Category: Business

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Business & Marketing Distribution Media Consumption

Why do we want advertising again?

Somewhere in my feeds today I found a link to a blog I’d never heard of: A Working Library. An article called On Advertising caught my attention, probably because it expressed my thinking better than I’ve been able to articulate: 

“There is no end to this, in that short of eviscerating the content all together (and removing any impetus the reader might have to visit in the first place), our attention to the advertisements is always waning. Sadly, our attention elsewhere also suffers and declines; instead of staying still to read, we skitter from place to place, like frightened prey assured the predators are near.

So, let’s stop pretending, shall we? Any economy which charges ever less for ever more intrusive ads will eventually be successful not in creating wealth but in driving the readers away, until the only ones left to heed the ads are all the other ads, the cell phones searching in vain for a target market among the cellulite.”

Are we really sure this is the way to fund new media? The only way according to ‘common wisdom’. If it is, combined with the precipitous drop in advertising expenditure in recent months and a dismal outlook in the future, then new media is doomed. 

Fortunately I don’t think traditional advertising has much role in new media or new television. Integrated, relevant product endorsement or placement; pay for download or view or subscriptions are much more likely in a world where producers and audiences are disintermediated.

It’s very important to keep in mind that the single most successful model for online distribution has been Apple’s pay-for-download iTunes Store (and lately rentals) by a several billion dollar margin over advertising support for new media projects. As I’ve said before, the advertising supported viewing of Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog returned negligible income but served to promote the iTunes download or DVD.

Perhaps I have a higher-than-usual aversion to advertising, but I do think we need new models. I have no confidence that the mass-market advertising model we inherited from the “Mad Men” of Madison Avenue has any relevance in a fragmented audience. 

Research shows that “relevant” advertising is more acceptable than any other form (to which I have to say “well d’oh”) and truthfully I appreciate seeing information-rich advertising when I’m looking for a product. Other than Googles Adwords text ads, I don’t see any attempt to target advertising. Even so I rarely follow those links because the informational links are where I go.

That’s why integrating products or services into the programming, or building branded webisodes around the main project seems to me to be far more viable than running a traditional 10, 15 or 30 second ad before or after the main content. The consumption model is different so there’s no reason to believe that old models will carry forward.

But personally, I’d still rather pay a producer a fair price for the content and skip the advertising completely.

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Business & Marketing

Why I still go to trade shows

Increasingly trade shows are becoming irrelevant. I remember my first NAB in 1998, my then editor at Digital Media World (an Australian Magazine and Trade Show of the day) needed me to research and write about the exhibits. A year later he only required a “color piece” because “all the information” was available on the Internet.

The color piece – or pulse of the show – is something you can only get by being there. Remotely you can get a feel for it thanks to the people who actually turn up, but only if you’re there.

I started thinking because today is HD Expo day here in LA (at the Universal Hilton until 8pm) and questioning why I would go.  It would be an opportunity to see the new Avid releases, but I’ve already researched them ahead of a Digital Production BuZZ interview tonight. I could be going for the keynote or speaker program, which are great for most people, but I’m above-averagely self educated on most things HD – writing a book on the subject helps – so that aspect isn’t so important.

So, why deal with the parking issues for HD Expo (a side-effect of the popularity) or the travel and accommodation costs for NAB, when I don’t have to?

Serendipity!

According to Wikipedia:

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

It’s the accidental meeting with someone; the chance comment; the juxtaposition of things that sparks a thought. There’s something about the atmosphere that opens opportunities. It’s said that NAB is “where deals are made” and certainly you can look back at NAB’s past and see how many deals were announced within the few weeks following.

So, the reason I go to Trade Shows is to find something – I don’t know what it is, or who it might be, but that’s what I’m looking for.

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Business & Marketing

How to build your post production business

The number one thing you should do, and do it now

Contact your clients

contactclientsCall them, write to them, send an email – whatever way you contact your past and present customers, contact them. Don’t commiserate about how bad the economy is. Don’t complain and moan how quiet business is, simply ask if there’s anything you can do to help. As Seth Godin says contact them along these lines:

“I know that times might be tough for you. Is there anything I can do to pitch in and help?”

Listen, and then do it. Even for nothing if it’s a small thing that you can do to help. Even the fact that you’re listening and asking will score you some karma points for the future.

If you get a meeting

If, as a result of asking, one of your clients wants to “talk” in a meeting, remember that there’s nothing different in this economic climate than any other: you need to add more value to the client’s business than you cost.

