Flipping Video

A tiny camcorder shakes up the market

Two disruptive developments seem to be driving camcorder sales. One is the “Flip” pocket camcorder from Pure Digital Technologies, which burst onto the scene 18 months ago, prompting a wave of copycat models from other manufacturers. By stripping out all but the essentials, the Flip created a new type of camcorder that has revitalized the market. Read more

UFO At Inauguration Video

A video of what some speculate is a UFO flying over President Obama’s inauguration has circulated over the Internet.

The video shows an unknown object flying past the Washington Monument, as nearly two million people gathered to watch the inauguration.

Commentors on the video write that they aren’t convinced the object was a bird, due to its flat appearance and lack of visible wings.

So we will leave it to you to decide if those little green men couldn’t resist turning up for President Dbama’s inauguration just like another million people couldn’t resist either.

Internet Video Hits New Peak

Internet live broadcasting traffic in the U.S. hit a record peak this week with the President Obama’s speech. Millions of cubicle employees watched (or tried to) online video of the inauguration ceremonies. It was the most-viewed live video event in Internet history.

CNN.com fed 1.3 million live streams simultaneously. Over the nine-hours ceremony, CNN provided more than 21.3 million video stream. During the Election Day, it had ‘only’ 5.3 million streams.

CDN provider Akamai worked with New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Viacom and other outlets, reported a record-breaking day, feeding up seven million video streams at one time.

Despite these impressive raw figures, many people were unable to access video, and many Websites –we tried CNN, NYT, ABC, NBC- had trouble keeping up the overwhelming demand. Those frustrated users turn to old television to watch the speech.

CNN posted a note to visitors saying they were in line to receive a working stream.

However, CNN and other media explained that the viewing troubles may have been more a result of the limited Internet capacity coming to offices and houses, rather than a lack of overall bandwidth from the media companies.

The viewing troubles may have been more a result of the limited Internet capacity coming to offices and houses, rather than a lack of overall bandwidth from the media companies, according to Mr. Woodcock.

“The United States continues to suffer from less-than-robust bandwidth, due to inadequate government attention and limited competition between Internet service providers like AT&T and Comcast”, said an analyst in the New York Times. President Obama has acknowledged the problem.

Google To Share Revenue

Google is trying to buddy up to major media conglomerates with a new strategy, according to some reports. Blog TechCrunch says Google has decided to share advertising revenue with owners of videos posted on its YouTube property, even if they are not the ones uploading them.

The idea is that if a consumer posts video content from a TV show, then any ad revenue that YouTube generates from that clip will be shared with the legal rights holders of that video content. Google would rely on its Content ID system to identify such content on YouTube.

Why would they pursue such a strategy? For Google this would be an attempt to placate other media giants who might be considering lawsuits along the lines of Viacom. But at the same time, I see it as a potentially important development for video advertising. Rather than treat the Web as a separate advertising medium, we’ve tried to re-use and match formats from other media to the Web. Banner advertising has come from newspapers and magazines, pre-roll ads from television, etc. Yet, the most successful online advertising format is search — a format that is unique to the Web, and best suited to online user behavior.

Similarly, online video syndication is a Web-only concept. Sure, there’s syndication in the TV business, but it is either content that never made it on prime time, or content that has already been on prime time for years. The idea of distributing video to multiple sites at the same time, and simply adding up viewers for advertisers, is a Web-only idea. It is also well suited to the Web. As long as detailed tracking data and analytics are available, advertisers benefit, and as long as the same revenue can be generated per view, content owners benefit.

If YouTube does go through with this new strategy, they will be taking it a step further. Not only will it not matter where users see the video, it won’t matter who actually uploads it.

Obviously, there will be concerns from content owners. There always is, when any kind of change is suggested. And advertisers will want to know who exactly is watching and if there is a difference between a viewer at one site or version and another. If these issues can be resolved — and they should be — then we could be moving into a far more open and disruptive stage of video distribution.

New Sanyo HD Camcorders

Sanyo unveiled two new 720P high definition camcorders this week, the upright, “pistol-grip” VPC-CG10 and the VPC-TH1, a traditionally-shaped horizontal design. Each offers different strengths: the TH1 tries to make a name for itself with its diminutive size, and offers a larger 30x optical zoom but smaller 2-megapixel CMOS sensor. The CG10 is positioned as a camera/camcorder hybrid, with has a smaller 5x optical zoom but a much larger 10-megapixel CMOS and high-res photos. Both find themselves in a market flooded with new models fighting for attention. Read more