables this kind of downloading..but I wonder if it can get its orgins from the actual camera you use.
[videoblogging] Re: Editing on Mac w/o Firewire...
There are a few different technical reasons I can think of why Jays solution should not work in a variety of cases. In fact Im rather surprised it works at all. I can well imagine it working if the hard drive is connected to the computer using FW800, and happens to have some FW400 ports on it, because its really just acting the same as a FW800-FW400 adapter cable. But I thought that the nature of the firewire bus would make it unlikely that drives would support Firewire-USB conversion, and that traditional DV cameras interface to computer with capture software in a very firewire bus specific way and would not take kindly to USB being involved? Maybe some modern cameras that could transfer via firewire using a non-DV way, eg by showing the camera as a storage device and you can just drag files across would work if USB was involved, but I dont imagine traditional DV cams working. I may be utterly wrong, its just that solution goes against my instincts for what works, though I may be out of date. Jay are you sure you are using USB not FW800? I will try to learn more via the interwebs. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Miguel mig...@... wrote: Test the external hard drive and your setup first. Jay and others have told me about this workaround but I haven't been able to do that with my external hard drive and my two cameras. Go figure. Miguel. Looks like I might be bartering for a new-ish mac 13 There is no firewire input and i was wondering how some of you dealt with that problem. I think my cams are only capable of exporting via firewire... Any help would be appreciated? I use an external hard drrive with USB and Firewire to make it work. --The computer connects through USB to Hard drive. --The camera connects through Firewire to Hard drive. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://momentshowing.net http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] flavors.me elegant aggregation
Greetings, You know Im not a giant fan of this era of hosted services in some ways, but seeing as thats the present reality I was looking at sites which aggregate stuff from the likes of twitter, vimeo, facebook, flickr into one nice site that can be used as an equivalent to a blog/your public face on the web. I get the idea that there are plenty of options, but Ive never really been overwhelmed by their look or functionality, things usually seem a bit clunky or ugly. Today I heard about http://flavors.me/ and whilst I havent actually tried it myself yet I did watch the demo video and I was impressed enough to mention it here. Mostly because it manages to present stuff in a way which is nice and to my mind at least has something in common with what showinabox was trying to achieve back in the day. This sort of thing might suit the likes of the iPad similar devices quite well too. Tidy. Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: flavors.me elegant aggregation
OK I tried signing up and it looks like theyve switched from supporting Vimeo to Youtube. This is one of the things I dislike about this sort of service - I need them to support lots of different video hosts, and if they decide to switch at some point then its beyond my control. It does look like they support RSS but I havent checked the details and am well out of date on what kind of feeds video hosts make available. Are there any opensource webapps with these sorts of features? They dont need to be pretty to start with, can always redo the front end, but needs to play nice with a variety of services. The means to aggregate stuff nicely from a vairety of services has not turned out quite as straightforward from a technical perspective as may once have been hoped here. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: Greetings, You know Im not a giant fan of this era of hosted services in some ways, but seeing as thats the present reality I was looking at sites which aggregate stuff from the likes of twitter, vimeo, facebook, flickr into one nice site that can be used as an equivalent to a blog/your public face on the web. I get the idea that there are plenty of options, but Ive never really been overwhelmed by their look or functionality, things usually seem a bit clunky or ugly. Today I heard about http://flavors.me/ and whilst I havent actually tried it myself yet I did watch the demo video and I was impressed enough to mention it here. Mostly because it manages to present stuff in a way which is nice and to my mind at least has something in common with what showinabox was trying to achieve back in the day. This sort of thing might suit the likes of the iPad similar devices quite well too. Tidy. Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: Veoh is dead
There is a rich spectrum of problems in this area and I dont see any signs that any have improved since we first talked about these issues years ago. Problems such as: Creating compelling content Getting an audience large enough to monetize in any meaningful way Lack of promotion capabilities compared to traditional mass media People used to getting everything on the net for free Advertisers being paranoid about content thats not created by the safe traditional producers Excessive number of tv channels straining everything from availability of talent to capacity to tread on new territory to viewers attention spam to potential audience reach. Lack of businesses that sell products or services to the same audience as the show may attract actually realising that they should be throwing money at peole to produce content for them Failure of most first generation vlog-stars to capitalise on their early success and thus be a shining example which would encourage the next generation Failure of creative people to have enough of a shared vision with eachother and ability to collaborate on something special over a sustained period without falling out Failure of other types of people who could do the business promotion side to find happy partnerships with creators Failure to take advantage of the global aspect of web video in many interesting ways As a viewer I remain pissed off that when I go looking for regular compelling content I suaully find magazine-format programs that dont float my boat for reasons of my age, the pace of the show, or cultural incompatibilities (eg I like Americans but where the hell are the British shows not made by existing media personalities?) Please can someone cheer me up by posting a few links to some content that there is a chance I might like (it doesnt need to be British, anything but the magazine format stuff will do). Here is my random offering of youtube content Ive found strangely compelling in recent years: Doctor of Mind MD: http://www.youtube.com/user/DOCTOROFMINDMD Cheers and no offence intended to anyone that makes content - I was always on dicey ground when sharing these thoughts in the past due to my own lack of producing any meaningful video on the web but hey ho. Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: This is something we've all spoken about at length. There's plenty of money for technology and ZERO money for creators. Advertising is something to watch but there's a HUGE gap between making a video series and bootstrapping its popularity long enough where you might make some money to survive. I also like the mantra: the web is not TV. Ill be sad if all this work just leads to HULU, or another place where you can watch LOST episodes. Jay
[videoblogging] Re: Veoh is dead
Do you think its safe to try discussing the creation aspect, now that there are presumably less people participating here, and there is no longer a danger of urinating on the newborn flames of vlog hope where everything seemed possible because that time has long passed? I'll pick one vital aspect for many kinds of video: the need to be entertaining. Its not easy, some peole by way of their personality or prior experience can be consistently entertaining but even then its hard to keep coming up with new material or the right subjects or format. Also if they can already harness their entertaining skills to make some money via means other than video on the web, why bother? Historical example of the strains of coming up with new material: If you are a comic and you tour around the country then you can make material last for years that would not last very long on television. So whilst some comics for various reasons are able to harness TV to their advantage, it has also been responsible for the premature burnout of others. I suppose one of the reasons Ive always liked non-commercial personal vlogs is that many people can be entertaining in ways that are not 'larger-than-life' that showbiz requires, that are just the same as the ways normal people have entertained eachother on a close personal level since time immemorial. But we have been somewhat spoilt by everything from talented geniuses at their prime creating brilliance, to huge personalities, epic tales and great actors and it remains very unclear to me if there is much more of that to go around. Are we just not fostering it and giving it room to grow in people, or is such potential actually rare? I admit I was hoping more would come from the partial removal of 'cocaine decisions' from the creative world but hopefully Ive just been barking up the wrong tree and some great things will happen one day or great things that are already happening will be recognised as such by me and others. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: All excuses aside, I agree with Eric Mortensen of blip.tv who just tweeted (https://twitter.com/ericmortensen) about creators having no excuses to not do their thing. Ultimately, creators have always been behind the ball and must sacrifice to prove their worth. This reality wont go away just because we have shiny computers. I just find it funny that VC's have wasted hundreds of millions on technology solutions to video. It's become extremely clear that it's not the problem we need solved. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://momentshowing.net http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: Remember when it was all 320x240?
Actually if you use older camera technology and go above 320x240 then you are at risk of running into interlacing issues. This isnt a problem if your editing encoding software can deinterlace and you understand the issue, but certainly when vloggers first started experimenting with 640x480 I saw no end of stuff that looked worse than 320x240 because they hadnt deinterlaced so there were bad comb artefacts when camera or people moved. The vast majority of vlogs that I watch dont really lose anything by being 320x240. There are certain types of content that I love watching at higher resolutions, but even with a pretty fast broadband connection I dont like to wait long - many of the popular video hosts are not delivering content to me at anything like the speed that my broadband can handle. I do like video hosts that enable the viewer to switch between HD and non-HD versions of the video very easily. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, David Jones david.jo...@... wrote: Seriously 640x480 is so trivially easy on almost any bit of hardware, it is no harder than 320x240. 320x240 is just not worth it unless you are producing a specific podcast or similar where bandwidth is critical. I produce a 480x272 podcast version of my show for just such reasons, but I'm not silly enough to film at that resolution or only make my product available only at that resolution. I'm not necessarily talking about HD here, as there is still has quite a few technical issues for the average users as has been discussed on here many times. But lets be honest, 5 or even 10 year old gear is easily capable of 640x480, as is any $50 second hand DV camcorder of any age. Heck, I can remember easily editing a 2 hour 720x576 DVD movie on an 800MHz Pentium 3 with 768MB of memory and crappy integrated Intel graphics card. Dave.
[videoblogging] Re: Remember when it was all 320x240?
I would guess that its partly the extra work the publisher has to go through like you say, but also some other technical issues to do with how the plugin works in practice, along with whatever the story is regarding what happened to ShowInABox and other video module plugins that it tried to promote, most of which Ive long since forgotten. What remains active of these prior efforts? There was some very nice functionality in these things but they needed polishing to gain wider use. As for why such ideas werent copied, I guess it would mostly be down to a relative lack of plugin developers who were familiar with all of the videoblogging power wishlists, coupled with the rise of the various video hosting services which has left us with mostly plugins that make it easy to embed video players from these different video hosts, but not a lot else. Progress on better multimedia handling within the core of things like wordpress has been much-requested over the years but very slow to evolve in practice. Throw in factors such as it being easier for the masses to go for hosted blog options or just posting their stuff to social networks or have people go to their main youtube page etc, and its not hard to see why innovation has stalled on these fronts. Im still struggling badly with this era of web-services which we cant build upon ourselves, and all these different ecosystems and forms of communication such as microblogging, social networks etc, which can sort of play with eachother but dont really gel in a cohesive way. In some ways everything is nice and easy and the complexity magic is hidden, in other ways I worry about the future and dont see so much scope for the little developers to build on these foundations in a way that is useful to the masses. I wanted stuff to evolve whereby people could mix a variety of different services from different companies together in a standard and modulaar way, where it would be trivial to switch service providers for any part of the system without having a nightmare, where the user had full control over their data, and where there was still room for indie developers to add functionality to the basic service offerings. Well in reality we sometimes get sort of some of the above, but not in a way that makes me feel there is a cohesive platform I can build on without placing undue trust on a single corporate platform such as writing a facebook app or whatever. Never mind, personally Im hungy to work on something so shall likely return to Drupal and see what can be done with that in conjunction with video hosting services html5. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: I've always been surprised vPIP hasnt been more popular, or someone hasn't copied it's features.I guess because it takes more work to post multiple formats, but I think its a nice option until there's some standardization.