Know your client

Before the meeting learn as much as you can about the client. Feel free to share your “war stories” but be very careful to keep the meeting about the client. Learn as much as you can about their business: read through their website and spend a few minutes googling the client company and contacts.

Know what you don’t know

Even if you’re well researched, arrive with a curious attitude and lots of questions. People instinctively like people who are interested in them.

Keep your eyes and ears open for any little clues in your client group during a presentation or the meeting. If you see a reaction among one or more people to the point you’re discussing, follow up on that point with a question to discover the client’s agenda on the subject. Being able to think on your feet and move toward the client’s need in the presentation shows that you listen and can be flexible – also desirable traits in a contractor.

All business is a people business, but production and post more so than most.

You won’t be the only one

You can almost guarantee that you won’t be the only person contacting, or presenting to, your clients. Every other production or post production business in your area will likely be calling, as well as any new entrant to the business who might be prepared to undercut to get started.

Whether or not you get the meeting or the job will depend on the sort of relationship you’ve had with your client in the past, and how well you can articulate to the client, the value that you bring in specific terms.

Most of your competition are going into these meetings focused on their need to stay in business. No doubt that’s in your mind to, but it can never be the focus of your presentation. There is only one thing the client is interested in: how you’re going to help them make more money. Keep that clearly in mind and the total focus of what you present.

Also, be very clear what business you are in. It probably isn’t the one you think it is.

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Business & Marketing Item of Interest

Who gets to be a production professional?

I was talking with Shane Ross about his new podcast and he said the first topic was, basically about Final Cut Pro and Media Composer because “they were all that professional editors used”. (My version of Shane’s words.) I admit, I had a fairly strong reaction simply because the world of production that Shane (and his guests on the first podcast) work in is such a small part of the entirety of the production space, that it does the whole industry a disservice.

Similarly I went very close to offending my good friend Andrew Balis when we were recording some interviews for Rick Young’s MacVideo.tv videos and I called him a “film snob”. In both cases I certainly did not mean to offend, and in Andrew’s case I was merely mean to imply that he had quality criteria that were somewhat higher than most. Andrew mostly works in film and television, as does Shane and it’s easy to believe, when you work in that area of “the business” to think that’s it. And 25 years ago you’d have been close to right, but not any more.

At the high end – Thompon’s Viper; Sony’s F900, F950 and F23; etc – there is a relatively small pool of people working with these formats to make “Television” and “Movies”. Let’s be generous and say there are 100,000 people working in post production for film, network or cable/satellite Television worldwide. (There are about 6000 members of the US Screen Editor’s Guild and only 104,000 across IATSE, most of whom aren’t working as editors.)

Compared with that 100,000 there are at least 1.25 million unique registered Final Cut Pro owners (and probably double that in “not registered” versions, but we won’t go there). There are probably 200,000 Media Composer units in use (some going back to OS 9) and well over 500,000 seats of Premiere Pro (probably more), at least 300,000 seats of Sony Vegas and approximately 75,000 Avid Liquid users. Feel free to correct my numbers in the comments if you have better information (or email me directly).

So, somewhere around 100,000 “professional editors” (by a certain reckoning) and yet there have been over 2.3 million seats of editing software sold. Professional editing software: this does not count iMovie, Windows Movie Maker or Pinnacle’s various consumer editing applications.

By Shane’s ‘definition’ professional editors make up less than 5% of the users of all editing software sold. Even if say that every owner of FCP is also an owner of Media Composer – there would be overlap but not complete – and the total is 2 million. That’s still just on 5% of all the professional editing software sold that’s being used by “professionals”. It does not compute!

There are no longer hard barriers between “the broadcast and film” business and the wider world of video production and post production like there may have been 30 years ago. Production quality from affordable tools has skyrocketed in that time and HD quality way beyond the best broadcast cameras of 20 years ago costs less than $5K US. There’s very high quality work being done for Trade shows or for educational video. There are those using RED One cameras for web video! Where are the lines to be drawn?

For me, if you get paid by your customers to edit (or produce) video and your customers are happy, pay their bills and come back for more work, then you’re a professional editor. (That is, of course, the inarguable definition of professional).

Professionalism also has undertones of quality and attention to detail that separates the pro from the amateur, and that certainly comes into it as well, but what has changed is that there is not just one market for quality. No longer a single standard.

