Category: Item of Interest

RT @goSimian: Facebook Starts Serving iPad-Friendly Video http://bit.ly/98st45

About the time the iPhone and iTouch were released without Flash support I had a series of email exchanges with a friend in Australia, who is something of a Flash fan. I predicted that the rise of the iPhone would make it imperative that a video service – any site serving up video – couldn’t afford to ignore the iPhone/iTouch (and now iPad) market.

Now at 80 million devices we’re seeing exactly that happen, with Facebook now joining the HTML5 camp for iPad et al support.

[Update] The definitive word: it’s H.264 MP4 using the standard player in Safari Mobile. From Techcrunch

Yes, videos on Facebook do play when clicked on from the iPad or iPhone, but only ReadWriteWebnoted that this was through an h264 player (which both the iPhone and iPad have always supported), and not actually any sort of HTML5 implimentation. We’ve since confirmed this with Facebook which says, “You are correct, this is not html 5. All new videos are encoded in h264 format, so we’re playing videos natively in the iPad since it supports h264-encoded videos.”

The distinction is the non-use of the <video> tag, otherwise that’s an HTML5 video! As I said in the comments, not being HTML5 at this point is probably a mistake, or simply not enough time.

Social Media rocks Film and TV http://bit.ly/cGNVRF Anything that gets the audience more engaged is good.

I’ve long thought that integrating social media into a production is the clue to success, and these case studies support this. If you’re going to be at Showbiz Expo anyway, this might make it worthwhile. (Otherwise, give Showbiz Expo a miss, big bore, and they try and upsell throughout registration, even pre-registered get the hard sell.)

The latest XDCAM updates (for those who care) http://bit.ly/cYHEGK

Firmware updates, wireless logging and other improvements for the XDCAM product family. Including this:

The PDW-HR1 will also get an update in the near future. The HR1 is a mobile XDCAM disc player and recorder, but if you look on the side of it you’ll also find two SxS card slots. New firmware will allow footage from an EX camera to be transferred onto an XDCAM disc. The video clips can be transferred as data (into the UserData folder on the disc) or transcoded to match the codecs found in the XDCAM HD camcorders. This is a great product for anyone mixing XDCAM disc and SxS cards.

XDCAM EX backup to XDCAM discs. Sony claim the discs have a life > 30 years. Will the format?

The difference between marketing, advertising, PR and branding. http://bit.ly/M745k

A nice simple cartoon that sums up the difference quite nicely.

If ‘Piracy’ Is Killing Filmmaking, Why Do Nigeria, China And India Have Thriving Movie Businesses? http://bit.ly/boSQWe Damned good question!

As China, Nigeria and India are hotbeds of “piracy”, why is it that they still have thriving (bigger than Hollywood) movie production and distribution  businesses?  If we actually listened to the garbage that the MPAA puts out (usually without factual basis) then conventional wisdom would be that piracy is killing the movie business (and yet the movie business keeps having record years).

Perhaps it’s not piracy, just an unwillingness to understand how the world has changed combined with a distaste for actually providing value. Movie theater owners: stop treating people like criminals and perhaps they’d come back. Stop overcharging for garbage food and beverage; make an experience that people want. Adapt and provide value, then you’ll discover that piracy is not the problem: you, the studios and the executives therein are the problem.

Want to monetize online video? Make an app for that. http://bit.ly/b1gdo3 Long thought that an App was a great way to market a project.

Its not for nothing that ABC have a very successful iPad app. It’s long been part of my thinking around iPhone/iTouch that apps are a great way to wrap up a project: put the previews, purchashable items (not only the media), community and so on, in one place.

Internet video startups Roku and Boxee are also enabling video publishers to build apps that can be monetized. Both companies have launched software development kits (SDKs) to enable third-party content publishers to build applications or channels on their hardware devices, and both are committed to enabling publishers to charge for content directly through their systems.

How To Market Your Film: Getting Results on YouTube http://bit.ly/9Hm2sM Who doesn’t want that?

Democratized production is great, but we need to democratize distribution. Once upon a time we (or the studio) spent money – lots of it – to promoting a film or other independent project. Now we trade off time and effort to do the promotion and keep control.

Part of that process will involve putting the trailer up on YouTube. The author argues that there’s a right way, and wrong way, to go about it.

Part two of the series talks about How to get more views on YouTube.

Ohh, interesting. Apple’s Video Decode Acceleration Framework Reference http://bit.ly/bDnW36 So Adobe can accelerate Flash on OS X now?

These are newly published for Mac OS X 10.6.3 and later with Mac models equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M, but mark a big step forward in third parties (like Adobe) being able to hook into the same frameworks Apple hooks into.

These frameworks seem to be mostly focussed on hardware decode of H.264, but no doubt there’s more in there than my cursory read suggests.

Brand and build your production or post production business. http://bit.ly/bJlTL7 Free seminar from me on May 4.

Your brand defines you post production business and the stories you tell define your brand. This webinar will help you understand how to establish and create you brand by better knowing what business you are in, because it’s probably not the one you think it is. Having established the brand we’ll learn how to build an internet presence by understanding how marketing, PR and social conversations have changed the business promotion landscape. The webinar will conclude with the top tips on maximizing your business’ visibility on the Internet.

Did I mention free? How can you lose.

Some background in Adobe v Apple re Flash http://bit.ly/dygV0N It’s still complicated but apparently Adobe haven’t been as proactive in the mobile space as they could have. Dan Rayburn is editor of Streaming Media magazine and doesn’t appear to have bias in this discussion.

I have to say though, that my experience of Adobe engineers and product managers has always been of people enthusiastic about their product(s) and their users.