[videoblogging] Re: A nice html5 video player with fullscreen
There is already at least one: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/degradable-html5-audio-and-video/ I doubt it is perfect yet but this stuff isnt too hard to achieve so I expect we'll get a variety of solutions in the years to come. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, adammerc...@... adammerc...@... wrote: When do you think WordPress will have a HTML5 video player? What would need to be done for that to happen? cheers adam
[videoblogging] Re: Veoh is dead
Oh. I expected more web video companies to go bust more quickly than has actually been the case, so in some ways I am surprised it took this long for another well-known player to fail. Ive read at least one article that suggests the Universal Music lawsuit was the main factor that killed them (even though they won that case in the end it harmed them). Im sure that was a big factor but not sure it is quite that simple. For a start Veoh was all about being a use for their peer2peer technology, but the success of in-browser video viewing forced them to change their approach. Then youtube came to dominate and got deep pockets via Google, presumably making success in this sector much tougher for youtubes rivals. Veoh tried various other strategies such as working more with traditional media companies content, and cutting off access from large parts of the world, but it seems despite plenty of attempts to change it did not pay off. One of many lessons to be learnt is that people can be funny about installing things, thus spoiling Veohs original plan and the main advantage they thought they had, their peer2peer technology. Although I probably had doubts about this at the time and probably expressed them here, it was not easy to be sure at the time - when the vlogging thing first started to catch on it wasnt clear how we would be paying for bandwidth for our videos once a lot of peole started watching them, there werent any youtubes or blips, flash hadnt yet come to become the grand enabler of in-browser video that it is today, heck we didnt even realise how much video would remain in browser rather than being offline aggregated via feeds apps. Was Veoh one of the companies that earned the wrath of this group once upon a time and their founder appeared and went some way towards trying to rectify whatever it was that made us upset? I'll store a tear for Veoh in the same jar as DivX's failed attempts to become a great web video standard and host, and whatever the other video big video host that went bust a while ago was - jeepers I cant even remember its name. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, David Lee King davidleek...@... wrote: http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100211/veoh-finally-calls-it-quits-layoffs-yesterday-bankruptcy-filing-soon/- I never really used them, but thought y'all would find this interesting nonetheless... David Lee King davidleeking.com - blog davidleeking.com/etc - videoblog twitter | skype: davidleeking [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: Veoh is dead
By the way their website is still up as I write this, although when poking around I note they havnt put a new press-release on their site since December 2008. Did some brief trawling through the archives of this group circa 2005-2006 and saw one reason why I remember Veoh - Their founder was active here when they started, and the Halycon bloke with pink hair rather overpromoted them on this group from time to time. At least this company actually had some technology of their own that made them a bit different - it didnt work out for multiple reasons but never mind. Too crude to draw the conclusion that it seems hard for many people to make profitable use of peer2peer stuff? Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: YouTube Live Streaming Video
There were strong rumours of youtube offering such a service back in early 2008 but as far as I know all that happened was a one-off streamed event that November. Since then I think they may have streamed a few other large events, but I havent heard anything else. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: I watched the Google Buzz launch video today, and noticed it was live streamed over YouTube. I had not heard of them offering a live streaming service. Is this something new or am I just late to the party as usual? I havent seen a Youtube streaming service. They probably just use it internally since they have the servers and engineers. Could obviously be testing for a public release as well. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://momentshowing.net http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: Remember when it was all 320x240?
To be honest I dont remember computers choking on 320x240 4 years ago. I know that around 5 years ago when Apple put some 720p H.264 videos on their website quite a lot of computers struggled to handle it. I guess bandwidth and procesing power are still issues, which along with device compatibility makes me think I wont go above 720p on the web for some years to come, but yeah its better than it was. I am especially glad that the era of low framerates is pretty much at an end - we dont recommend 12 or 15fps anymore for example. Im also very glad that there are more progressive recording devices around now so people are less likely to run into hideous interlacing issues when publishing videos at higher resolution. As for reasonably fast computers still choking on HD H.264, much of the progress in recent years has been about using the GPU to do some of the decoding work, preventing the cpu from getting overloaded. This requires the right software, operating system, graphics hardware. Ive been meaning to check out the h.264 support in Windows 7 to see what its like - got any good links to some 1080p web content that I can use for testing purposes? Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: well, Vimeo just announced that it's added 1080p with ACCHD support (for Vimeo Plus members). http://www.studiodaily.com/blog/?p=2568 Youtube did this in the fall but it's not becoming common. I have a pretty decent mac and it can barely handle playback. But it was just 4 years ago when people complained of their computes choking on 320x240 videos. Bandwidth was slow and processing power limited. Just a matter of time before the groupBorgmind upgrades itself. Really really beautiful images at 1080p. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://momentshowing.net http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: H264 still free till 2016
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Brook Hinton bhin...@... wrote: If we accept EITHER h.264 or Ogg as even close to an acceptable standard for online video quality we're in trouble. We have a long long long way to go in this area before we can call any codec at online bandwidth good. h.264 is just the first one that isn't HORRIBLE, and Ogg is better than the HORRIBLE pre-h.264 variants of mpeg-4. I now what you mean but I dont really agree. I think where we are at is at an acceptable quality:size ratio and I dont see any signs that things will improve much in the short to medium term. Considering how much information video consists of, I think humans have done well to get the filesizes down to where we are at today. Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: H264 still free till 2016
Good. And for those still worried about the future for h.264 after 2016 this buys a lot of time for alternative codecs to be improved. One of the reasons Ive been quite relaxed about all this licensing stuff is that generally companies are only after money from those who can afford to pay, its not worth their while chasing after small fry or having the hassle of trying to collect lots of extremely small payments from a very large number of people. So unless the world of online video evolves in a radical way which causes a lot more money to be floating round that eco-system, why should they bother? They still gain in other ways by having h.264 as the standard, ie they get larger payments from companies that distribute a lot of video, sell video, make hardware software that encodes decodes, etc etc. The end user or small creator still ends up paying in the form of a small chunk of the cost of things they buy, or a small percentage of the cut that the video host/distributor takes, but if done right its such a small amount that hardly anyone notices, and those who dont have the means of paying are not chased by the brain police or completely locked out of the online video revolution. Will be interesting to see what Mozilla do with firefox, and the youtube html5 test and ipad have stirred up a heck of a lot of online discussion about these issues recently, time will tell if this leads to anything useful or remains mostly hot air. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: Steve of Elbows has mentioned this day several times. H264 will now officially be royalty free to users for a little while longer. My cynical read: they're trying to make sure H264 is the video standard online...then they can charge out the wazoo. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/02/03/1528242/MPEG-LA-Extends-H264-Royalty-Free-Period The MPEG LA has extended their royalty-free license (PDF) for 'Internet Video that is free to end users' until the end of 2016. This means webmasters who are registered MPEG LA licensees will not have to pay a royalty to stream H.264 video for the next six years. However the last patent in the H.264 portfolio expires in 2028, and the MPEG LA has not released what fees, if any, it will charge webmasters after this 'free trial' period is over. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://momentshowing.net http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: H264 still free till 2016
Well I always have very mixed feelings about patents because of what a mess can potentially be caused, especially for the web. Luckily some pragmatism tends to occur otherwise we'd have been stuffed by previous patent woes such as Amazon 1-click buy or BTs claim to hold a patent for hyperlinks. Open source stuff tends to get away with it because patent lawyers are expensive and so there is often little point going after them. But yes it certainly creates a murky area where stuff exists and may be in vary wide use but cannot be completely relied upon from a legal point of view, especially if you are a commercial entity. I think its easy for there is some confusion about patents, copyright and open-source code. Its not like there is specific lines of code that make h264 work that are protected locked away, its that many different techniques for making an efficient video compression system are protected by a wide range of patents. This makes the task of creating an open alternative harder, because even if you just start writing something from scratch its hard to avoid using techniques for encoding that are patented. And mozillas h.264 firefox woes go beyond simply the cost of licensing, to areas such as whether its even possible to get a license that is compatible with the opensource licenses they use for their browser. Im not sure that IE is a great example, as the main issues with that browser were to do with it sucking, not sticking to various web standards, and the legal trouble microsoft got in was mostly about using ts dominance in the OS market to hamper fair competition in the browser market, an important issue but not one directly related to patents or open source. For sure some of the other browsers are better and find their way into more devices because they are open-source, but conforming to proper standards is probably more important, at least to web developers. Likewise whilst there probably would be some patent ugliness for open video editing software looking to include h.264 encoding capabilities, thats not whats actually holding back opensource video editing apps right now. If we consider what has limited the evolution of online video in general, many factors have nothing to do with patents. We had headaches with agreeing on video standards which has become much less of a problem in recent years, but we have ceded control in many other ways - by using flash to overcome browser video format issues we reduced the number of potential developers doing interesting things with video. By letting 3rd party commercial entities host, distribute attempt to monetize our videos, we gave up more control and flexibility in how things evolved. All of these may well be considered necessary and the pain:gain ratio worth it, but Id still argue that its limited our wiggle room and we have no idea what innovations it may have killed off. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: They still gain in other ways by having h.264 as the standard, ie they get larger payments from companies that distribute a lot of video, sell video, make hardware software that encodes decodes, etc etc. The end user or small creator still ends up paying in the form of a small chunk of the cost of things they buy, or a small percentage of the cut that the video host/distributor takes, but if done right its such a small amount that hardly anyone notices, and those who dont have the means of paying are not chased by the brain police or completely locked out of the online video revolution. Yes, someone just watching video online or editing with commercial software will see no change. But if we wanted to create our own video editing software or transcoder, we would have to pay licensing fees to use H264. If H264 is the default standard, then any grassroots solution will necessarily be illegal. This is why Firefox is pushing for Ogg/Theora to be widely adopted since they cannot afford to pay a licensing fee for each Firefox install. This is also why awesome video projects like http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ are created by somewhat shadow groups who put plenty of blood, sweat and tears into their projects...but cannot really by public about it. If H264 is the standard then it cuts out any player who cant pay. At the same time, the creators of H264 have every right to insist on payment for their team of engineers who create a beautiful codec. Just like a pharmaceutical company has every moral right to charge for medicine they research and produce. It's also like Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For a while it was the default browser because they pushed it onto all computers that were bought with Windows. The browser was free to the user, right? Who cares? Defacto standard. Of course we learned that a closed browser stifled innovation and added cost onto the cost of each computer bought. It took
[videoblogging] A nice html5 video player with fullscreen
Hello, This player looks very promising: http://jilion.com/sublime/video It doesnt work in firefox yet, and the fullscreen mode only works in very recent webkit nightly build, but the potential is there, the animations are nice, and performance seems good. As for the ogg theora issue, having spoken to a few people elsewhere on the web I still feel it is far more likely that firefox will be forced to try and get h.264 working by relying on the operating systems ability to play h264, than stay with ogg only and run the risk of losing browser market share. There is a lot of heat on the net about these issues but it isnt translating into anything that makes ogg more viable, at least not at this stage. Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: 2010 the year of the tablet?