I love that Shane, Andrew and their compatriots care deeply about quality, rejecting (if they can) “lesser” formats (like HDV or any long GOP acquisition) as lacking in quality. I also recognize that their world is a small part of the totality of production. I wish I could find the reference but I’m sure I’ve read that – based on dollars spent – what we think of as Broadcast Television and Film (IOW the entire industry of 30 years ago) is now around 15-20% of the dollars spent on “professional production”.

The old lines are gone. In coming days I’ll talk about Joss Wheedon “leaving television” and the implications of the failing distribution model, etc. Bottom line, things are changing and changing fast and there’s not really room to try and restrict “professional” editors to an exclusive club.

At the same time, I know what Shane is trying to define: there are different workflows and expectations of certain types of production – that he and Andrew work on – that are quite different from the workflows and expectations of corporate, event or other entertainment production. While the skill sets are different, I don’t see Shane’s compatriots as any more professional than the members of the Association of Video Professionals, WEVA (with more than 200,000 members); and the Digital Video Professionals Association.  They’re all about maintaining high standards of production, post production and service appropriate for their customer base. 

And here’s the thing. If those folk performed in the same way, at the same level and within the same restrictions as Shane’s friends and associates, they would not be doing the job they are being paid for and therefore, not professional. 

Maybe we just need some new terminology!

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Distribution Media Consumption

How much will you pay to watch ads?

Of course, if I ask the question like that “How much will you pay to watch ads?” most people would immediately respond with “nothing” or something close to it. However most people already pay to watch ads on cable television. You pay the cable company a fee but the majority of channels you can get without paying another, additional fee, all have advertising.

In some of my presentations on the subject of the future of Television, I like to point out that the advent of cable is when Americans started paying twice for Television: once with your attention to the advertising (which was supposed to be enough) and again with cash to your cable company for the privilege of a clean signal and no outdoor antenna.

At least with the cable company you know what you’re going to be charged ahead of the game and you’re not charged specifically for each commercial you watch. You will if those same companies move to capped or tiered bandwidth on your Internet connection. With caps along the lines so far proposed by Time Warner (50 GB a month) a couple of movies downloaded every week (or the equivalent TV watched on Hulu, or YouTube et al.) will soon put you up to that limit. Then, every single advertisement you’re forced to watch will be adding to your bandwidth bill directly.

Capped bandwidth is not necessary and will cause a crippling effect on the growth of video on the Internet (of all kinds). It’s not for nothing that Australia – with very low bandwidth caps – is a broadband backwater in international terms, even compared with the USA. To meet the demand, the cable companies need to invest in their infrastructure just like any other business. If they don’t, let’s find an alternative because the only thing stopping a truly competitive business is the lack of competition.

In most places there is, at best, a duopoly of Internet suppliers: a cable company and (if you’re close enough) a telecommunication (a.k.a. phone) company. Duopolies get comfortable and start to think they’re running the business for themselves and “customers” are a rather unavoidable nuisance. Throw WiMax, 4G cellular or other technologies into the mix and we’ll have real competition. With real competition, all need for a discussion about “Network Neutrality” will evaporate: none of the competitive organizations can afford to be the only one throttling their network.

Without real competition, start to think about paying for watching ads – not only at SuperBowl time but all year round. Ads you don’t care about for products you’ll never be interested in buying, but that you’ll pay for anyway.

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Business & Marketing Distribution

How is new media being funded?

One of the more interesting experiments that came out of frustrated creativity during the Writer’s Strike was Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog:  A three-part musical with some very well known actors in the lead roles. 

drhorrible

Until an interview with Knowledge @ Wharton we didn’t have a lot of the financial detail, other than it was done with a SAG low budget or experimental contract.

There are a couple of interesting observations in the article. The one that immediately caught my “I don’t believe advertising can support new media” prejudice was this comment about where the money came from:

 iTunes has been a great boon for us. And the DVD has done quite well — although I’d love to bump that up more. Streamed [online video] with advertising is probably the smallest revenue. Whether that’s a viable monetization scheme … is the question. In some ways it acts as an advertisement and in some ways it might be pulling people away from bothering to download it or to buy the DVD.

What’s funny here is that Whedon’s experience was that the “free” (with advertising support) was useful in promoting the paid downloads and DVD – people paying for media!  That’s the complete reverse of the more theoretical positions held by many that the content will be free but some other income stream will “subsidize it” (like advertising has for the last 50-60 years).

