video
Spilling Your Own Beans
If you took in the big game yesterday you may have noticed that some of the commercials had already created buzz online. Volkswagen’s ads scheduled for release on Super Bowl Sunday were leaked 5 days earlier on YouTube, purposefully.
One day after the Wednesday February 2nd release, the commercials had gone viral – with “The Force” receiving more than one million hits. As I write this post, early Monday morning, the commercial is sitting at 15.5 million hits!
The strategy: by releasing the videos early, Volkswagen was able to engage audiences before the bombardment of other beer, cola or car commercials scheduled to hit the big screen during the game. The timing of the release was perfect. Volkswagen jumped the gun, and stayed one step ahead of the competition.
Pre-released or not, these ads were well received and have been touted some of the most memorable ads of Super Bowl XLV. Thus, showing us, once again – the power of video online. Check them out: “The Force” and “Black Beetle”.
Taylor
Tags: commerical, Super Bowl ad, video, viral video, Volkswagen, youtube
Does Google Index Flash?
On November 11, Google’s Webmaster Central Blog announced its progress with indexing Adobe Flash content. A webpage is indexed when Google becomes aware of its existence and is added to Google’s database. In the past, Flash was a big problem for search engine optimization because search engines like Google, were not able to crawl (read) content within Flash files. As a result, Google was not able to understand and properly rank websites created largely in Flash.
In June 2008, Google announced significant improvements for indexing Adobe Flash files, such as the ability to index textual content and discover URLs within Flash files. Further improvements were announced in June 2009.
In the announcement on November 11, Google explained improvements with JavaScript compatibility which helps index sites that use JavaScript to embed Flash files. Video indexing technology also improved to help detect pages with videos.
Flash content and videos offer a richer medium to engage website visitors. There is always a trade-off between making a website look attractive with Flash content and making it more search engine friendly. With these improvements, the trade-off is reduced and ultimately allows website developers to improve the visitors’ experience, from finding a website to exploring it.
Victor
Tags: adobe, engagement, flash, google, index, SEO, video
A Different Spin on Crowdsourcing
Every month I take some time and check out the latest videos posted to TED. The latest talk to catch my eye is by Chris Anderson, previous publisher and now curator for TED. He speaks of the rise in web videos fueling a cycle of innovation in a talk titled “How web video powers global innovation”.
Anderson states there are three things needed for crowd accelerated innovation: crowd, light, and desire. A crowd of people who share an interest. A light, as defined as a means for people to see what others are creating. And desire, inspiring people to participate.
So, unlike crowdsourcing (where tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, are outsourced to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call), crowd accelerated innovation is less controlled or contrived – it just happens. The web has made it easier than ever to form crowds, as well as shine a light on what is being created. And the desire, we know is out there. “We are a social species,” Anderson says. “We spark off each other.”
Anderson speaks about how the accessibility of video on the web (and the abundance of it), allows for people to teach themselves (and share with others) how to do things they might never have done before. He speaks to how video is accelerating the speed at which we are innovating (an interesting thought when you consider that Cisco predicts that within four years more than 90% of the web’s content will be video).
The world of dance has evolved with dance videos being posted online. Kids are able to teach themselves, and challenge others. Jonathan Chu, a director, writer and producer, also part of a dance crew called AC/DC (Adam/Chu Dance Crew), is quoted saying:
“Dancers have created a whole global laboratory online. Kids in Japan are taking moves from a YouTube video created in Detroit, building on it within days and releasing a new video, while teenagers in California are taking the Japanese video and remixing it to create a whole new dance style”.
This type of accelerated innovation in effect produces a new kind of dance dance revolution (check out this kid’s moves).
I agree with Anderson whole heartedly and can see that power in numbers has served us well when it comes to many things, take for example: programming. Open source practices lend themselves well to the internet, which allows code to be easily shared and distributed. Thus allowing for more collaboration, resulting in further innovation and creativity.
TED, probably without realising, is actively promoting the idea of crowd accelerated innovation. By crowdsourcing and appealing to audiences to help translate their talks online, they have managed to provide subtitles in 18 different languages. This accessibility allows millions of people to access the magnitude of intelligence, creativity and innovation surrounding technology, entertainment and design that TED shares with us daily.