Well as it turns out there is nothing for video creators/editors to get excited about from the iPad at this stage. Even for consumption of video its a mixed bag because it isnt HD or widescreen, though the pixels per inch isnt too bad so it should actually turn out to be quite nice for watching video on. Lack of flash should not be a surprise and html5 will stop this being a complete pain in the ass for video in browser, though it will cause some issues. Video format is the usual apple story, h.264 at 720p or lower resolutions, as well as older mpeg4 for lower resolutions. Looks like you may be able to watch the videos in place within the webpage rather than only fullscreen on the iphone/ipod touch but I am not 100% sure of this detail yet. Nothing to indicate that its a safe bet this Apple device will be the one that makes the tablet form of computers a huge success at this stage, though I still expect a lot of people will like it when they actually get to use it. I remain extremely excited about surfing the web via multitouch with a larger screen, so it meets my needs, and if the iphone has taught us anything its that the quality and quantity of apps makes a big difference, sot he iPad may be of more interest for creative tasks in the not too distant future, we will see. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Verdi michaelve...@... wrote: I just started a videoblog to document my triathlon training - all shot, edited and posted from my iphone. About to head out and make another update now. http://training.michaelverdi.com - Verdi On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 1:50 PM, johnle...@... wrote: I've been shooting video and editing it or broadcasting it live from my HP Compaq TC1100 tablet for nearly 4 years. A lot of my shooting is on building construction and restoration sites, so the highly portable tablet form factor is extraordinarily useful. Shoot in the morning, edit over lunch and post it. Or, when operating live over wireless with no cables at all, bluetooth from cam to tablet, wifi from tablet to the internet direct. Video Reports from the Field: http://www.historichomeworks.com/hhw/video/rftf.htm John Leeke by hammer and hand great works do stand with cam and light he shoots it right www.HistoricHomeWorks.com Yahoo! Groups Links -- Michael Verdi http://michaelverdi.com http://talkbot.tv
[videoblogging] Re: Learn from GIF's
Interesting, although I find the user comments on the first article you linked to interesting as well - complaints about the current user experience when using ogg on firefox in fullscreen. The gif example is a good one but for more reasons than the article pointed out - yes it was bad and it caused a huge stink and lots of ranting, but at the end of the day thats about all that happened, and gif is still with us to this day. If it was so hard to move away from a relatively simple image format then I dont hold out much hope when it comes to video. The article is wrong to suggest that h264 license terms can change every year - there are very well defined times when it will change, the important one being at the end of this year, and depending on how that works out we may or may not have more reason to moan about h264. Certainly I dont like patents or these issues they cause, and there is no doubt that this h264 html5 stuff is causing major woes for firefox, for which I can sympathise. But so much needs to happen to get this situation sorted, and there isnt much in it for the viewer or original creator of content at this stage. Many fine words about the importantness of open standards etc that are completely meaningless so long as the alternative formats arent brillian, suffer from a lack of tools for encoding etc. I mean you know Ive not held out much hope of theora for years, but even by my standards the progress achieved has been dismal - hardly any better tools for encoding theora, no hardware decoding chips for it (which is very important for the mobile space) and only a few sites providing content in that format (at least archive.org are, thats something I guess). Given that software developers are the ones most affected by the downside of h264, what is really needed is some more compelling reasons to embrace an open format - eg if the world was brimming with ideas about how we would like the edit, encode, remix etc video online, and lots of people were trying to make great sites do do this, then there would be additional reasons to look to an open format. But as this group shows, innovation on this front has been almost completely dead for some years now. I guess it is hard to overstate how much Google will determine the outcome of this saga. As far as I know the on2 shareholders have to vote on whether to accept Googles offer to buy on2, think this vote is some time in February, then lets see what happens. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for switching formats, I have been looking at that wordpress plugin which enabled h264 and theora via html5, or offers flash for browsers that dont support either of those, and it seems to work ok and is quite easy for the wordpress blog owner to get their head around, its just the encoding into theora in the first place which remains a bit of a pain. And as for the open video alliance video you posted recently - more fine lofty words but there is more vagueness and blending of all the different sorts of 'open' into one thing in order to demonstrate why open is important, but its a bit misleading really, because the theora stuff has nothing to do with the copyright other open issues they mention. And the case that we should use open standards to avoid costly barriers to entry would carry more weight with me if it bore much relation to the reality right now, eg if there were many video hardware software tools that actually used the open standards well, and no cheap h264 tools, but thats not actually the case. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: To complete my trilogy of emails today on why open standards in web video is important, I give you this great post: http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-h-264-what-history-tells-us-and-why-were-standing-with-the-web/ The web in 1999 was a lot smaller than it is today, so a lot of people don't remember what happened back when Unisys decided to start to enforce their GIF-related patentshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gif#Unisys_and_LZW_patent_enforcement. GIF was already widely used on the web as a fundamental web technology. Much like the codecs we're talking about today it wasn't in any particular spec but thanks to network effects it was in use basically everywhere. Unisys was asking some web site owners $5,000-$7,500 to able to use GIFs on their sites. Note that these patents expired about five years ago, so this isn't an issue today, but it's still instructive. It's scary to think of a world where you would have to fork up $5000 just to be able to use images on a web site. Think about all of the opportunity, the weblogs, the search engines (even Google!) and all the other the simple ideas that became major services that would never have been started because of a huge tax being put on being able to use a *fundamental* web technology. It makes the web as a democratic technology
[videoblogging] Re: Learn from GIF's
Greetings, --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: Chris Blizzard was clear that Ogg/Theora is not the holy grail: http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-h-264-what-history-tells-us-and-why-were-standing-with-the-web/ Well yes it was the video with lots of different people in it that I was drooling on about. In some ways it was a funny video because it did seem to encompass most of the big issues that got talked about in this group over the years, and thats not a bad thing, Im just not certain that grouping them all together under the banner 'open' is really good for educating people if it blurs the lines a lot. It ends up making me a little cynical in the same way that I roll my eyes and can be rude to people who throw around labels like open-source because they sound good, and then fail to actually open-source anything. Or when people were gushing over creative commons at the same time as wanting to control the distribution of their video, thus missing a big chunk of what cc was about, and you know I drove myself potty by bringing this point up many times back in the day and getting hardly any response. Its not so different from my rants about net neutrality debates, its quite easy to paint these issues as good versus evil, open versus closed, controlling centralised corporations versus the masses. Sometimes something good comes out of it, these are battles that should be had, but when the detail is lost in a wave of mass hysteria or pantomime villains, and great big dollops of fear-uncertainty and doubt get chucked around, I groan and make these tedious posts. My comments are usually not meant to be directed at the person raising the issues here, eg Im not accusing you of any of the above and you are certainly no bling ogg cheerleader, rather my rants are directed at the subject and its participants as a whole. There is certainly a lot of lofty philosophical talk happening right now around Open Video. Even that term is being inserted into relevant conversations so people start relaizing that there is a different being Open and Closed video. Its a slow education process. Ultimately most things start with philosophy and, if based in logic, move to reality. Well I wish that happened more. All too often the good stuff that actually comes from open ideologies ends up constrained to the margins. Whether it be copyright-challenging ideas like creative commons or issues of video hosting site terms conditions, independent aggregation tools, networks, directories, or open video codecs, something good gets achieved but falls well short of whats actually needed to really make a significant difference. Perhaps over a longer time period these things will sink in reality may move in the right direction, but the last 6 years have given me a very mixed feeling, people have spoken and struggled and tried to an extent that Ive got some renewed hope that people can achieve positive things, but Its still pretty amazing to me that Ogg/Theora is even in play. There are literally just a couple dudes who work kind-of fulltime on the codec. Compare that to the x-number of fulltime employees working on Flash and H264 stuff. As all these recent articles point out, everyone is waiting on Google to make the big play. Will they stick with H264/Flash and pay whatever license fees will be required to run Youtube and their emerging mobile phones? Or was their purchase of On2 (makers of .ogv) show they feel web video is a vital part of the web and refuse to give up that control to Adobe or the MPLA. I fear the fact we are seemingly waiting for Google to save us rather undermines certain aspects of the underlying philosophy. Its sad when open software fails when there arent actually enough developers putting its open nature to good use. Although evangelising video consumers and creators and people in general is an important part of the process, it can come across as premature and doomed if developers dont join in the fun and deliver lots of useable tools for the masse to actually use. Time and time again we have seen the practical realities completely trump the better philosophies: Youtube had some sucky terms and other faults but they did something right and came to dominate. Flash has some big downsides but it solved a real problem and came to dominate. We hated on portals and gatekeepers, especially in the mobile space, yet in the end what revolutionalised that stuff was just a new sleeker form of gatekeepery and control freakery. Apple itunes, by putting such elegance into the design and functionality of the product, skirted round these fine ideals. Maybe these 3 examples will eventually be corrected, and will one day stand as examples of something very different to the jaded and slightly defeatist sentiments I am expressing here, I shall certainly be interesting to see what happens. Cheers Steve
[videoblogging] Re: Youtube supports HTML5 (No more Flash?)
Flash is under some threat in most of the areas its been strong at in the past. Canvas tag, css transitions, downloadable fonts, and various other things mean it can be gradually replaced. I welcome this, not least because of the cost of flash development tools. But it will take a long time whatever happens, and for flash to be beaten on most fronts these various wonderful web standards must actually work properly in all major browsers. Flash could be largely gone from the web in 3-10 years depending on how all this stuff plays out, or it may be around for a very long time, I guess what happens with multitouch and mobile web will also have bearing on flashes health in years to come, these could be areas where it will eaither struggle or conquer new territory. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, sull sullele...@... wrote: I still have high hopes for the future of Ogg. Will be interesting to see what the next phase entails and if Google will even contribute to Ogg or put out it's own project (typical). Regarding Flash... We should frame this properly Flash obviously has infinite uses beyond the standard web video player and will continue to be heavily used by developers and consumers. What I welcome is the ability to not depend on Flash for the standard web video player and let it be supported by native browser/html standards and get consensus on codecs and/or let web browser users configure it (prompt). Sull On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: I'm really bummed that Google and Apple are doing this with h264 and Mozilla is using Ogg. The more I look into ogg the more that I see that for most cases it can be just as good as h264. It would really help if someone made a fucking compression app (with a GUI) for it. Firefogg is pretty darn good though. Holy shit! Verdi this is a breakthrough! This summer I know you were pretty down on Ogg/Theora because it would never be as good as H264. Just as good wasnt good enough. Because Google and Apple are now separating ways and competing head to head, Id be interested to see if Google doesnt put out a version of Ogg/Theora that kicks ass because they have a team of engineers working on it. There would be profit in the investment because they'd no longer have to pay a codec license fee for their phones or websites. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://momentshowing.net http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: Youtube supports HTML5 (No more Flash?)
As for the Youtube HTML5 experiment, I like it, it uses less CPU on my macbook pro, although the saving is not hugely dramatic because of flash becoming more efficient in that regard not so long ago. It is missing quite a few features compared to the youtube flash version, and Ive no idea what Googles future plans are regarding ogg, I doubt converting all the videos to another format will be fun for them but on the otherhand they might be able to make ogg encoding less energy cost intensive than h264. Even so, as long as they have to provide h264 version to work with certain browsers, I cant see them being too keen to have all youtube videos in many different formats. As with posts in the past I still question how ogg will ever dominate video if its only advantage is to do with licensing, as licensing issues with h264 dont affect many of us so what is the point really? Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: Flash is under some threat in most of the areas its been strong at in the past. Canvas tag, css transitions, downloadable fonts, and various other things mean it can be gradually replaced. I welcome this, not least because of the cost of flash development tools. But it will take a long time whatever happens, and for flash to be beaten on most fronts these various wonderful web standards must actually work properly in all major browsers. Flash could be largely gone from the web in 3-10 years depending on how all this stuff plays out, or it may be around for a very long time, I guess what happens with multitouch and mobile web will also have bearing on flashes health in years to come, these could be areas where it will eaither struggle or conquer new territory. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, sull sulleleven@ wrote: I still have high hopes for the future of Ogg. Will be interesting to see what the next phase entails and if Google will even contribute to Ogg or put out it's own project (typical). Regarding Flash... We should frame this properly Flash obviously has infinite uses beyond the standard web video player and will continue to be heavily used by developers and consumers. What I welcome is the ability to not depend on Flash for the standard web video player and let it be supported by native browser/html standards and get consensus on codecs and/or let web browser users configure it (prompt). Sull On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Jay dedman jay.dedman@ wrote: I'm really bummed that Google and Apple are doing this with h264 and Mozilla is using Ogg. The more I look into ogg the more that I see that for most cases it can be just as good as h264. It would really help if someone made a fucking compression app (with a GUI) for it. Firefogg is pretty darn good though. Holy shit! Verdi this is a breakthrough! This summer I know you were pretty down on Ogg/Theora because it would never be as good as H264. Just as good wasnt good enough. Because Google and Apple are now separating ways and competing head to head, Id be interested to see if Google doesnt put out a version of Ogg/Theora that kicks ass because they have a team of engineers working on it. There would be profit in the investment because they'd no longer have to pay a codec license fee for their phones or websites. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://momentshowing.net http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: Youtube supports HTML5 (No more Flash?)