It’s also satisfying to know that even when it was being streamed on Hulu with advertising – horribly irrelevant and repetitive advertising – it was the best selling download on iTunes. The pay-for-download version was being purchased through the iTunes store even though there was a free alternative (if you like to see the same ad over and over again). 

The budget was something over $200,000, which is more than had been previously guessed, but total revenue has now been “more than” double that. Even considering that a lot of the income over $200,000 went to actors and department heads who had worked for nothing, that’s still not too bad overall.  It also means the production budget is within the range for similar content – with similar level stars – as a musical would for cable. For ease of the Math, let’s say the total budget was $350,000.

Given that the range for network shows is 25-65c per viewer/per show from advertising revenue and cable rates are lower, let’s be generous and go with the 25c per view figure. At that rate, the show would have had to have enjoyed a cable audience of 1.5 million to have covered its costs. 

If we were to be more realistic about the advertising rate – they were network rates after all – the audience would have needed to be around 2 million (cumulative) to have funded the show. 

Cable can certainly get the numbers: Monk, The Closer and Burn Notice all enjoying audiences of over 5 million on USA and TNT. Shows around the 2 million audience are The Daily Show, Real Housewives of OC, and  Intervention. Very few musicals and not much drama/comedy content!

The one thing we don’t know is what the total audience numbers are across iTunes, Hulu, other online outlets, and the DVD release, but we do know that $6.50 (their share after the reported figure Apple take) for a 45 minute show is better revenue than any other model has provided on a “per minute” basis. Sure, they added additional content so that people who might have already seen the show on Hulu or have it from iTunes still have a reason to buy the DVD. (Directly sold DVDs could bring in a higher per viewer revenue, but not if there’s a distributor or Amazon CreateSpace in the middle.)

Of course, I thought it would have been a show that would have been perfect through Open TV Network. All the benefit of having people delivered each episode as it comes out, with the ability to make a small charge for each download. 15c an episode would have bought in more than a cable showing would and definitely be worth it. Plus when there were DVD Extras they could have been offered to existing fans via their feeds.

Regardless of how, I believe it’s clear that some part of “new media” has to disintermediate the conversation between viewer and producer, without another editor in the middle. And that’s going to require a little direct revenue. We tip for service, why not pay for entertainment?

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Distribution Interesting Technology

How will video be distributed on the Internet?

At his Blog Maverick, Mark Cuban reveals the “Great Internet Lie”, which apparently is that the utopian dream of distributing “Television and Film” over the Internet is doomed. He goes on to “conclusively” prove that it’s not possible to reach Network-sized audiences (even cable network) simultaneously across the Internet.

And he’s right. Certainly I’ve got nothing to refute his numbers. Real time streaming is difficult and expensive. And totally unnecessary. Broadcast Television and its cable/satellite brethren deliver simultaneous viewing to many millions of people at a time, without incremental cost. The bigger the audience, the more profitable the show because there’s not incremental cost and bigger audiences equal more viewers for advertisements.

The trouble is, that’s trying to resolve a new problem with an old solution. (When you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.) The problem that will need to be resolved in the future is “how do we deliver a broad multiplicity of program choices tailored to individual tastes and smaller per-show audience numbers?” 

Programming has to be available when people want to watch it, not at some “appointed” time. It’s been more than five years since I watched real-time television. PVRs and digital downloads replace broadcast schedules. Even for the big-pipe broadcasters appointment television is dying. Broadcast will eventually become the home of sports (real time delivery to big audiences is highly desirable); American Idol and reality TV. These are the only shows that will garner large-enough audiences to meet the mass-audience requirement of a broadcast station or network.

vintcerfSo, how do we deliver that multiplicity of program choices – from traditional and new media suppliers – to meet customer demands? None other than Vint Cerf, one of the “inventors” of the Internet, feels that the future of video on the Internet is downloading instead of streaming real time like a broadcaster.

Already the majority of the video on the Internet is downloaded – progressive download (a.k.a. fast start) drives YouTube, Google Video and pretty much every How to and travel video website on the Internet. It’s only the traditional media folk that think emulating their old business is the way to build a new business, so Hulu and ABC.com stream. (Hint: it’s never been the case and isn’t now.)

Progressive download requires much simpler technological configurations. It’s far less sensitive to the variability of speeds on the public Internet and shared neighborhood nodes, and it meets the needs for the future, instead of the past.

