Posts Tagged ‘YouTube’
How to Navigate the Video Format Battlefield
How to Navigate the Video Format Battlefield
by Jeff Malkin
For content publishers and consumers, there is chaos in the video ecosystem, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. No doubt you’ve been reading about HTML5 vs. Flash vs. Silverlight (and recently, WebM), Apple vs. Adobe, H.264 vs. VP8, iPhone vs. Android, Do-it-Yourself vs. OVP.
Whether serving tens or thousands of videos, maximizing viewership with reasonably high-quality videos across web and mobile devices is the new imperative. With so many permutations of video codecs, formats, containers and features, it’s confusing to design a video workflow that’s cost-effective, flexible to change with the evolving formats and scalable to meet your growth requirements. With this post, I offer a couple of recommendations to help simplify the array of options currently available.
Case in point: Just when it appeared that H.264 was emerging as the video codec leader, primarily because of YouTube support and strong backing by Apple on its devices, Google went and threw an open-sourced VP8 codec into the ring via the recently announced WebM project, a new video format launched by Google with support from other leading industry players such as Mozilla, Opera Software, Brightcove and Encoding.com.
While both H.264 and VP8 are good quality codecs, only VP8 is currently royalty-free and therefore has a great opportunity to emerge as the new leader within the next year or two. However, for web distribution today, we recommend encoding your videos using the H.264 video codec in an .mp4 container. This is a high-quality output format already supported by Flash, and the leading HTML5 browsers including Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer v9.
WebM is a great shot in the arm for proponents of HTML5 who are pushing for plugin-less video viewing and a more seamless integration with rich media web applications. But the lack of unified HTML5 standards across browsers has hampered its growth. Adobe’s Flash, on the other hand, with deep market penetration and a robust feature set, remains the dominant technology for consuming web-based video.
Our recommended approach for HTML5 supporters who want to ensure users can view your videos via a slick user experience is to write code, or utilize a commercial platform, to detect the user’s browser for HTML5 compatibility, and if not supported, launches a Flash player. If you want to get fancy, you can utilize the Flash Media Server to detect your users’ bandwidth connections during video playback and switch to a higher or lower bit-rate version mid-stream to ensure the highest quality video is being served without causing buffering issues.
Adding to the complexity of video format options are the various mobile device requirements. Yes, Apple’s iPhone OS and Google’s Android OS – the dominant mobile platforms for mobile video consumption – support our recommended encode format using the H.264 codec in an .mp4 container delivered via HTML5 in Safari and Chrome. However, if you’re delivering video via applications on the iPhone / iPad, Apple now requires publishers to prepare video in its proprietary and complex HTTP Streaming format. For this, we suggest utilizing a video encoding service or video platform to manage. To support the plethora of feature-phones already in the market, videos should be encoded to the 3GP format for the most universal coverage.
The “winners” in the video format battle will reap billions of dollars as their influence and market dominance in the video ecosystem rises. This simple truth means the utopia of a single, standardized video format across all web and mobile devices will not be realized – not soon, not ever. In other words, for the foreseeable future, you will need to support multiple video formats to capitalize on your revenue potential across the various internet-connected devices.
The good news is that there is a mature ecosystem of video tools and service providers that can help. The availability of open-source content management systems, video encoding services and cloud storage providers has dramatically simplified the development effort required to create and manage a powerful, flexible and cost-efficient video workflow.
YouTube Streams Two Billion Views Per Day
Five Years In, YouTube Is Now Streaming Two Billion Views Per Day
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been five years since YouTube launched and changed the way people share video online (it was acquired by Google a year and a half later). To celebrate its birthday, YouTube has just announced a major new milestone: it’s streaming a whopping two billion views per day (the company notes that this is “nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined”).
To help commemorate the occasion, YouTube is also launching a new channel of videos called “My YouTube Story”, which includes a collection of clips featuring people around the world talking about how YouTube has changed their lives. The initial batch of clips were filmed by documentary filmmaker Stephen Higgins, and some of them are quite touching. YouTube users can upload their own video stories as well; YouTube will be plotting these videos on a global map, and will also offer an interactive timeline of clips.
We should point out that YouTube announced it had passed 1 billion views a day in October 2009, but that number was probably a bit lower than the actual figure — we had reported that it had crossed 1.2 billion views a day the previous June.
YouTube has also compiled some stats and timelines as it reflects on its first five years.
Here are the site’s most current stats:
2 Billion views a day
3rd most visited website (Alexa)
Localized in 23 countries across 24 different languages
15 The average number of minutes people spend on the site each day
24 Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
45 Million home page impressions every day
70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S.