Well there are likely quite a lot of developers who are excited about various things in html5, including the video tag. They may be excited about it because it is potentially elegant and flexible and a standard that will work on a variety of browsers platforms one day, and you dont need to buy flash, learn actionscript or use someone elses flash video player. They may enjoy the development process more if everything is done in css, html javascript rather than having to use something else when dealing with video. These things have real practical implications for how and what they create, and so the principals and beliefs about standards, openness, profit, control have many important consequences for developers in practice. But interest in html5 video tag is not exactly the same as interest in ogg, because there are browsers using h264 with html5 video tag, and at this point in time using ogg rather than h264 does not offer any technical advantage beyond firefox compatibility. Lots of developers love firefox so its going to be messy, especially for developers who want to use the myriad of h264 videos that already exist on the web in their application - they can do it if their users are on safari or chrome (or even chrome frame on IE), but firefox and normal IE will spoil the party. Throw in the presently hideous realities when it comes to creators of video having nice workflows for encoding their stuff to ogg, and the ever increasing use of h264 in hardware and software that can play, edit or record video, and you can probably see why I question the practical consequences of pushing for greater ogg use. Unless google create a megaogg with various practical advantages, or weird things happen in the world of browsers or h2634 licensing terms, its quite possible that all the patents for technologies used by h264 will have expired before ogg comes to dominate, thus eliminating oggs one advantage. I think patents only last 20 years? Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: As with posts in the past I still question how ogg will ever dominate video if its only advantage is to do with licensing, as licensing issues with h264 dont affect many of us so what is the point really? This is a good question. Not sure I know the answer. But why did Firefox gain so much traction, and open up to other free browers? Explorer was a free to us users. I guess the creative class wanted more control and ability to customize/play. Feels the same way now. Developers are excited by HTML5 and ogg/theora because they are no profit-based restrictions based. We want logic. But future versions of ogg/theora must be useful and helpful in order to be succeed. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://momentshowing.net http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: 2010 the year of the flip?
Broadly speaking Red make cameras that are the digital equivalent to film cameras used in cinematography. They want to set a new standard for affordable high-spec modular cameras. Bt thats affordable compared to equivalents in that high end of the marketplace, their stuff is considerably more expensive than the sort of video cameras vloggers and others are likely to come across. Results can be stunning but the workflow and skills required to operate the camera are quite a bit different to what people are used to from video cameras, its far more like being a camera operator for cinema, which is something I know very little about but from what I understand its not exactly 'point and shoot'. Cheers Seve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jim Turner jtur...@... wrote: Give us the deets Pete. What are the specs etc on RedOne as it looks intriguing. Jim On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Pete Prodoehl ras...@... wrote: Hmmm, the Flip? I'm shooting with the RED ONE in 2010. :) Pete Joly MacFie wrote: I think the flip (I got the HD for xmas) could be transformational - it's like the brownie cam of videoblogging.. It's not just the cam but also the flipshare software/service that comes with it... It's pretty much idiot-proof.. j On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 6:33 PM, David Jones david.jo...@...david.jones%40altium.com wrote: On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 3:42 AM, elbowsofdeath st...@...steve%40dvmachine.com wrote: Belated new years greetings to all, Ive not been keeping up with the list much in the last year or so but am back again for now... -- Jim Turner One By One Media, LLC www.onebyonemedia.com www.bloggersforhire.com @Genuine this email is: [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: Brief history of video compression
I suspect there were both performance, user experience and business/control freak reasons not to put flash on the iphone. Certainly on the desktop flash was very cpu-intensive and older mobile lite versions of flash were not very good. However Adobe have been improving on this, and there is a general move towards gpu-accelerated video decoding which takes the load of the cpu on both desktops and mobile devices. Its especially important on mobiles for battery life and because the cpus often are not powerful enough to do decent video playback on their own. Flash has been getting better at hardware-acelerated stuff but Apple still want to do things their way. Apple also probably wanted to be careful with the user experience in terms of things like multitouch and screen size, so they didnt want people running flashbased apps that were not iphone specific. But I would think they also wanted to make sure that iphone developers use Apple stuff rather than flash, there are a few commercial reasons for this, and the success of the app store will make them even keener to persue these sorts of strategies. On the desktop Apple have also been dong all sorts of things that could increase the chances of flash becoming obsolete in the longterm, eg canvas tags, downloadable fonts, css transforms transitions, webGL. Apple have mostly been doing this the right way, by giving these things to other standards bodies to ratify and make part of web standards that goes way beyond Apple, although Apple have not helped the chances of the html5 video tag becoming a big success due to the standard codec issues. If I was forced to make a prediction Id say that flash will slowly fade out over the next 2-5 years as web standards browsers improve. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, forestm...@... wrote: Joly MacFie wrote: Forest - are you suggesting that flash is more cpu-intensive than baseline h.264? Is that so? I was referring to the flash player in general and wasn't suggesting the flash container itself requires significantly more resources on the client side. (Also, flash is a container format; 264 is a compression format, so not completely sure what your question is.) Even so, when Adobe/Apple rolled out their 'compromise' last year, there was the usual hang-wringing about battery life browser performance; although to my mind it's not clear how a custom rolled app that plays flash video from a specific site (eg. Hulu) would *necessarily* realise significant performance gains. (At just 5MB the whole binary itself weighs in on the low side of a typical app, and not likely the app porter is going to improve its performance.) But then I haven't built an app such as that, myself yet. stay tuned, forest mars -- mnn.org http://mnn.org
[videoblogging] Re: Brief history of video compression
h.264 tends to be more cpu intensive than older flash video codecs. Playing h.264 via a flash wrapper in a browser can use a lot more cpu than playing it via native operating system video player/browser plugin. But the latest beta of flash player features significantly lower cpu use when playing video, and various computers operating systems are tending to shift h.264 playback to the gpu rather than cpu, and flash is trying to do this also. As for the broader question of video compression, h.264 is quite firmly entrenched now, and for most people it will continue to be the best option as they are not affected by licensing issues. If you sell your videos and they are less than 12 minutes long or you have less than 100,000 users, its not an issue. If you give awa your videos then its not an issue, although the license does change at the end of 2010, it probably still wont affect many people unless they have really big audiences, its the usual story of them only targeting people with revenue who could reasonably afford to pay. If you make hardware or software that does encoding, or if you are offering a video hosting site on the internet, it could be an issue. And as even Microsoft have had to come to the h.264 party, I dont think there is going to be a shift away from h.264 any time soon. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Joly MacFie j...@... wrote: Beg pardon, Forest - are you suggesting that flash is more cpu-intensive than baseline h.264? Is that so? joly On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Mars Forest for...@... wrote: While there has been much rampant speculation, and Apple has said/implied different things at different times, I'm inclined to believe them when they indicate the client-side cpu requirements, which is one of the things that makes flash so appealing, were a decisive factor. -- --- Joly MacFie 917 442 8665 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com ---
[videoblogging] 2010 the year of the tablet?
Belated new years greetings to all, Ive not been keeping up with the list much in the last year or so but am back again for now... So, is this going to be the year that the tablet form factor finally takes off? And if so, will it have many implications for vlogging? Assuming that Apple are going to announce a tablet/slate/call it what you will near the end of the month, and knowing that other companies have been showing off tablets or assocaited technology recently (eg Microsoft, HP, nvidia), I guess there are 3 areas where this could have implications for vlogging: Mobile editing - perhaps the larger screen, more power multitouch will refresh the mobile editing experience in a good way? New viewing device/habits/resolution - Assume device will be at least 720p res (eg 1280x800), perhaps even full HD. Smaller videos will probably still look quite nice but maybe this stuff will encourage more HD content? Not sure if people watching on tablets will increase demand for web video or cange the potential audience their habits much? Beginnings of a new sleeker web, 3D multitouch or at least flash-free 2d slickness? Ive been wanting to develop web stuff for a suitable tablet for years now, although I must confess that since youtube, facebook twitter came to dominate Ive become very unclear about what is next for the web and what services people might actually need. Cheers Steve Elbows PS. I didnt have time to hunt for new shows/vlogs in 2009, any tips for great new stuff that came along?