Advocates of real time streaming attempt to draw a distinction between a viewing and “ownership” of a copy. Real time streaming never leaves a copy on the viewer’s hard drive; download does. But realistically a viewing = ownership (potential) has been the de facto reality since the introduction of the Betamax in 1975. Ever since then every broadcast has had the potential for people to keep a personal copy of the show. Digital only accelerates that with built-in PVRs and DVRs in cable and satellite boxes. 

One trend that defines the current state of mass-market television is increased choice and control over viewing schedule, moving the viewer away from the broadcast or cable programmer to effectively programming their own entertainment channel. This is the trend that will increase in the future and that’s why Mark Cuban is completely right and totally missing the point.

Addition: It seems like I’m not the only one questioning Mark’s assumptions. The Forrester Blog for Consumer Product Strategy Professionals posted “Mark Cuban Goes off on the Internet Video Lie” pointing out that Broadcast and Internet delivery were complementary media. They also have links to some of their other writings on the subject.

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Distribution

How to fix independent feature distribution

Kent Nichols If I Were In Charge Of Sundance post started me thinking about independent feature distribution and media distribution in general.

sundanceKent proposes that Sundance run all films on VOD, DVD or on the Internet immediately after the show in order to get maximum exposure at the peak of attention, figuring that few would make money from a distribution deal so the work might as well be seen. (Those deals being done at Sundance are also much lower than in previous years.)

The problem is that the distribution channels for features have been restricted by access gatekeepers. The major studios had this perfectly under control when they owned production and distribution, but that cosy relationship was less profitable after being broken up over antitrust concerns.

What remained are just smaller cartels. Unless a film producer is prepared to hire “dry walls” a theater at their own expense and handle all promotion and ticketing, getting access to “film distribution” is as hard as ever, and the deals are getting worse, not better.

The chance of an independent feature ever getting distribution and making money for the producer and director is almost nil. Enough do to keep the dream alive, but right now, for the majority of films, distribution is broken for the producers and audience. If you can’t find a movie and view it, there’s no profit potential for the producer even if there is supposedly a “distribution deal” in place.

Kent in the article talks of the difficulty of finding a suitable way of viewing a movie that had caught his attention last Sundance, and had done a distribution deal. He ultimately resorted to “other means” to view the movie.

One of the things I learnt at The Conversation conference back in October, is that alternate methods of promoting a movie – with online and DVD distribution can work very well. There is a group of documentary producers who do not even seek “traditional” distribution deals because they know how to create demand for local screenings, driving DVD sales and helping causes related to their documentary.

insideiraqOther independent features create interest in their project from the time of first conception. They build a base of “true fans” who care about the project and help spread the word.

It’s a brave new world of digital distribution, including DVD which will be viable source of income for independents for a long time. But what is needed is a way of getting all those movies out when they’re hot, and giving people who might be interested in watching them, easier and better ways to find the movies.

Revenue could come from branded sponsorship, but personally I’d prefer a method, like my own Open TV Network, where the producers could receive a reasonable payment from viewers but continue to control their own copyright and distribution across other channels. Remember this is not a blockbuster nor known quantity so I’ll be less likely to take the risk if you want to charge studio-level prices.

All Sundance needs to do is to implement Kent’s suggestion, and tack on the convenience of RSS drive feeds. Sundance could provide curated feeds with common themes or fans could build curated feeds of their own and share them.

Filmmakers make some money; Sundance gets affiliate fees and audiences get to watch more interesting fair than the 200 or so formulaic movies that make it into local cinemas.

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Business & Marketing Random Thought

A great customer service story

So, I’ve had a bad week, twice ordering the wrong card for a particular configuration I manage. First I forget that this is a PCI-X install (one of only two left I have to deal with) and the second I misread specs on another card. The original purchase was from PC Pitstop, as was the follow up card.

There was no problem with shipping back the first incorrectly ordered card, and even though I’d opened the sealed inner package on the second before realizing my mistake, it was also accepted back without restocking fee.

That’s good, but when I realized my second mistake I got on their live chat and within a minute or two was chatting with Mark. I explained the situation and he made a couple of suggestions as he got closer to understanding the limitations of the configuration. Ultimately he made a different recommendation then took the time to check that it would work with the existing drive enclosures. He thought it would with one type and not with the other, but ultimately it turns out that neither were suitable.

But Mark didn’t stop there, he then pointed me to a Sonnet Tech card (that they did not carry), which sadly Sonnet have stopped making! Apparently determined to solve my problem even though there was no longer much chance of a sale (this time) Mark very quickly found a refurbished unit at another dealer and gave me the URL in the iChat.

