Video

Overheard - RealDVD and the power of the MPAA

“It’s perfectly legal to rip music from a CD and upload it onto an iPod for personal use; why can’t a person do the same with their own copies of movies?” Brennon Slattery, Why Pick on RealDVD?

It’s sad that RealDVD, with its sophisticated and lawful approach to DVD-copying, had to swallow the wrath of the MPAA. It’s also clear that the DMCA [Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998] needs to be updated to reflect the changes in media distribution 11 years later.

Overheard - When should you use streaming video?

Streaming is the better solution when your clips are more than a few minutes long, when you want to enable interactive applications like video search or linking deep into a file, or you want to collect statistics on what’s actually being watched. Larry Bouthillier, Streaming vs. Downloading Video: Understanding The Differences

Streaming is the way to go when you want to control the impact of video on your network, or when you need to support large numbers of viewers. And of course, it’s the only way to do live webcasts and multicasting.

Overheard - New BigDog video

Boston Dynamics has released a new video of BigDog, their military transport quadruped.  This is one robot you want to keep an eye on — very cool.  According to Boston Dynamics PR:

BigDog is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog’s legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next.

Here’s LittleDog -- I think it looks like a bat.

Overheard - Viral marketing at its best

Celeb Choreographer Ashley Wallen took the dancers through an intensive 80 hour rehearsal to ensure they nailed the performance as they could only film a single take. Commuters stand and watch in amazement as the routine gets going and many can be seen taking pictures on their phones still unaware of what is happening around them. Karl Walderman, T Mobile Liverpool Street Station flashmob ad storms YouTube

By now you’ve probably heard about the T-Mobile flashmob at the Liverpool train station.  What a brilliant piece of marketing.

Here’s the official press release.

Overheard: Overlay ads beat out pre-roll ads for viewer’s attention

In a study released Thursday, Google and MediaVest used NeuroFocus findings to show that overlay ads appearing in YouTube videos grab consumers’ attention and boost brand awareness. Mark Walsh, Google: This Is Your Brain On Advertising

With revenue from YouTube ads falling short of company expectations at an estimated $200 million this year–mostly from display ads–the pressure grows to find new ways to monetize the Web’s largest video site.

I had to look up overlay ad.  They’re semi-transparent overlays that cover the bottom fifth of the screen and then disappear after 10 seconds. If you click the ad, a pop-up with a full commercial plays right in the main player. At the end of the commercial — or when you click the close icon — the original clip resumes playing.  Overlay ads come in two flavors, video and plain text.  If marketers were observing my brain waves, they’d see that my emotional response to such an ad was favorable.  Unlike a pre-roll ad, you don’t have to sit through a commercial to see the content.

Today’s word is neuromarketing.

Overheard: Monetizing web video with product placement

Sure, the YouTube explosion was fueled by amateurs, but it will be showbiz professionals who cash in on Web video. That’s because most big corporate advertisers want a safe, predictable environment — not the latest YouTube one-off, no matter how viral. Frank Rose, Hollywood Has Finally Figured Out How to Make Web Video Pay

Frank Rose put together an interesting look at the scramble to monetize web video. I hadn’t realized that some TV execs were looking at Web video as the farm team for the big league. It also hadn’t occurred to me that product placement in web video could be big business.

On a sunny afternoon in March, Rogow pulls his black Porsche SUV to the curb, collects a ticket from the valet, and walks briskly into the Creative Artists Agency building on LA’s Avenue of the Stars. Perfectly framed in an enormous glass wall is the Hollywood sign, 8 miles away. Rogow is here to meet with Anita Lawhon, the Cisco executive in charge of entertainment partnerships. This is crunch time for Gemini Division, the weeks when everything — advertising, distribution, financing, production — must come together. On a table in the vast marble reception zone sits this morning’s Daily Variety. “Changes to Biz Give Town the Jitters,” reads the front-page headline.

Today, Rogow is focused on how to get that business model working. It’s going well — so well that Herskovitz recently met with his CAA agents to learn how Electric Farm is doing it. Cisco is key. Those Gemini Division agents are going to wield some pretty cool tech, much of it — thanks to a deal brokered by CAA — actual products from Cisco: a video surveillance system that sends an alert when someone penetrates the wrong sector; digital billboards that can be reprogrammed on the fly; TelePresence, a teleconferencing system with life-size video so hi-def it makes virtual meetings seem almost real. In the past few weeks, similar deals have been cut with Acura, Intel, Microsoft, and UPS. “In a cold business sense,” Rogow confides, “this show is a self-financing marketing vehicle.”

Another quote from this article got me thinking: “In 1908, movies were 10 minutes long because that’s all you could get on a reel of film, and the actors who appeared in them were anonymous. ” Sound familiar?

Overheard: Qik — streaming video from your phone

I shoot video using my cell phone all the time. Transferring it to other sites was a major pain until Qik came around. Using Qik, any video you shoot is streamed live, and also archived at the same time, so you can watch it again later. Eric Zeman, Qik Offers Its Mobile Video Sharing Service To The Masses

I can see this really taking off — it makes much more sense to me than Twitter does.

I wonder how they’re going to handle the pro-privacy backlash — it’s bound to be an issue.

Video: Intel, HP and Microsoft team up for a TV commercial

- Just wanted to share this one…I love it.

Video: CERN and the Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is supposed to be turned on sometime this May. (The turn-on date has been delayed many times.)

Video: CERN - from the WWW to the origins of life

Cern in 3 minutes — virtual tour