[videoblogging] Re: Mystery
It seems to be using html5 video tag and including links to both .mp4 and ogg versions of videos on archive.org. So if I look at it using safari, I get the mp4 version, I assume I would get the ogg if I used a recent firefox, and for other browsers it may fallback to flash. Im sure we would have had a lot more techie talk about this, and seen a lot more of it in use, if this era were not dominated by video hosting services that have added lots of other stuff to their flash-based players. Maybe we will still see more of it once the video tag support in browsers is more mature, and certainly there may be some interest from people who like to DIY and would like their page to serve up video in the way best suited to the viewers browser or device. Its an extension of the 'serve a h264 in a flash player for most browsers but have code on the page so that iphone users can get the same h264 video but without the flash player' concept. Easy to build on that to also serve h264 without flash for safari, easy to serve ogg for firefox, just a shame that entails having to have your videos in another format as well, something that will put some off. Does anyone know what Google Chrome browsers appraoch to the video tag is, does it support it and if so which codecs? Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: Does anyone know who made this site? http://alpha.publicvideos.org Its very cool...seems to use Ogg format. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://momentshowing.net http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: Where to Host Videos Now that My Beloved Blip.tv Doesn't Love Me Anymore
Sort of reminds me of the minefield we got into with the question of what is commercial in the context of creative commons licenses. Only this one has sharper teeth. I mean obviously there are some cases which are pretty clear cut, especially if its established companies just trying to avoid costs of hosting video, but the grey area is still pretty large. Im slightly surprised and happy that we havent seen more video hosting sites vanish in the last 18 months, so I dont want to knock them for trying to focus and transition but its still going to be ugly at times, especially for people with sizeable archive of vids. It sure does feel like a long time ago that sites were falling overthemselves to attract almost every sort of content creator and the buzz that video was where the money will be seems long gone. If I ever build a successful web company (not likely), someone remind me to sell it quick before the fickle sands of the web shift. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Markus Sandy markus.sa...@... wrote: On Oct 29, 2009, at 7:26 AM, Rupert Howe wrote: Do you know what the issues are that people have with Vimeo TOS? I'm aware of a case where video content was interviews with people who are involved with various web-related projects. Videos we're identified by Vimeo as commercial due to some interview subjects speaking about their company or product. Vimeo TOS says they are for non-commercial use only. Markus [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: New UK Video on Demand regulations
Hello, I havent finished reading the document yet, but from what Ive read so far the key is the scope, and they certainly dont want to include all uk youtubers etc in this, especially as this is a more pro-active form of regulation than the FTC stuff in that VOD broadcasters have to register as being such with the regulators. Its basically aimed at online equivalents of TV networks/broadcasters. Again there are probably some murky areas where only time will tell how this is handled, eg if you produce a heck of a lot of content that is 'tv show-like' and have tons of viewers then its possible you'd start to slip within their scope. That could get quite messy as there is more regulatory burden with these rules than the FTC stuff, but as the regulator themselves likely dont want this burden any more than the creators, this scenario may well never happen. Maybe there will be a test case at some point which will allow these issues to be explored with more concrete detail, maybe not, anyway as the UK rules are based on EU legislation I would be keen to know the detail of how other EU countries have implemented this stuff within their own national laws. Certainly if the scope of these rules ended up being very broad and encompassed the uk vlogosphere, then the fact that a collection of companies from the industry get to do some of the regulating would become a huge issue. The idea of these corps policing the little man would crate a big stink, and the companies, the government regulator and the masses would have a nightmare on their hands. But I take this as a sign that thats not a scenerio they want to get into with this regulation, rather than a sign that the government corps want to bind crush us. Regarding my failure to take slippery slope concepts seriously, I do not completely rule out that things are sometimes just 'the tip of the iceberg'. But as its possible to imagine icebergs everywhere, in every area of life, politics, policy law, every time someone suggested doing anything pro-active at all, I prefer not to get carried away with hyping the threat. I think I recently rad a US news item about a man who was doing census work for the fed who ended up dead, and some people were suggesting that a right wing blogger who had implied that census data was being collected with the purpose of putting US citizens in concentration camps in future, was a potential factor in the sort of anti-fed sentiment that can sometimes go too far and lead to loss of life. Having said all that, on occasions in the past where some were predicting or fearing that corporations will try to crush vloggers ability to vlog, I suggested it was more likely that government would be more likely to impose restrictions on vvloggers than corporations, although that was partly because I have trouble with the idea that corporations see indy vloggers as a threat to their domination. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: In the context of the recent discussion about the FTC clampdown on blogola and, in particular, the mud being thrown from across the pond at the idea of slippery slopes, I note these new rules soon to come in to force in the UK. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/vod/ I'd like to hear what the folks from Britain have to say about their own rule. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://jaydedman.com http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: Google Wave the state of the net in general
Hello, Thanks very much for the info, and thanks to Jay too for his thoughts. Cheers Steve --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert Howe rup...@... wrote: Steve, On 1-Oct-09, at 5:19 PM, elbowsofdeath wrote: What significant developments have happened on the web in recent years, especially pertaining to vlogging? How have the video hosting services evolved, or have they just been treading water and trying to survive in recent times? Are there any interesting projects that people are throwing themselves into? Check out the Artists in the Cloud group: http://groups.google.com/group/artists-in-the-cloud/ where people are discussing this stuff and circling the kind of video projects they're considering throwing themselves into.
[videoblogging] FTC rules on blogger Payola
I am pleased that the FTC has revised its guidelines so that they cover bloggers who do not disclose fee's or freebies they receive from companies: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8291825.stm I have not yet had time to read the full arguments of those who are against this, though I start from the position of viewing their stance with quite some skepticism. Thou shalt not shill without disclosure sounds fair enough to me. Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: FTC rules on blogger Payola
Well you are certainly correct that I am not from the US so my knowledge is somewhat limited, however I have witnessed enough ranting and drooling on the net about related issues in the past to have some vague idea about the kind of arguments that are made to support the special brand of capitalist freedom that many on that side of the pond seem to get excited about. Indignation about the idea that the government would regulate the web in any way does not get much sympathy from me when it is applied very broadly. Existing laws prevent people from doing all sorts of things on the web without the sky falling in. You cant stir up violence or call for murder or bloody revolution or sell quack devices or illegal drugs or indulge in complete fraud or child porn without falling foul of the law. The web has never been an unregulated new wild west, despite the hyperbole of some. I also dont buy into the idea that this will bury people in paperwork or legal fee's or whatever, these are guidelines which simply require people who indulge in commercial activity to consider disclosure and ethical issues properly instead of only being guided by their own moral compass. Good. The global nature of the web certainly complicates issues such as these but I doubt it will cause too many issues in this case. Certainly I feel that noble ideas about self-regulation, codes of conducts, the blogosphere policing itself because those who do not disclose will ultimately fall foul of public backlash and will soil their own brand are all well and good, but just as with wider notions of industry self-regulation, I raise my eyebrows and feel it is not enough. Anyways Im sure the last thing this group needs is for me to take us back to the bad old days where my loud opinionating and sometimes harsh tone lead to headaches and a giant waste of peoples time, so I shall zip my cakehole now. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: I am pleased that the FTC has revised its guidelines so that they cover bloggers who do not disclose fee's or freebies they receive from companies: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8291825.stm I have not yet had time to read the full arguments of those who are against this, though I start from the position of viewing their stance with quite some skepticism. Thou shalt not shill without disclosure sounds fair enough to me. You dont know the US very well. Criticism stands on complete anger that the government would regulate the web at all. --Who's going to keep track? Who pays for this supervision? More bureaucracy. --Bloggers especially feel it's an attempt to limit their ability to take on big power by entrapping them in legal limbo by silly lawsuits. --it starts by regulating disclosure. what will be next? It'll get to the point where an individual person needs so much paperwork and legal help to blog that only big companies can afford it...thus taking away why the web has been cool. --The web is global territory. So if you (in England) dont disclose something on your blog, will the FBI come after you? Will they then get Scotland Yard to arrest you? This a brief rundown of worries. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://jaydedman.com http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: FTC rules on blogger Payola
Sorry I am breaking my own claim that I would shutup already. I apologise as Ive blundered into a minefield without considering all of the issues properly before speaking. Apparently this stuff applies to twitter and other things too, so I really dont see the insured and licensed professionals things as a likely outcome of this sort of regulation. I dont buy slippery slope arguments easily, and certainly not in this case, though I would concede that it raises more issues than my initially dismissive musings suggest. Im sure some of the difficulties with balancing freedoms and rights is that one persons freedom may impinge on anothers rights. The term 'consumer protection' is used to argue for regulation, as a consumer dont I have the right to know if someone is blogging positively about a product because they are being paid or given freebies? Considering all is not squaeaky clean in the traditional media in this regard, and that one of the great hopes for blogging is that it would somewhat overcome the duplicity between the media and the entities they write about, why must we focus only on the negative freedom-destroying aspects of legislation when considering these things? Im not complaining about people discussing the freedom stuff and their concerns for the future, its simply that as there seems to be no shortage of people prepared to make such cases, I prefer to focus on any valid reasons that may exist for regulation. So trying to keep it to the narrow specifics of these particular FTC guidelines, is it really wrong that I should face a fine if I endorse products without disclosing that I am benefitting in some way? It doesnt seem like a large and murky minefield that would disuade many from blogging at all? Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Markus Sandy markus.sa...@... wrote: On Oct 6, 2009, at 3:38 AM, elbowsofdeath wrote: I have not yet had time to read the full arguments of those who are against this, though I start from the position of viewing their stance with quite some skepticism. I think the handwriting on the wall is pretty clear: Make blogging something for only insured and licensed professionals under the guise of protecting people. markus [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: FTC rules on blogger Payola
Im not even sure the US would request it, let alone the UK grant it. We are after all talking about the sort of legislation where fines are used to disuade companies and corporations from indulging in certain practices when it comes to advertising and marketing, not exactly hanging offenses. Anyway whilst the extradition act is flawed in some ways, the courts do have some say in the matter, as seen when a Pentagon hacker with aspergers challenged this extradition. The challenge failed, but UK courts were at least involved. Im just reading the full FTC guidelines now, it seems pretty good, and Ive also seen plenty of positive comments about it (as well as many negative ones) on Twitter, some from US citizens, so lets not pretend that there is a clear split to the sides of this debate based on cultural differences. (Note that I am not accusing Adrian of this for obvious reasons, just happen to be tacking this detail onto the end of this reply). Cheers Steve Elbows PS. Hoorah the guidelines also remove the stupid 'these results are not typical' safe harbour clause for TV print adverts, no more extreme weightloss examples seeming like the norm if you dont read the smallprint. --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Miles adrian.mi...@... wrote: ah yes, but presumably Blair at least left a court to determine this? in which case it is still reasonable to think that an English court is not going to extradite an English citizen for cash for comment in their blog :-) or can we expect extraordinary rendition for cash for comment bloggers? On 07/10/2009, at 2:19 AM, Rupert Howe wrote: Slightly beside the point, but sadly since 2003 the UK has had a one- sided Extradition Act in which the USA can demand the extradition of anybody without presenting prima facie evidence. Although the UK, of course, doesn't have the right to demand extradition of US citizens under the same terms. It was fast tracked through parliament in the name of fighting terrorism - though it has of course been used more often to extradite non-terrorist suspects. Another lovely part of Blair's proud legacy as W's bitch. cheers Adrian Miles adrian.mi...@... Program Director, Bachelor of Communication Honours vogmae.net.au
[videoblogging] Re: FTC rules on blogger Payola