100 Years of video scanned by copyright managent technology, Content ID, every day
1700 Years it would take you to watch the hundreds of millions of videos on YouTube
Episodic is Acquired by Google – What it means for YouTube
Episodic Acquired by Google, and What it Means for YouTube
April 2, 2010
Filed Under: in Analysis, Featured Articles, News, Online Video, Social Media
Author: Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins
From the blog post:
We are thrilled to announce that Episodic has been acquired by Google. The entire Episodic team is extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our customers and the evolution of online video.
The Episodic team will join Google and continue its work to bring a great video experience to the Web, mobile phones and IPTV devices. There will be no interruption in service for existing Episodic customers.
From our earliest discussions with Google, it was clear that the teams shared this belief and together we obviously see huge potential in online video. Our product visions were also complimentary and together we will continue to produce innovative video technology for our customers and their viewers.
Speaking of our fabulous customers, we want to thank you all for your support and your willingness to experiment and sit on the bleeding edge with our team. We can’t wait to show you all what’s coming.
This is particularly interesting news for me – I’ve been a user of the service since it’s inception (I think my first show on the system was the sixth one created – just after Mashable Conversations and just before Boing Boing’s show). I’ve since used my account there to launch dozens of short series and shows, and I’m always impressed with how full featured the system has been.
The “shared vision” Episodic is talking about, speaking from experience, is their willingness to listen to their early adopters and their accessibility. Up until very recently (right around when he started talking to Google, I’d imagine), I had the ear of Episodic co-founder Noam just about any time I wanted to pick up the phone and dial him up.
I spoke briefly with people familiar with the matter to get a sense of whether or not this was a personnel acquisition or a technology acquisition. I didn’t come away with a definite answer, but I got the sense that it could be both. Matias, the other co-founder of Episodic is a veteran of Google as well as of Powerset (part of the technology behind Bing), so there’s going to be an obvious overlap in familiarity with the culture as well as many of the people now at Google.
Beyond that, though, what made this an interesting question for me to hunt down the answer to is that there isn’t a ton of technology to fold into the YouTube platform that isn’t already out there. Racking my brain, here’s what I can find that isn’t yet available to the public on the YouTube platform:
Easy syndication to other platforms.
With Episodic, you can click a button, and it uses TubeMogul to syndicate your videos out to every other platform in existence. I don’t see YouTube wanting this feature, but it would certainly put them in a different class of tool if they offered it.
Advanced Analytics.
You can drill down with Episodic to minute by minute analysis on engagement, click throughs, fast forwards and all sorts of mess. It’s really evolved into a powerful system over the last couple years, and one that’s invaluable for determining not only what works or doesn’t creatively, but show construction (Does the ad do better in the first or second slot? Should I have a 15 second or 10 second intro song?).
An Ad Platform.
The one thing I’m surprised we haven’t seen at this stage of YouTube’s existence is a producer facing ad platform. If you were to ask for one that’s simple and gets the job done, Episodic has it.
A Public Facing Live Streaming Solution.
This is the one component I haven’t seen to Episodic’s platform, but they’ve been offering a live-streaming solution for professional users for many months now. If it is anything like the VOD component, it’s a turnkey solution. This is something that, if it was scalable, would be a game changing announcement from YouTube with regard to the rest of the livestreaming world (with Justin.TV, UStream as well as with professional players like BitGravity and the rest).
This is an Announcement to Watch
I’m not saying that simply because I’m close to some of the players involved – if the tech is the target in this acquisition and any of this gets incorporated into the larger ecosystem of the YouTube world, we could see some real innovation in online video again.
Industry News
- China Finally OKs Google’s Acquisition Of Motorola Mobility May 19, 2012It's been just over nine months since Google announced their intentions to acquire hardware manufacturer Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, and now it seems that the final pieces of the deal have fallen into place. According to a new report from the Associated Press, Chinese officials have finally given the Google-Motorola deal their blessing. […]Chris Velazco
- The Disrupt 2012 NYC Hackathon Is Officially On! May 19, 2012The anticipation is palpable. Hundreds of hackers have congregated outside Manhattan's Pier 94, planning, strategizing, and praying to baby Jesus that their fates will be similar to those of Group.me and Docracy. We've seen plenty of Hackathon winners go on to do incredible things, make millions of dollars, and rise to startup stardom levels, but t […]Jordan Crook
- Gillmor Gang: Don’t Click Here May 19, 2012The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Gabe Rivera, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — play toe jam football in the shadow of the Facebook IPO. Try as we might, we can't shake the weight of Facebook's dominance of Techmeme and maybe the fate of the global economy. Greece, move over. @gaberivera joins near the 30 minute mark. @scobleizer trie […]Steve Gillmor