We are part of their crowd. What innovation do you think is worth accelerating?
Taylor
Tags: collaboration, crowdsourcing, innovation, video
Future unFriendly
Louis CK is right: The world is amazing and no one is happy.
This weekend I saw two game-changing videos. One was the Tipp Ex advertisement with the Hunter and the Bear, the other was the Arcade Fire video “The Wilderness Downtown.” One word sums up both of these experiences: Wow.
The Tipp Ex video advertisement is exhaustively interactive. A bear comes upon a hunter – and you, the viewer, decides what happens next. Does the hunter shoot the bear? Dance with the bear? Kiss the bear? You name it. The hunter and the bear do it.
Of course there are limits. And of course, *that* is what people talk about. Forget the fact that there are at least 50 possible outcomes. Forget the fact that this video continues to shoot around the internet at lightning speed and has garnered over 6.5-million views on YouTube in less than 2 weeks. Forget the fact that this is another inspiring example of interactive media, a la Old Spice. Nope. Let’s talk instead about how the words “sew” or “knit” don’t trigger results.
Taking the concept of what a video can be, to another new level is Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown”. (You must launch this video on Google Chrome for the full effect.) This interactive video sucks you into the experience in a most intimate way. By incorporating imagery from Google Maps, the street you grew up on becomes part of the video. Not only that, but halfway through this experience, you are prompted to write a note to your younger self, who lived on that street. There are multiple windows opening – with content transferring between them. It is truly remarkable.
Yet when you read people’s reactions online, many complain about their address not working. Or, having seen this done before… it’s nothing new. And therefore..? That takes away from the overall awesomeness? People. Dial back the negative. I think this ambitious interactive experience takes an entire industry of video production to new heights. The potential blows my mind.
In my opinion, these two examples give us a taste of what’s to come. And I, for one, will be greeting that future with a jaw on the floor and an abundance of praise for the very effort.
Tags: Arcade Fire, interactivity, Louis CK, TippEx, video, youtube
Why H.264 has won (for now)
H.264 is a video codec that is used in a number of different containers, for example, .MP4, .FLV, .MOV.
As of May 2010, the H.264 format has claimed a stake in 66 percent of all videos online, making it the current leader for internet video compression.
One reason is, well, H.264 is an athletic encoder – it looks great and weighs less! Technically, it offers nearly three times greater compression than MPEG-2, at half the file size, and still looks clean and sharp, I like to think of it as the star wrestler of video encoders, the way it squashes data flat.
Another reason for H.264′s dominance, is it’s flexibility. H.264 was created to allow content from your home computer to be delivered to other devices without the time consuming hassle of converting. So, if you happen to have the latest technology in your hands, you can share your H.264 videos from your computer to your iPhone to your iPod to your DVD player, to your TV set-top box with no sweat, no cursing, no mangled, stretched or pixelated video.
And finally, I would guess that YouTube – the Ruling King of Video – has been one of the major forces in pushing H.264 to the top.
In the beginning, YouTube’s favored codec was H.263 Sorenson Spark in an FLV container. And people were astounded at the speed of playback and the ability of H.263 to crunch a fat movie down to an edible size. We were finally watching video in real time, on our home computers, without fits and starts, and the world was forever changed.
Since then, YouTube, whose very existence requires the staff stay on top of evolving video compression standards, started using H.264 in 2007 and three years later, YouTube uses and promotes H.264 FLV. In a recent blog post, YouTube explained that they chose H.264 because they need a format that will work with as many browsers as possible. And for efficiency’s sake, YouTube needs to minimize the number of formats they accept to keep up with their manic upload rate of 24 hours of video every minute (makes me sweat just thinking about it!).
While YouTube gives a nodd to the people-friendly open video format VP8, YouTube says they’re sticking with the Flash Player and H.264 for now, noting Flash’s security features and it’s technical capabilities such as recording from a webcam straight on to YouTube for live chat and broadcasting.
Tags: codec, H.264, video, youtube