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Tom Gosse bigdogvi...@... wrote: On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Adrian Miles adrian.mi...@...wrote: I don't think bloggers, on the one hand, can call for the same rights and privileges as the press, but then not want to actually be held to reasonable ethical standards. Well said! -- Tom Gosse (Irish Hermit) Indeed, very well put. I miss the ethical debates here, which admittedly didnt get too deep as it pertains to videoblogging rather than text blogging, as I dont think there were too many examples of widespread non-disclosure at the time. I seem to recall we had a conversation about product placement in vlogs once or twice, has much changed in the intervening years, eg some dramatic examples of such things? Ho ho ho the new rules apply to celebrities too. Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: FTC rules on blogger Payola
From what I have read of the FTCs guidelines and stance so far, it mostly boils down to whether people are being mislead, and the regard that consumers have for different messengers is taken into account . eg if people dont trust journalists very much in the first place, or expect them to be distorting things for commercial reasons, then this is taken into account when considering how likely people are to be mislead, ie the capacity to mislead is reduced if the messenger is not trusted in the first place. When individuals blog on the net, there are not likely to be so many preconceived ideas, people may be more inclined to take them at face value, hence the need to disclosure of commercial relationships and suchlike. permit to speak' is rhetoric that just makes me laugh, thats not what this is about at all. Nobody has to get a license to speak, its just that they dont have freedom to say whatever they like without potential consequences, which is fine by me. We are never free from the consequences of words, whether its me being unpopular for things I say, or someone risking a fine for trying to promote things in ways that are potentially misleading. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert Howe rup...@... wrote: Ethical standards is funny in relation to newspaper journalism. I don't know many newspapers in the UK that have much in the way of real ethics, certainly not much in the way of morals. Sure, they have some house standards, and they are self-regulating in cases of extreme breach. But mostly it's just muckraking, partisan politics and sensationalism in the name of trying to stay afloat and not lose advertisers. Look through your newspapers today and tell me that they're being transparent about their advertising. A journalist in this group told me only last month about how his editor killed a story he was writing about a huge corporate crime solely because the criminals were big advertisers. I think maybe the US has a stronger myth of the noble journalist and truth seeking press. However true that is, I don't know - certainly I don't see much in the way of truth seeking editors and proprietors. So I don't see why people writing or publishing online have to be regulated at all, beyond existing laws. There will always be conmen and suckers, politicians and voters, papers and readers. Regulations like this don't change any of that, they're just something for politicians and civil servants to do. And how will this be enforced - whose permits would be monitored and taken away, and how? Surely it's a joke - but a lucrative joke, if your Permit To Speak costs you money to buy. And, in the end, Permits to Speak will be abused by people who don't agree with what you say. On 6-Oct-09, at 4:48 PM, Tom Gosse wrote: On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Adrian Miles adrian.mi...@... wrote: I don't think bloggers, on the one hand, can call for the same rights and privileges as the press, but then not want to actually be held to reasonable ethical standards. Well said! -- Tom Gosse (Irish Hermit) bigdogvi...@... www.irishhermit.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: FTC rules on blogger Payola
Spot on, especially the point in your blog about us being even more vulnerable to such things, not less. I think the same is also true of politics, the seductive trappings of power may overwhelm and corrupt those who have risen from the lower planes of disenfranchisement even more than those who are brought up, educated and indoctrinated to be managers/rulers. It can be easy to sneer at journalistic codes of conduct given the reality of that industry, but at least there is some idea of standards and a clear barometer by which failings can be measured, and those who have been educated to enter that field at least know some detail about the ethical minefield and so dont make the kind of jaw-dropping statements that some in the blogosphere have made when defending themselves against accusations of selling out. I dont want to mention names as that will only open open old wounds, but I can think of a couple of instances where such things emerged on this list years ago, although I think there was also an example of political non-disclosure which never got aired here in detail, boom boom Senator Edwards. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Roxanne Darling oke...@... wrote: Well I hate to disagree with some of you however I just blogged about this (again) this morning:It's Official: Bloggers Are Recognized by the FTChttp://www.barefeetstudios.com/2009/10/06/its-official-bloggers-are-recognized-by-the-ftc/ http://www.barefeetstudios.com/2009/10/06/its-official-bloggers-are-recognized-by-the-ftc/I see it from another side. If bloggers want respect, we have to stop acting like we are above ethics and can somehow police ourselves when no other group of humanity has demonstrated that ability. Do you not all see the payola that is everywhere in the blogosphere? Does that not bother you as the pure of heart I know so many of you to be? True Case in point: Well-know travel blogger writes on her blog that she was fired from her job. She bemoans the situation, says she didn't like it anyway, and os going to take a trip to Hawaii to clear her head. Her loyal and empathic readers give her the blog equivalent of you go girl! we support you taking you care of yourself. She then proceeds to blog lyrically about the cool places where she stays on multiple islands and the amazing (business) people she meets on her trip. No where does she disclose that her trip was a fam trip. A practice long ago abandoned by reputable travel writers. No where does she use the nofollow tag on all her links to so-called friends she met and products/services she used/bought on her trip. I think that is misleading and abuse of privilege. I also think it is unnecessary. Loyal readers will be happy she got the earned trip and will ignore themselves the built-in advantage one gives to gifts in cash or in kind. We don't like this practice when lobbyists take our congress people on vacations and we don't like it when said congress people claim not to be influenced. What's the difference anyway? We are NOT talking about limiting free speech or regulating independent opinions. This rule is about regulating COMMERCIAL speech or speech that has been influenced by commerce. Done. Aloha, Roxanne On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 6:56 AM, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: From what I have read of the FTCs guidelines and stance so far, it mostly boils down to whether people are being mislead, and the regard that consumers have for different messengers is taken into account . eg if people dont trust journalists very much in the first place, or expect them to be distorting things for commercial reasons, then this is taken into account when considering how likely people are to be mislead, ie the capacity to mislead is reduced if the messenger is not trusted in the first place. When individuals blog on the net, there are not likely to be so many preconceived ideas, people may be more inclined to take them at face value, hence the need to disclosure of commercial relationships and suchlike. permit to speak' is rhetoric that just makes me laugh, thats not what this is about at all. Nobody has to get a license to speak, its just that they dont have freedom to say whatever they like without potential consequences, which is fine by me. We are never free from the consequences of words, whether its me being unpopular for things I say, or someone risking a fine for trying to promote things in ways that are potentially misleading. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com videoblogging%40yahoogroups.com, Rupert Howe rupert@ wrote: Ethical standards is funny in relation to newspaper journalism. I don't know many newspapers in the UK that have much in the way of real ethics, certainly not much in the way of morals. Sure, they have some house standards, and they are self-regulating in cases of extreme
[videoblogging] Re: FTC rules on blogger Payola
Its their own fault if it doesnt even dawn on them, let this be a long overdue wakeup call. The FTC look at all this stuff on a case-by-case basis anyway, they arent going to attempt to police this stuff down to the last blog or twitter, indeed a large point of updating the guidelines is to get most people to self-police because they wont have the excuse that they never even considered this stuff or that the guidelines didnt mention them. And for those who persistently mislead or just ignore the issue, well occasionally the book will get thrown at them, further raising awareness for everyone else. Im sure that a few genuinely murky areas may emerge where people may be justified in not knowing how to handle things, or where there seems to bean injustice, but overall after reading the guidelines I think quite a lot of sensible thinking has gone into them and for the majority of cases its quite straightforward. If I have understood the guidelines properly, one area that may spell trouble for certain corners of the blogosphere is that companies can be held to account if bloggers that they pay or give freebies to, make misleading claims about the products. Companies are advised to shield themselves from this stuff by taking some steps to limit this where possible, such as monitoring the bloggers they seduce, and not giving any more freebies to bloggers who make spurious claims about their products. The celebrity stuff brought a grin to my face as celebs can no longer rely on a 'I was just reading a script/sticking to my contract' defense if they are bullshitting about a product in certain specific ways. I consider all of this as fairly inevitable considering the changed nature of the distribution of these messages. Endorsers messages are no longer published only by the company who make the products, do the endorsers themselves are deemed responsible and will sometimes be held to account. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, David King davidleek...@... wrote: I know a lot of bloggers that mix business and pleasure, professional interests and family, and well - they're still in that murky middle area where policies like the FTC is going after ... wouldn't even dawn on them. That, plus the fact that there are like a gazillion blogs out there, makes this a hard thing to enforce, I think :-)
[videoblogging] Re: FTC rules on blogger Payola
Anyway enough of my opinions, here are 3 examples from the guidelines that apply to blogging etc, as opposed to adverts, and hopefully clarify just what we are talking about here. They are taken from a few different sections near the end of this document: http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf Example 5: A skin care products advertiser participates in a blog advertising service. The service matches up advertisers with bloggers who will promote the advertiser's products on their personal blogs. The advertiser requests that a blogger try a new body lotion and write a review of the product on her blog. Although the advertiser does not make any specific claims about the lotion's ability to cure skin conditions and the blogger does not ask the advertiser whether there is substantiation for the claim, in her review the blogger writes that the lotion cures eczema and recommends the product to her blog readers who suffer from this condition. The advertiser is subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made through the blogger's endorsement. The blogger also is subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made in the course of her endorsement. The blogger is also liable if she fails to disclose clearly and conspicuously that she is being paid for her services. Example 7: A college student who has earned a reputation as a video game expert maintains a personal weblog or blog where he posts entries about his gaming experiences. Readers of his blog frequently seek his opinions about video game hardware and software. As it has done in the past, the manufacturer of a newly released video game system sends the student a free copy of the system and asks him to write about it on his blog. He tests the new gaming system and writes a favorable review. Because his review is disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious, readers are unlikely to know that he has received the video game system free of charge in exchange for his review of the product, and given the value of the video game system, this fact likely would materially affect the credibility they attach to his endorsement. Accordingly, the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge. The manufacturer should advise him at the time it provides the gaming system that this connection should be disclosed, and it should have procedures in place to try to monitor his postings for compliance. Example 8: An online message board designated for discussions of new music download technology is frequented by MP3 player enthusiasts. They exchange information about new products, utilities, and the functionality of numerous playback devices. Unbeknownst to the message board community, an employee of a leading playback device manufacturer has been posting messages on the discussion board promoting the manufacturer's product. Knowledge of this poster's employment likely would affect the weight or credibility of her endorsement. Therefore, the poster should clearly and conspicuously disclose her relationship to the manufacturer to members and readers of the message board. Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: FTC rules on blogger Payola
and lawmakers? I don't know - I guess I'm missing what's getting you all so excited about this. Rupert http://twittervlog.tv On 6-Oct-09, at 5:56 PM, elbowsofdeath wrote: From what I have read of the FTCs guidelines and stance so far, it mostly boils down to whether people are being mislead, and the regard that consumers have for different messengers is taken into account . eg if people dont trust journalists very much in the first place, or expect them to be distorting things for commercial reasons, then this is taken into account when considering how likely people are to be mislead, ie the capacity to mislead is reduced if the messenger is not trusted in the first place. When individuals blog on the net, there are not likely to be so many preconceived ideas, people may be more inclined to take them at face value, hence the need to disclosure of commercial relationships and suchlike. permit to speak' is rhetoric that just makes me laugh, thats not what this is about at all. Nobody has to get a license to speak, its just that they dont have freedom to say whatever they like without potential consequences, which is fine by me. We are never free from the consequences of words, whether its me being unpopular for things I say, or someone risking a fine for trying to promote things in ways that are potentially misleading. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert Howe rupert@ wrote: Ethical standards is funny in relation to newspaper journalism. I don't know many newspapers in the UK that have much in the way of real ethics, certainly not much in the way of morals. Sure, they have some house standards, and they are self-regulating in cases of extreme breach. But mostly it's just muckraking, partisan politics and sensationalism in the name of trying to stay afloat and not lose advertisers. Look through your newspapers today and tell me that they're being transparent about their advertising. A journalist in this group told me only last month about how his editor killed a story he was writing about a huge corporate crime solely because the criminals were big advertisers. I think maybe the US has a stronger myth of the noble journalist and truth seeking press. However true that is, I don't know - certainly I don't see much in the way of truth seeking editors and proprietors. So I don't see why people writing or publishing online have to be regulated at all, beyond existing laws. There will always be conmen and suckers, politicians and voters, papers and readers. Regulations like this don't change any of that, they're just something for politicians and civil servants to do. And how will this be enforced - whose permits would be monitored and taken away, and how? Surely it's a joke - but a lucrative joke, if your Permit To Speak costs you money to buy. And, in the end, Permits to Speak will be abused by people who don't agree with what you say. On 6-Oct-09, at 4:48 PM, Tom Gosse wrote: On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Adrian Miles adrian.miles@ wrote: I don't think bloggers, on the one hand, can call for the same rights and privileges as the press, but then not want to actually be held to reasonable ethical standards. Well said! -- Tom Gosse (Irish Hermit) bigdogvideo@ www.irishhermit.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: iPod Nano shoots video