Ultimately PC Pitstop are going to be refunding these purchases as they’re returned, but Mark, who appears to be a search engine master, has certainly guaranteed I’ll be shopping there again some time in the future.

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Distribution Video Technology

What’s the difference between a codec and a container or wrapper?

It’s a subject with widespread confusion often leading to only a partial understanding.

There are file containers, sometimes called wrappers, that wrap around a number of video and audio tracks. Each of those tracks will have an appropriate video or audio codec. A codec is a concatenation of “coder – decoder”. Basically it’s like using a secret code or cryptography: as long as the encoder and the decoder understand each other, we get video and audio back out at the other end.

Think of a shipping container. There’s this standard “wrapper” (the container) which tells us nothing. Inside could be a car, computer or a million wrist watches. Like the shipping container, file containers can carry many different types of content – the video and audio tracks. These tracks are encoded with some sort of codec. Most codecs compress the video to reduce file size and time to download (and to increase field recording times in production), but there are codecs that work with uncompressed video. Every track has to have a codec for video and for audio.

Common containers are QuickTime (which supports over 160 codecs at last count); AVI (which probably supports almost that many) and MPEG-4, which supports only a few codecs, but very versatile ones. Common codecs are “MPEG-4”, “Sorenson”, “H.264”, “Animation”, “Cinepac”, etc. (DivX is it’s own thing, as I’ll explain.)

Most QuickTime codecs are for production purposes. The older QT codecs that were used for .mov on the web have been “deprecated” by Apple. They no longer show up as export options in the default install of QuickTime. Nor should they. They’re way too inefficient by modern standards. The last new QT distribution codec was Sorenson Video 3 in July 2001. In codec terms that’s just a little after the Jurassic era.

AVI has been a workhorse. I refer to it as the Zombie format because Microsoft officially killed it in 1996 (when the last development was done). It is still in use in production on PCs and very popular for distribution on the Internet, with more modern codecs. Most AVI production codecs are specific to their hardware parent. A modern .avi file is likely to be a “DivX” file.

DivX is actually a hybrid of an AVI wrapper with an MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (see later) video codec and an MP3 audio track. This is a bad hybrid of codecs and formats, such that DivX for a while had to have their own player. (MPEG-4 video should go with AAC audio.)

Most often the MPEG-4 codecs are used in the MPEG-4 container. This is a modern, standards-based container not owned by any one company. It is an official International Standards Organization standard. The basic file format was donated by Apple and is heavily based on the QuickTime container, but is NOT the same. You can’t just change the .mov to .mp4 (or reverse) and hope it’ll work. (It will in the QT player but nowhere else.)

The first codec that the Motion Picture Experts Group (a.k.a. MPEG) approved is properly called MPEG-4 Part 2 ‘Simple Profile’ or ‘Advanced Simple Profile’. This was such a great marketing name, that Apple just called it simply “MPEG-4,” thereby creating huge confusion for everyone as the distinction between codec and container was totally blurred! Thanks Apple! Not! Apple only supported Simple Profile; Sorenson and DivX used Advanced Simple Profile and there were components for QuickTime (not made by Apple) that played Advanced Simple Profile MPEG-4 as well as Simple Profile MPEG-4.

DivX uses the Advanced Simple Profile but in an AVI wrapper, as noted above.

Then just a few years ago, the MPEG association approved a new codec, to be used in the same MPEG-4 wrapper, called (in full) MPEG-4 Part 10 the Advanced Video Codec (AVC). The European ITU also supported the same codec independent of MPEG-4 (so it could be used in other wrappers) as H.264. They’re all the MPEG-4 codec that is Part 10, Advanced Video Codec or H.264.

And yes it is possible to put an AVC/H.264 video track in a QT .mov, but that’s a different container and only QT will play it. MPEG-4 is an ISO standard and there are more than 20 player implementations.

It is AVC/H.264 video with AAC audio (the MPEG audio standard) in an MPEG-4 container that is now playable in QuickTime Player, iTunes, on Apple Devices, in 20 standard players and in Flash 9 release 3 or later (9r3 was finalized in Nov 2007 and is now widely installed). Microsoft have also announced support for H.264 MPEG-4 is coming in Silverlight in 2009, and Windows 9 Media Player has support built in for those same files.

3GPP and 3GPP2 cell phone codecs are part of the MPEG-4 family fwiw.

Hope that helps and makes sense.