Categories
Item of Interest Media Consumption

Web Original News Video Get Twice the Views as TV Clips

Web Original News Video Get Twice the Views as TV Clips http://t.co/MHcBBP3o

An interesting data point from Stokes Young, and Executive Producer at MSNBC:

Video news created exclusively for the Web gets about twice as many streams online as videos clips from broadcast programming, says Stokes Young, Executive Producer of MSNBC.com in this interview with Beet.TV

Note how important transcripts have been to improving the findability of the clips.

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest Media Consumption

More Movies Will Be Streamed Than Watched on Disc in 2012.

More Movies Will Be Streamed Than Watched On Disc In 2012 http://t.co/6oOvgKnG And that’s the legal viewings!

Legal online viewings of films will more than double to 3.4 billion this year from 1.4 billion in 2011, IHS said today in a statement. Physical viewings of DVDs and Blu-ray discs will shrink to 2.4 billion from 2.6 billion, according to the forecast.

Unlimited-streaming subscription plans, including those offered by Netflix Inc. (NFLX) and online retailer Amazon.com (AMZN)’s Prime service, accounted for 94 percent of all paid online movie consumption in the U.S. last year, Englewood, Colorado-based IHS said. Streamed movies have been replacing video discs, much as streamed music is overtaking compact audio discs.

Of course, that’s little solace if your client(s) still demand shiny discs!

Categories
Item of Interest The Technology of Production

Shooting Cinerama

There’s a group of enthusiasts shooting a brand new Cinerama movie – a travelogue about Los Angeles – and today I played an extra around the Griffith Park Merry-go-round.

This is shooting to real film, with a restored Cinerama camera.

The restored camera being loaded with its three magazines.

Got me thinking about how size changes over time, which will lead to another post.

Categories
Interesting Technology Item of Interest Metadata

Adobe Story update: new and changed features

Adobe Story update: new and changed features (15March2012) http://t.co/UwR7Nay7

The entire Adobe Story workflow – from script to screen – is a great story of its own, and I feel somewhat undersold by Adobe.

There’s a mini-site for the software and a bunch of tutorials at Adobe TV. If you’re unfamiliar with Adobe Story:

Extend the benefits of your Creative Suite applications

Streamline your post-production workflow by using script metadata to edit more quickly in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5.

1. Access directly within Adobe Premiere Pro

Use the CS Live services panel in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 to go to Adobe Story and quickly access your scripts and outlines.

2. Accelerate your editing workflow

Import script metadata directly into Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 and easily search for important video elements such as dialogue or characters.

3. Edit more efficiently

In Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, use the script dialogue embedded in your shots to align the script to the spoken dialogue more accurately.

4. Capture metadata efficiently

Use Adobe OnLocationâ„¢ or Adobe Premiere Pro to add script metadata to your clips.

Categories
Item of Interest

When Entertainment Industry Numbers are More Suited to Comedy than Analysis

When Entertainment Industry Numbers Are More Suited To Comedy Than Analysis http://t.co/Y8vLaWkY

Without further comment:

The movie folks also tell us that our economy loses over 370,000 jobs to content theft, which is quite a lot when you consider that back in ’98 the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that the motion picture and video industries were employing 270,000 people. Other data has the music industry at about 45,000 people. And so the job losses that came with the internet and all that content theft have therefore left us with negative employment in our content industries. This is just one of the many mind-blowing statistics that copyright mathematicians have to deal with every day. And some people think that string theory is tough.

It’s so easily disprovable, why bother saying it? (Answer: Because the rest of the media repeats what they say with no critical thinking at all.)

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

Glenn Beck Says Walking Away Fox Will Get Him $40 M a Year

Glenn Beck Says Walking Away From Fox Will Get Him $40 Million A Year http://t.co/qmonMcw3

Although the audience is much smaller – 300,000 subscribers vs 2.5 million viewers on Fox – the revenue is dramatically larger.  I think this, along with the recent Louis CK experience, supports the theme that direct connection with an audience and giving them something to pay for they want (in this case access to Beck) is a viable option for future funding of production.

Personally, I loath Beck and what he stands for, but I support his First Amendment Right to be a what he is.

GBTV, which jumped on the scene in September, is expected to bring in at least $40 million in revenue this year, supported by advertising and more than 300,000 subscribers paying as much as $9.95 a month for full access to GBTV, according to a person close to the company.

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

Rumblefish’s Friendly Music – 750K licensed songs

Rumblefish’s Friendly Music relaunches with 750k licensed songs http://t.co/Eh05ehpr $1.99 per track for YouTube videos. All licensed, apparently only for YouTube, though.

One tool Friendly Music has added is a MoodMap, which lets users search for a soundtrack based on the feeling of the video they’ve created. By clicking within a rainbow-like circle, they can find songs that match a certain mood, which refines things a bit. There’s also a “What’s the Occasion” tab for finding soundtracks relevant to certain holidays and occasions. And finally, Friendly Music has an editorially curated Editor’s Picks, with songs focusing specifically on current events, pop culture or upcoming holidays.

Would be nice to get this level of simplicity (and cost) in licensing music for other applications. Until then, there’s Smartsound!

Update: On Twitter Chad Haberstroh @haberchad pointed out that jewelbeat.com has 35,000 tracks licensed for commercial use for 99c each.

 

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest

The RIAA & MPAA Say That A Copy is as Valuable as the Original…

The RIAA & MPAA Say That A Copy Is Just As Valuable As The Original, Send Them A Copy Of Money http://t.co/2mQuXN8C

OK, it’s totally tongue-in-cheek but it’s fun!

A guy by the name of Jake Gold set up SendThemYourMoney.com, which is a site encouraging you to send “money” to the RIAA/MPAA. But… by “money” he means “copies” of money, since the RIAA/MPAA’s whole argument is based on the idea that a copy is no different than the original.

Categories
Interesting Technology Item of Interest

The Robotic Musicians known as Intel’s Industrial Control.

The Robotic Musicians known as: Intel’s Industrial Control in Concert http://t.co/7uyjx1CI Some amazing engineers – softwaare *& hardware.

I admired the animations when they came out and am just blown away that an engineering team could implement it in real life, in 90 days using off the shelf software and hardware.

And while we’re on that theme:  Robot Quadrotors Perform James Bond Theme

Categories
Distribution HTML5 Item of Interest Video Technology

The war on H.264 is over.

The war on H.264 is over: “We lost,” says Mozilla at Apple Insider

Thank Goodness, sanity finally prevails! In fact Mozilla’s previous approach – holding out for Ogg or WebM codecs – had the unfortunate side effect of driving even more people to the very closed Flash for distribution of H.264 in FireFox. Exactly the opposite of what the Mozilla folk wanted.

I’ve long said that H.264 is “one codec to rule them all” (because it scales so well) and it’s about time Mozilla realized that the world really only wants one codec. Well, really users just don’t want to care about codecs at all!