I disagree. Nokia started down this path with their Internet Tablets, the 770 and 800, which pre-date the iphone. So they've had their toes in the water for a while, including opensource. I had an N800, it had some real nice features but it suffered from the usual problem when compared to the iphone: clunky, and not enough polished apps = not as much fun. Open source is not the be all and end all, developers may care more about having a feature-rich platform to build on and which offers good opportunities for monetizing their work. Open source certainly has its advantages, everything Apple have done wrong with app store and approving apps and being control freaks reminds people of the benefits of being opensource, and stops us from blindly swapping nightmares involving the mobile phone networks being gatekeepers, for nightmares where the device manufacturer is the gatekeeper. But the open source movement has its own woes and downsides, to date I only really consider it a massive success with certain webapps, eg wordpress, and probably a few desktop apps but not many really. And the Apple app store also opens eyeballs by demonstrating that people are still quite prepared to pay for apps if the experience is deemed good enough. Open standards and interoperability fascinate me more than open source apps. On the web I have to rely on many services that are provided by corporations, and the same is true for most hardware. But at least if some commons standards are used with this stuff, it gives us some flexibility and freedom. With the exception of Internet Explorer, Im very happy with where the web and browsers have been going in regards to standards, HTML5 and friends will hopefully eventually give us a pretty comprehensive multimedia experience that will be common across platforms and will allow people to buy slightly locked-down hardware without all of the associated pain. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert Howe rup...@... wrote: Nokia has been closed up until now. The N900 using an open source OS is a radical departure for them - they've been a traditional, hierarchical closed company. Thus many fewer apps. Also the apps are more functional, less fun for straight mobile phones. The moment you bring in a touch screen with a large screen surface area and good resolution, the more things you can do with it. And then add the financial and career incentive of creating a successful app for the world's most popular mobile computer. I think you're right, though - Nokia have had to raise their game massively because of the iPhone, and the N900 is definitely a desperate reaction to the iPhone and their subsequent drop in market share. Making it open and using a slightly different technology for the touch screen is a gamble, but I think it might pay off. I'm already scheming video apps for it. On 29-Sep-09, at 4:21 PM, Jay dedman wrote: So Rupert given your experience with Nokia and Apple, I would love to read your more elaborate thoughts on the two options for mobile smart phone puters. Are you leaning towards iPhone? I was a Nokia user for a long time...but without being a fanboy, I got to say how awesome the iPhone is. The fact that you can figure out how to do things without instructions is amazing. Hopefully, other companies will follow this model. It's strange to me that Nokia is open and Apple is closed, but developers have created many more applications for Apple than Nokia. Being a big fan of Open Source, it's just an example that usability will always win. As far as the camera on the iPhone 3GS, it's not something right home about. The image is pretty poor. Little control. Bad mic. BUT BUT BUT it is extremely easy to take a video and post it online. So easy. Hopefully, Apple with all their developers and design sense will just set the expectation for how all phones should be, open source included. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://jaydedman.com http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: iPod Nano shoots video
Funny isnt it? Ive tried all sorts of windows mobiles, other smartphones, windows-based tablet computers over the years, and oh my how they sucked when looking at the overall experience. When looking at what makes the iphone great, it does seem strange that nobody has come close to copying it effectively yet, even if we rule out other factors such as how well known the iphoe is, critical mas of users, journalists frindly towards apple etc. An intuitive interface gestures, a touchscreen that feels nice and responds properly, hardware-accellerated graphics to make everything flow quickly and smoothly. Not rocket science, although there are many good reasons why its not been so easy for others to copy these effectively, ranging from the touch technology used to the difficulty in ripping off the essence of a UI without completely copying it. I guess it just goes to show that quality design is still a rare skill, and that making things easy is difficult. I also blame some generalised failings of the sorts of minds that tend to get into development, myself included, it seems we often do not have strong instincts about making the interface/experience anywhere near as fun and smooth as it should be. A decade of the microsoft way nearly destroyed this natural born geeks love of computers, though I remain very uncomfortable that only one corporation, Apple, has saved my love from further erosion. I have high hopes for the Apple tablet but I would be far happier if other companies were really getting somewhere, joining what should be a new golden age where many technologies have evolved to the point where they live up to their promise. In nearly every other area technology is still failing me and depressing me, with the exception of quite a lot of music creation software and hardware, of which some very lovely products have emerged in recent years. Oh and certain aspects of the web, although Im just about to start another post ranting about that so I'll not dwell on that further here. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, hpbatman7 heathpa...@... wrote: So I will give props to Apple for the iphoneit does make you wonder though why these other handset makers are having such a hard time making an Iphone cloneI mean it can't be that hard, can it? Heath http://heathparks.com (site under construction)
[videoblogging] Google Wave the state of the net in general
Google Wave interests me. On face value its just googles answer to twitter, social networks, forums, email blog comments, but the way they are doing it makes me interested. For as well as the usual APIs that will allow developers to add functionality to the platform, and the now standard ability for users to embed this stuff in their own sites, they are also releasing full details on the protocol used to make the service work, as well as example code which demonstrates how to make your own clients and servers. If adopted by people, this means we dont have to worry about Google having complete control over this stuff and it all being centralised in the usual way. So has anybody looked at it in detail? At this stage its one of those annoying invitation-based betas so I havent had the opportunity to try it myself, though the developers stuff I mention is available and Im starting to read more detail about it. Im interested in it from the point of view of solving stuff we talked about here over the years: aggregating content and conversations in a more sophisticated way, whilst still retaining control of the data and not ending up in a walled gardem that al the API's from the likes of facebook have not really torn down, they just added more gates to the wall. What significant developments have happened on the web in recent years, especially pertaining to vlogging? I took my eyes off the ball for a while after getting tired with the hype filled web 2.0 stuff once it reached the silly greedy commercial stage and then started to vanish up its own backside, whats occuring apart from the obvious like facebook and twitter? How have the video hosting services evolved, or have they just been treading water and trying to survive in recent times? Are there any interesting projects that people are throwing themselves into? There is a hole in my life where once I used to be able to have dreams inspired by the likes of fireant, mefeedia, showinabox, and all sorts of other things whose names now escape me. Wow, I cant even remember the name of the video hosting site that used archive.org and never quite lived up to its potential. Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: Google Wave the state of the net in general
Here is an intro video about wave, looks like I missed wiki and instant messaging when trying to list the sorts of things its inspired by/designed to replace. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pgxLaDdQw And I finally remembered the name of the video host of old: ourmedia. Ive just been catching up with where this and some other sites have ended up, they are still alive but not exactly bursting with momentum or giving us much to talk about. Speaking of which, are some of the conversations that used to happen on this group now taking place on twitter or friendfeed or peoples blogs or other communities, or are they not happening much at all now? Its nice to see this group busier of late, and Im just a wondering how to get a sense of the state of things, everything is so fragmented and based on popularity or social connections these days, Im a bit lost. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, elbowsofdeath st...@... wrote: Google Wave interests me. On face value its just googles answer to twitter, social networks, forums, email blog comments, but the way they are doing it makes me interested. For as well as the usual APIs that will allow developers to add functionality to the platform, and the now standard ability for users to embed this stuff in their own sites, they are also releasing full details on the protocol used to make the service work, as well as example code which demonstrates how to make your own clients and servers. If adopted by people, this means we dont have to worry about Google having complete control over this stuff and it all being centralised in the usual way. So has anybody looked at it in detail? At this stage its one of those annoying invitation-based betas so I havent had the opportunity to try it myself, though the developers stuff I mention is available and Im starting to read more detail about it. Im interested in it from the point of view of solving stuff we talked about here over the years: aggregating content and conversations in a more sophisticated way, whilst still retaining control of the data and not ending up in a walled gardem that al the API's from the likes of facebook have not really torn down, they just added more gates to the wall. What significant developments have happened on the web in recent years, especially pertaining to vlogging? I took my eyes off the ball for a while after getting tired with the hype filled web 2.0 stuff once it reached the silly greedy commercial stage and then started to vanish up its own backside, whats occuring apart from the obvious like facebook and twitter? How have the video hosting services evolved, or have they just been treading water and trying to survive in recent times? Are there any interesting projects that people are throwing themselves into? There is a hole in my life where once I used to be able to have dreams inspired by the likes of fireant, mefeedia, showinabox, and all sorts of other things whose names now escape me. Wow, I cant even remember the name of the video hosting site that used archive.org and never quite lived up to its potential. Cheers Steve Elbows
[videoblogging] Re: Videoblogging social network
Ive always been interested in stuff like this. For a few years I hoped to contribute towards making it happen for the vlogging community, but a combination of factors always put me off, ranging from technology limitations to not wanting to fragment this community (eg some people just want to stick with a straightforward mailing list), and also the idea that once video on the net really took off, communities may form around specific genres/subjects and an overall 'vlogging community' would be too broad and redundant. Once the likes of youtube, facebook and twitter got massive, I became quite interested in whether we could have a form of decentralised social networking where each individual had full control over their content and how/where its hosted, but somehow these fragments could be aggregated together in a very sophisticated way to create cohesive communities. The dominance of certain corporate entities, the lack of technical people to put the vast time in to make it happen for free, my own negativity, how quiet this group for for a few years means I havent bothered, but I remain rather interested in the subject. I expect things may evolve in this direction over the next decade, but Im not sure 'the videoblogging community' (whatever that is) will be the driving force, and the situation still remains complex due to the dominant players. There are still lots of walls out there, even though progress has been made with API's etc, specific platforms rule the waves, and pick'n'mixing features from different providers is not as doable as it should be. This was certainly not helped by most video hosts trying to build social networking and community stuff into their own services, leading to the wrong sort of fragmentation, something that first showed up in terms of people complaining about people commenting on their videos on the hosts site rather than on their own blog. At least the dust has settled from those giddy years when there was so much hype and hope from certain companies dreaming that they would dominate, and where community-based stuff ran out of momentum or people tried to cash in to get some return for their efforts, with fairly predictable results. I think Ive finally recovered from the time I became an aggressive nightmare when faced with a few dicks who thought they were going to become the new media moguls. Mind you even if the dust has settled Ive got less clues about where the net may be going than at any point in the past, so i tend to restrict myself to drooling over things like 3d accelerated css and multitouch devices and what that could mean for how people navigate the web in future. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert Howe rup...@... wrote: I know we return to this every so often - how to add more functionality to this list... I just had a thought, so I wanted to jot it down here while it was still fresh. It seems to me that we could benefit from a Facebook-style, Ning-style or Drupal-based site where we could have this same kind of disussion forum, but where we could also upload/link a lot of other content - particularly videos - and connect in other ways. What I want is a bridge between RSS, Twitter, threaded discussions, community hub and information archive. I want a non-corporate community-owned place where I can go, where there are lots of online video people, where I can: a) post links to things of interest (i do that here sometimes) b) Bookmark videos I like (harder to do that here) c) chat in asynchronous twitter style but with preserved threads that allow more than just statement response end d) talk about more serious internet video things (i do that here) f) Bookmark whole sites/channels/videoblogs, like a vlogroll, but much larger, and with an aggregated directory of all sites for everyone to browse, in categories. g) Form groups for different types of people/sites/channels/videos/ interests h) post other types of content - photos, etc i) a place for people to come up with coordinate collaborative projects and challenges like vbweek j) an archive like the videoblogginggroup Wiki for sharing advice suggestions Oh my god, this sounds like Facebook for online video people. But I HATE Facebook. So how come? I think what I hate most about Facebook is the lack of boundary between people from different parts of your life - work, home, hobbies, etc. I want something like Facebook, but that's a videoblogging ghetto. Rupert http://twittervlog.tv
