Howdy all, I was just wondering. Am I the only one who noticed how much faster and smoother blip's videos play back now!?
I thought it was just my upgrade to Firefox 2.0... which I think does handle media better, but the speed and smoothness which blips player now works has increased by a factor of ten fold. I can now watch blips videos in firefox in the background while editing my own videos in the foreground... well... I could if I did any editing video. The processor requirements for blips new player have been cut to a fraction of what they were. I got my old hamster wheel G4 powerbook 667mhz, which I refuse to upgrade from and I'm very pleased to see the blip guys making a comitment to the other 99.999% of the world which aren't on the latest greatest computers. Accessibility to me is a central issue of videoblogging... it's not just important that someone on a pentium 1 running linux can watch videos on blip or youtube, but it's everything.... we need to keep the barriers low to not just viewership, but creation as well. We must constantly be aware of and focus on making vlogging available to more people. Camera prices are dropping radically. A sub $100 camera will do video just fine these days for basic vlogging. I should know I shoot with a $150 camera... and it actually shoots up to 640x480... not even necissary. Then there's memory. A one gig flash card will hold anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour of video. They've dropped from $100 a year ago to $20-$30. 512mb cards are cheaper still. The other factors are pipe... bandwidth. This is the biggest issue of all. We can't do much about what's going on in the rest of the world, but we can always provide low bandwidth versions of our videos... especially if we're creating HD content as well. Bandwidth isn't just about poor people either. None of this is. We all travel. We all know what it's like to be stuck in nowhere on a dialup connection or some other crappy network. Wildcast.net, a superb videographer who's previously shot for National Geographic has to upload his videos litterally from the bush via satelite. Every mb of video costs tremendous time and money. I've just convinced them to try out blip.tv over youtube and part of that was just the simple fact that blip offers better accessibility. Cross posting is a huge plus when you don't have the band to upload your videos to 4 different services. With blip once the original is online a helper from anywhere in the world can take that original and cross post it to youtube, google video, or anywhere else that blip hasn't already automatically cross posted it to like their wordpress videoblog, archive.org, or otherwise. It's the same thing with X360 (aka. Experdition360.com)... though I'm not involved with them, just a HUGE fan. x360 is a superb vlog from a guys who's been traveling around the world since 1994. He just completed his 130 day leg across india and china and it costs him $50 just to upload each video via his satelite connection. People like this can't upload four different formats... They need to be able to upload one file and be done with it. But to come full circle we must also not forget the computer, the platform not only for creating, producing and editing but also viewing. If we're not careful, with all the our love of high quality HD video and high quality compression codecs we can kill accessibility right at the desktop. You must ask yourself, what is more important to you... that some kid in china or some kid in a one room school house in montanna with a satelite connection can access your video? Or that there's a few compression artifacts in it? While I love and respect all those with "production values"... I will side with accessibility every time. But this is not an either or situation... it's a BOTH issue. We can have our cake and have it to. What I don't like about some of the new codecs like h264 is they look fabulous but they have tremendously higher hardware requirements and are compatible with far fewer devices than say MP4. When it comes right down to it, it's just not worth the tradeoff. H264 is not worth it in my opinion. This is increasingly important as we remove the computer from the equation. What happens when you can shoot a video... upload it directly to a service like blip via a cellular connection or wifi... and when the viewer aggregates that video to their cell phone, portable wifi media player, set top box or other device... no computer... no sync cable. In this case H264 won't do... neither will WMV, Real media... or above all flash. Just like with the mp3 these portable devices will increasingly lean toward support of the most open formats with the least hardware requirements. My guess is most likely Mp4... it works with the Nokia's, the iPod, the PSP, and the majority of other portable media players are following suit. Sort of puts Youtube's business model in the crapper right? Youtube has no ability to be compatible with any of these devices. They announced an exclusive partnerhips with verizon to bring "some" of their videos to "some" of verizons phones all for only $15 a month. Yeah right! It's the stupidest idea in mobile video since ESPN mobile failed. Call me when youtube and verizon support open standards that can support all vlogs, and all hardware devices. Accessibility is THE dominent factor here. We MUST consider accessibility, but the tradeoff's aren't that hard for us. Only for fools like youtube or verizon whom have endoctrinated their business plans around creating walled gardens of media. So... back on point. Accessibility... Has anyone seriously noticed any drop in quality in Blip's flash videos? A few more artifacts? How many have instead noticed they stream faster, and play smoother? I'm not positive, but all I believe blip did was choose a simpler codec that had fewer hardware requirements. Quality and accessibility often go hand in hand there maybe a bit more artifact, but the videos should also stream much better. What's more with blip you can still provide a high quality MP4, MOV or other original format. ... and I hope where this will go is... in the future blip will branch out into offering other alternatives as well. Alternatives like mobile feeds in 3gp format... or a bittorrent feed for HD quaility vids and democracy.... or whatever is around the corner. Flash and Mp4 are a good start. The point is we can have our cake and eat it to let the Flash be fast and dirty... if you want quality provide an original mp4, or h264 video in a nice 640x480 or some such... and look for services and encourage services like blip to continue to push the envolope not just of quality, but also accessibility. Just an FYI... while I love blip and am extremely happy they've made their flash videos more accessible, just to show I'm not purely a Blip fanboy I also highly recommend Vimeo. Those guys have superb flash, QT, and even WMV transcoding as well. In the end I won't be happy untill people on $100 laptops, with $10 cameras, and remote satelite internet connections in Chile have just as much access to not only view, but produce media and communicate with media just as easily as we the digital elite do here in the eastern world. Our view of the world world may be higher fidelity than their view of the world... but we'll both have the opportunity to be looking at the same world, and that's a damn good start. And make no mistake about it... categorically the people participating in this yahoo group and videoblogging in general are the most privelaged .0001% of people on the planet. So you don't have to give up your love of the content, your beautiful h264 compressed videos in HD... just remember to make allowances for the other 99.999% of the planet.... and that's why in many respects I refuse to upgrade my 667mhz g4 tibook. If I can't play back your videos imagine how the other 99.999% of the world views them... or in this case, doesn't view them. Accessibility first! Content and substance over quality! This little step in the evolution of media is about communications, not about entertainment. If people wanted to veg out and be entertained they would turn on the TV... it's a "no brainer". They're watching you, or ze frank, or ask a ninja, because they know you, they like what you have to say, you have substance generalized content cannot give them... and above all because you are *accessible* to them. 1) They can watch your videos virtually anytime... not on a schedule... How many of you get emails still from videos that have only found their audience 6 months after posting them!? That's accessibility too! 2) They can increasingly watch anywhere... work, home... and increasingly on portable devices and TV's if they like. 3) And most importantly because YOU are *accessible* to your viewers as a real live person, to respond to... to correspond with... to email, to comment on your vlog, to IM with... and even because they too like you can post a video on their vlog in response as your equal... there is nothing like having a conversation eye to eye... In the real world if we all got soap boxes none of us would be able to be heard, but in cyberspace we can ALL have our soap boxes and we can all have an equal opportunity to bring something to the table. Try getting that type of access with any personality on TV. Like blogging, accessibility is a hugely multifaceted element of videoblogging. Cheers to the blippers and anyone who's keeping the eye on the ball with accessibility. Accessibility is a truely the central feature to everything we do. Peace, -Mike rambling non-sensical, non-proofreading guy mefeedia.com mmeiser.com/blog [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
