Category: Item of Interest

Can Inidie Films make money on YouTube? http://bit.ly/cvtnHb Mostly not. Much on Demand Media again. (Pay attention to Demand Media!)

A few “indies” have made decent money from YouTube but the general consensus is:

These are happy accidents, but should indie filmmakers be using YouTube as a component of their finance plan?

No, they should not.

And right at the end of the article:

Instead of layering the “old school” indie on top of a new platform, the smart approach is to follow Demands’ lead and recognize this is a new medium, with different requirements; it’s actually more a search engine than a content delivery system or distributor.

While there’s a lot I find disturbing about Demand Media’s model – mostly that it’s scraping by with the barest of production values – it is a new business model and one that I think has the best chance of showing us how to reduce the cost of quality production down, so it can survive in a world of niche programming, which is the inevitable direction we’re heading.

Wired’s article on Demand Media from last year: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/

and from yesterday: Is Demand Media’s CEO Going Hollywood? New Board Member at Demand Peter Guber is the former head of Polygram and former chairman of Sony Pictures. What does he say about Demand?

As someone who’s always understood the power of the narrative for attracting audiences, I believe Demand Media has discovered a new and largely untapped story telling platform on the web. As part of its Board, I look forward to helping unlock this value and drive innovation online, using the insight and experience I bring from the entertainment industry.

Copyright and Wrong http://bit.ly/cfX7ql The Economist weighs in on a return to the root of Copyright. Statue of Anne – for 14 or 28 years.

The purpose of copyright is to incentivize creative people to make more work by giving them a limited period of monopoly license before the work returns to the public domain. This has been so blatently perverted so that a successful artist – with only one success – may never have to work again. How is that creating new works?

The notion that lengthening copyright increases creativity is questionable, however. Authors and artists do not generally consult the statute books before deciding whether or not to pick up pen or paintbrush. And overlong copyrights often limit, rather than encourage, a work’s dissemination, impact and influence. It can be difficult to locate copyright holders to obtain the rights to reuse old material. As a result, much content ends up in legal limbo (and in the case of old movies and sound recordings, is left to deteriorate—copying them in order to preserve them may constitute an act of infringement). The penalties even for inadvertent infringement are so punishing that creators routinely have to self-censor their work. Nor does the advent of digital technology strengthen the case for extending the period of protection. Copyright protection is needed partly to cover the costs of creating and distributing works in physical form. Digital technology slashes such costs, and thus reduces the argument for protection.

Time to return to the roots and limit the monopoly license. It was never intended that copyright should create any “intellectual property”. Whatever that is. (Is it property? Then it’s physical.)

Great HTML5 experience on iDevices with Sproutcore Touch http://bit.ly/aQB4Ih Fast Javascript interpreter. Who needs Flash? (ducking!)

Javascript is what drives a lot of web interactivity outside Flash. Shadowbox image or movie displays, slide shows, etc. It also powers interfaces like Apple’s .me rendition of an image browser like iPhoto.

Sproutcore is the Javascript engine inside Webkit, which is the html renderer for Safari, Chrome, Mobile Safari, Firefox and a whole bunch other browsers.

Since all of our views provide touch support automatically, this means that you can actually use SproutCore Touch to build apps that run both on the iPad and desktop computers.  In fact, we’ve found that usually its easier to build our apps for the iPad first and then desktop next – since things usually just work when you transition.

3D at the movies, check. 3D in the home, not so much. http://bit.ly/cxmsfF Is 3D a fad or….

Comparatively, only 5 percent of those surveyed said they had watched a 3-D film on TV — and very few seemed to want to, with only about one in six respondents said they were likely to buy a 3-D TV for their next purchase. Only about a quarter of respondents said they would prefer to watch TV in 3-D if it was available, with a third saying they would prefer not to. A whole 42 percent were unsure if they’d prefer to watch 3-D TV, which signals unfamiliarity with the technology.

What will the browser look like in 5 years? http://oreil.ly/d5tLiK 5 years ago browser “just an app” now email, docs, maps – the Internet, in fact is the browser for most of us.

But with faster javascript, the changes coming with HTML5, Canvas and Video tags, and the amazing power of CSS to style the interface, and it’s not the same beast any more. (Just try using IE 5 on OS 9 to even check email: can’t be done!)