[videoblogging] Re: Wordpress Security
Thanks for the info. If you are getting rid of them via phpmyadmin then there is stuff in the usermeta table that you should also be deleting, otherwise some future users could find themselves with admin rights! Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Verdi michaelve...@... wrote: If you haven't heard yet, there is an attack happening on all versions of Wordpress except the newest - 2.8.4. So you should upgrade your installations. The thing that I noticed on ALL of my sites that were not already running 2.8.4 was that they had hidden admin users on them. The sneaky thing about that is that you may not have any other symptoms besides these hidden accounts and then think you are safe once you've upgraded. The are, essentially, back doors left on your site to be exploited later. So you have to make sure to get rid of them. The process is a little tricky at least it's not a typical WordPress user operation so I've documented two ways to do it in this screencast. http://reports.graymattergravy.com/2009/09/06/remove-hidden-admin-users-in-wordpress/ - Verdi -- Michael Verdi http://milkweedmediadesign.com http://michaelverdi.com
Google Chrome + open-source video codec? [ was Re: [videoblogging] Re: Youtube a
The mp4 battle wasnt exactly Apple vs Microsoft, although that was probably the most visible front. h264 .mp4 won on most fronts, I think it might even be included in Windows 7, need to check. The next phase of the battle has a lot to do with how the h264 battle was won in the browser - flash. One thing that may unite all the other corporations is a desire to do away with reliance on flash. But this could end up being a very long struggle, the chance to do it quickly has already been lost, the need for browsers to support a specific format for html5 video having been removed from the spec. It will take quite a dramatic worsening of h264 licensing terms costs to turn the tide against h264 in my opinion. Maybe if google made some codecs available to everyone who makes web browsers, something will happen eventually, but so much hardware now supports h264 that it would still be an uphill struggle. Whatever Google do with youtube, they are unlikely to drop support for things like h264 in a hurry, so unless they are able to make the user experience radically better using a different format, I dont think it will help that much, but who knows. Plus we are now in an era where lots of people are building up sizeable content libraries in formats such as h264, and thats bound to slow the pace of change. I am not sad about this state of affairs, I droned on here for years with hope that h264 would make the landscape cleaner and end the format nightmares, and whilst things arent perfect, they are so much better now than in 2005. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: If Google delivers Chrome with an open-source On2 codec, does that mean a codec plug-in is NOT required? (I.e., it's built into the browser). Yes, this is what Firefox currently does. Ogg/Theora codec is in the browser...so an .ogv file will play without downloading a codec. This is possible because Firefox doesnt have to pay a patent fee for the codec. Google could do the same if they chose to opne siurce the newest codecs (like VP7) made by On2. What about all the videos encoded in h.264 ( other formats)..are we back to the codec/player wars? Educate me here. We have QT (which could play .mov, .mp4, .avi) WMP (which could play .wmv, .avi, etc), which was an Apple VS Microsoft battle. Is Google jumping in, with an open-source solution: Chrome + On2? Yes. But Google could make a big charge here since it controls Youtube which is often seen as the default video on the web platform. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://jaydedman.com http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: QuickTime X
Interesting stuff, when I get a chance I will explore this functionality to see what it means in practice - probably similar to how it works on the iphone. QuicktimeX in Snow Leopard is likely to elicit mixed feelings. It delivers a slicker experience but at the expense of functionality, some old formats and features are no longer supported, and in the browser flash still has an edge with its fullscreeen abilities. The export functions in QuicktimeX have been dumbed down considerably, and further cement Youtubes position by including a direct publish to youtube feature. For users who require configurable export and other stuff, Quicktime 7 is still available for Snow Leopard, can be installed on demand, but I assume it will eventually vanish from the scene. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Miles adrian.mi...@... wrote: hi all from the blurb: QuickTime X takes Internet video streaming to new levels with support for HTTP live streaming. Unlike other streaming technologies, HTTP live streaming uses the HTTP protocol the same network technology that powers the web. That means QuickTime X streams audio and video from almost any web server instead of special streaming servers, and it works reliably with common firewall and wireless router settings. HTTP live streaming is designed for mobility and can dynamically adjust movie playback quality to match the available speed of wired or wireless networks, perfect whether the video is watched on a computer or on a mobile device like iPhone or iPod touch. This relates to conversation here recently able multiple bit rates, the above is a great idea as RTSP uses odd ports and causes firewall hell. On the other hand the usual problems will remain, if I want high quality but have low bandwidth these sorts of solutions give me no options. cheers Adrian Miles adrian.mi...@... Program Director, Bachelor of Communication Honours vogmae.net.au
[videoblogging] Re: Youtube and HTML5
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: Welcome back Steve. It's been a while. Thanks very much :) Im pretty busy these days so whilst my posts may still be long, at least there wont be too many of them :) Im also interested to see what Google does with On2 and their newer codecs. It might be a year till we see anything since Google is currently in a lawsuit with the On2 shareholders (they claim they paid too little). Remember that Google is making a big play in the mobile world...so getting videos to play on the iPhone might not be that important. Im sure itll come in stages. But as you say, I bet Google bought On2 to try to reduce patent fees...and electricty use. Im not sure why they bought them, I seem to recall Google is doing a desktop OS so it could be something to do with that as much as their mobile offerings. As for power consumption, my main observation was that flash is an inefficient way to watch h264, and that h264 in the browser using video tags on the mac seems to be quite efficient. I havent looked at any of On2's codecs to see how they compare, but the way things are going these days an important factor is to offload some of the decoding and encoding of video onto GPU's or other chips rather than the CPU, and this can save a fair amount of juice. Its happening with h264 to a certain extent, but not sure about other codecs. Still as Google have rather high energy use on the server side of things, they have other issues to worry about such as whether the size of video files can be reduced and encoding made much more efficient. Cheers Steve
[videoblogging] Re: Youtube and HTML5
Hello, I am returning due to these technologies sparking my interest, along with the looming release of Snow Leopard which Im sure will give me something to talk about. That youtube demo is interesting, especially when I compare CPU use. The html 5 example uses way less CPU than the flash version of youtube. With a busy site like youtube, this has the capacity to reduce waste of electricity in quite a big way. Im not quite sure about your compatibility example, because the work was already done on that issue when youtube started using h264. They can serve the h264 via flash on the desktop, but on the iphone they can use the video tag to point to the same h264 file without using flash. When I tried that youtube test on Safari on Mac it was using a h264 video with the html5 video tag, not sure if it uses a different format when it detects firefox. These codec choices for html5 are going to remain messy and get in the way of things. If the 2010 h264 licensing details turn out to suck then I suppose that will encourage people to look at alternatives more. It will certainly be interesting to see what Google do with On2. I would not get my hopes up too much about theora though, even if Google plan to use it on youtube or in Chrome browser, its still not going to work on the iphone and things. So at the very least h264 versions of the videos still need to be made for iphone other hardware devices, and I doubt Google want to have to host and encode lots of different versions of all their videos. Now that h264 is pretty much everywhere, it will be a lot easier for all concerned, from viewers to producers, if the h264 new licence terms dont suck much, and we just stick with this format. Despite my complete lack of enthusiasm for Theora, I still get very excited about html5 video tag, and some other things that are proposed for html5. Recently nightly builds of Webkit on Leopard, and Safari in Snow Leopard, feature hardware-accelerated transformations of web page elements whih are really lovely and smooth. Combine these with video and there are some lovely possibilities. All sorts of fancy stuff that could be done in Flash already, but this way it looks nicer, is smoother, doesnt eat the CPU and the tools to make the stuff dont cost loads money. I am looking forward to Flash losing ground, all the things it can do should really be part of web standards and handled by the browser, for numerous reasons I have already hinted at. Here is the demo that impressed me, but you will only see the magic if on a recent webkit nightly on Leopard or Safari in Snow Leopard: http://www.satine.org/archives/2009/07/11/snow-stack-is-here/ Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: All the discussions around HTML5 have been abstract around here. Not many good examples to point to its promise. We did say it'll take the big boys to start adopting it...so: http://www.youtube.com/html5 With Google buying On2 (the codec company who open sourced Ogg/Theora)...this could be a good sign. The app shown in the video is coded in javascript and html and runs in a web browser. NO FLASH!? From what I understand, if web browsers adopt the standard of HTML5...then you could get around the incompatibility issues. Youtube would play on the iPhone because it would not use Flash. You could make an iPhone-like app on a webpage...and not worry about being accepted to through the Apple store. It all just goes back to the web...versus what software you have installed on your computer. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://jaydedman.com http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
[videoblogging] Re: Youtube and HTML5
Hello, I am returning due to these technologies sparking my interest, along with the looming release of Snow Leopard which Im sure will give me something to talk about. That youtube demo is interesting, especially when I compare CPU use. The html 5 example uses way less CPU than the flash version of youtube. With a busy site like youtube, this has the capacity to reduce waste of electricity in quite a big way. Im not quite sure about your compatibility example, because the work was already done on that issue when youtube started using h264. They can serve the h264 via flash on the desktop, but on the iphone they can use the video tag to point to the same h264 file without using flash. When I tried that youtube test on Safari on Mac it was using a h264 video with the html5 video tag, not sure if it uses a different format when it detects firefox. These codec choices for html5 are going to remain messy and get in the way of things. If the 2010 h264 licensing details turn out to suck then I suppose that will encourage people to look at alternatives more. It will certainly be interesting to see what Google do with On2. I would not get my hopes up too much about theora though, even if Google plan to use it on youtube or in Chrome browser, its still not going to work on the iphone and things. So at the very least h264 versions of the videos still need to be made for iphone other hardware devices, and I doubt Google want to have to host and encode lots of different versions of all their videos. Now that h264 is pretty much everywhere, it will be a lot easier for all concerned, from viewers to producers, if the h264 new licence terms dont suck much, and we just stick with this format. Despite my complete lack of enthusiasm for Theora, I still get very excited about html5 video tag, and some other things that are proposed for html5. Recently nightly builds of Webkit on Leopard, and Safari in Snow Leopard, feature hardware-accelerated transformations of web page elements whih are really lovely and smooth. Combine these with video and there are some lovely possibilities. All sorts of fancy stuff that could be done in Flash already, but this way it looks nicer, is smoother, doesnt eat the CPU and the tools to make the stuff dont cost loads money. I am looking forward to Flash losing ground, all the things it can do should really be part of web standards and handled by the browser, for numerous reasons I have already hinted at. Here is the demo that impressed me, but you will only see the magic if on a recent webkit nightly on Leopard or Safari in Snow Leopard: http://www.satine.org/archives/2009/07/11/snow-stack-is-here/ Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman jay.ded...@... wrote: All the discussions around HTML5 have been abstract around here. Not many good examples to point to its promise. We did say it'll take the big boys to start adopting it...so: http://www.youtube.com/html5 With Google buying On2 (the codec company who open sourced Ogg/Theora)...this could be a good sign. The app shown in the video is coded in javascript and html and runs in a web browser. NO FLASH!? From what I understand, if web browsers adopt the standard of HTML5...then you could get around the incompatibility issues. Youtube would play on the iPhone because it would not use Flash. You could make an iPhone-like app on a webpage...and not worry about being accepted to through the Apple store. It all just goes back to the web...versus what software you have installed on your computer. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://jaydedman.com http://twitter.com/jaydedman 917 371 6790