And, of course, any move to cloud computing will require a browser.

Stroome builds community features to Kultura online editing app. http://bit.ly/akWGCb I don’t think Avid need be worried by this competition to the upcoming cloud editing effort (mentioned in my previous post).

Stroome allows users to upload footage and mix these clips with photos, audio tracks and other video footage available online in a video editor that resembles something like iMovie, albeit with less features. The resulting video can then be saved as a project and shared with either a closed group of collaborators or the entire Stroome community. The final video can be shared through various social networks, but there’s no function to republish content on YouTube or any other video sharing site yet.

And from Avid:

At NAB, Avid is demonstrating technology that aims to fulfill the vision: edit anywhere, on anything. Behind this vision are some core beliefs:

• We believe you should be able to access your media anywhere-without copying it.

• We believe that you shouldn’t have to worry about codecs and formats for either ingest or delivery. Everything should just work.

• We believe that you should be able to edit in the edit bay, in the cafeteria, at home, on location, in the airport lounge, or even at 33,000 feet-without compromise.

• We believe that if the only hardware you have with you is a netbook-you should still be able to edit.

• We believe that not just media, but software too can be streamed to the laptop-truly making any computer an editor.

You probably have those same beliefs. And if seeing is believing, you’ll just have to come check out our web-based editing technology demo at NAB.

I think I smell a trend. Not for everyone today or tomorrow (bandwidth for media upload remains a concern even though downstream bandwidth seems to work ok) but this type of collaborative editing tool is coming. Oh, and in the Media Composer-esque Java App there’s a nice little “Export {timeline} to Final Cut Pro XML”. It was then I began to believe that Avid does stand for “Open” and “Collaborative” as they had been telling us.

Google may face challenges open-sourcing VP8. http://bit.ly/auBaEl Oh shoot! Google may not have license to open source. Sadness.

Although Google has not yet officially announced that it will open-source the VP8 codec and push for its adoption in the HTML5 <video> tag, some sources think they may not have the right to do it. Modern codecs are all built on cross-licensed technologies: it’s hard to do something completely original that doesn’t build on others’ work.

Today, Betanews asked a video technology business source whether our theory held water — whether technology owners could legally challenge Google, or other users, if it attempts to offer a free license for technology without the owners’ consent or license. The source replied affirmatively. While Google may very well own rights to a proprietary version of VP8 for its own sale and licensing purposes, outside of On2’s own patents, if Google and other users are not licensed under applicable patents, the “patent-free” state of that codec could be challenged in court, Betanews was told.

VP8 is undoubtedly a better codec than Ogg Theora (built, as it turns out, on a very early On2 codec – VP3!) and would make a better choice for the open-source alternative in the <video> tag, but if Google doesn’t have the right to open-source it, then all bets are off.

Great NAB roundup from Oliver Peters. http://bit.ly/aADloT Saves me writing half my NAB roundup!

Oliver’s Digital Films blog is one of my must-read blogs and his NAB roundup is spot on. I share his thinking about Apple and potential marketshare damage (limited) from no NAB 2010 announcements, and his skepticism about 3D. Beyond that it’s a good roundup of what was announced.

Is piracy killing the music industy? http://bit.ly/d2VLtf Not by any measure that is based on fact. Music is growing, CDs are shrinking.

The music industry is growing quite nicely from every possible measure, except that the RIAA/Record Labels refuse to consider that there is any “music industry” that doesn’t include them. Recorded music on CD sales have been dropping because of digital downloads (growing dramatically) and independent musicians doing it without labels, and making more money than they did with a label. (And it works for big established acts, leaving a label, as well as artists just starting out.)

According to statistics taken from the RIAA shipment database, between 2004 and 2008 the number of single tracks sold in the U.S. increased by 669 percent while the number of album sales dropped 42 percent. Consequently, the income of the big labels suffered since single track sales are less profitable than full albums. As can be seen in the chart below, the number of music ‘units’ sold continues to grow rapidly nonetheless.

See the graph in the linked article.

Swedish Band – out of contract with label – releases “CD” as magazine: free music, added value around it. http://bit.ly/cSNMKy