Online Video Sharing

A few weeks ago, I ran a quick informational post about the Pure Digital FlipVideo Camera over at DVGadgets. I was so taken by the potential of the camera, that I purchased the 30 minute version the very next week.

And Jean and I haven’t had this much fun with a video camera. Ever.

We are acknowledged video freaks. We bought the Canon GL-1 when it launched years ago, and have a variety of Sony and Panasonic MiniDV (standard and Widescreen) camcorders to go along with our digital cameras as well.

But here’s the rub. When we’re heading out and know we want to take video, we’ll grab one of our camcorders, as well as one of our tripods if the occasion warrants. When you want high-quality video, nothing beats videotape. We very rarely just want pictures, but on occasion will also have our digital camera packed away somewhere in our car - “Just in Case”.

The problem comes when we’re just out and about on a casual trip and didn’t plan on taking any video. And that’s where the FlipVideo comes to the rescue.

Small and very light, Jean has taken to bringing the FlipVideo everywhere in her purse. After 10 days of using it, she has claimed it as her own. The casual, candid, everyday family moments that were usually a story to tell to my parents over the phone are now being preserved and shared in video form with my family over the web. Extremely easily.

Although the FlipVideo comes with easy-to-use software to upload your videos to Grouper or YouTube, I choose to upload all our video to stashSpace. Yes, I am a co-founder of the company [disclosure], but my free account at stashSpace lets me trim the starts & ends off of the individual clips, and arrange them in a movie sequence. This way, I can share one movie (made up of a number of clips) with my family, instead of having to share a whole range of individual clips. The video management features (movies, collections, tagging, search, etc.) make it very easy to customize movies for different family members, as well as just keep track of all the video that you take.

I was hoping the FlipVideo would be a convenient would be an easy-to-use way for Jean to take video and post it online for our families without having to get me involved. I am glad these hopes were not in vain.

What else can I say except if you are currently using a photo sharing or video sharing service, buy a FlipVideo now! I very rarely feel this strong about product recommendations, but this is a video device that makes video accessible across all generations.

Even if you own a digital camcorder or camera that can take video, you still need to go out and buy a FlipVideo now! It is not a replacement for your current camera or camcorder - but it will allow you to preserve so many more of your precious moments on video for the future.

Apple announced today that videos from video sharing powerhouse YouTube will soon be available to watch in your living room through your AppleTV. Starting in mid-June, thousands of current YouTube videos will be made available for live streaming to your Television, with thousands more being added every week until the entire YouTube collection is available sometime this fall. Instead of using your mouse, you will be able to use the Apple Remote to browse, find and watch YouTube videos through the AppleTV.

The YouTube feature for Apple TV will be available as a free software update in mid-June. Given the issues that I have with my current PC to TV video setup, for watching our online home movies and YouTube videos, I may have to finally break down and buy one of these!

>> Read more in the official Press Release

[*Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Post*]

My wife can spend hours at her desk creating the perfect series of 4 pages to add to our family scrapbook.  The latest trip to the zoo or aquarium, one of our kids’ latest birthdays or even a recent family get together ends up looking like the moment of a lifetime by the time she’s through.

I will readily admit, however, that I am just not that handy when it comes to… well… using my hands for most anything other than typing, especially when it comes to anything remotely artistic.  So I was very happy to see what amounts to a Digital Scrapbooking Application come across my desk for a review.

This software from PhotoFrameShow let’s you frame your digital pictures in one of over 600 frames that are available for download from their site.  You are able to do some very basic “editing” to zoom in/out on the photo within the frame, to rotate your picture, and to resize the overall image prior to saving it out (especially handy if you want to post your resulting image to the web.

The company has done a nice job in designing a piece of software that is very easy to use. After downloading and installing the software (7.6MB download), I was able to create this framed picture of my youngest son in a matter of a few minutes.  There is a categorized collection of frames available for you to download on a one-by-one basis, and selecting an image is just a point and click away.

PhotoFrameShow Features
The overall application has been designed with simplicity in mind, and as a result has limited functionality - but that’s a good thing.  It is difficult to get confused or go too far off-track exploring off-beat features that don’t add any value to what you are trying to accomplish. To that end, the basic feature set of PhotoFrameShow include:

Save your framed pictures in multiple formats and sizes.
For me, I simply saved out a large version (for possible future printing) and a smaller web-version (seen above) in the standard .jpg format, although other formats are available.

Share your picture directly from the application.
You can email the picture simply by clicking “email” and then entering your recipients email addresses, a subject line and a welcome message.  The application will then use your default email client to send your picture to family & friends.

Customize your Frame
Over 600 available themes are available to download through the website in a number of different categories, ranging from Sports to Family to Holidays to Special Events.

Virtual Printer
When you are done with your design and sharing your new picture, you can also print your picture directly from the application.

Try PhotoFrameShow for Free 
I always like to try before I buy, and PhotoFrameShow makes their software available for a full-featured Trial period - 15 days - before you need to purchase for $29.99 (although if you visit their blog, you may be able to find a promotional discount from time to time).  This will give you sufficient time to try the product and and see if it fits well into your everyday quiver of personal photo and video editing and sharing products.  I am sure that after I show it to my wife, we’ll be purchasing the software and be putting it to good personal use.

MySpace unceremoniously dumped PhotoBucket late Tuesday night, adding the popular photo and video-sharing site to a list of companies that MySpace has restricted access to.  MySpace claims that PhotoBucket was violating their TOS by generating add revenue from Videos posted to MySpace, but PhotoBucket CEO Alex Welch denies that videos contained advertising.

It appears that this dispute arose over numerous posting of a Sony-sponsored slideshow featuring images from Spiderman 3.  Although the slideshow itself was not generating money on a PPC or CPM basis, my impression is that Sony sponsored the ad with the understanding that PhotoBucket could drive a substantial number of impressions, with the largest source of these presumably coming from MySpace.

So the question here is whether this action was a direct violation of the MySpace TOS.  Fox Interactive Media certainly thinks so, stating that,  "Photobucket recently began running an ad-sponsored slideshow,” and encouraged users to post these slide shows on MySpace. “We spoke to the company about their actions, but they refused to respect our community’s terms and we had no choice but to disable their service.”

In a written statement in response to MySpace, Welch states that “Photobucket was not contacted by MySpace about this issue… Some of our users choose to share their slideshows with friends on blogs and social networks, of which MySpace is obviously one. This content is not clickable and does not generate revenue for Photobucket – only the branded content and environments on Photobucket do that. In addition, MySpace is claiming that some of these slideshows contravene its terms of service. However, it has decided to block the posting of user-generated videos from Photobucket, not slideshows.”

The TOS point in question is Item 8-13 which states that "Prohibited Content includes, but is not limited to Content that, in the sole discretion of MySpace.com: ……. Involves commercial activities and/or sales without our prior written consent such as contests, sweepstakes, barter, advertising, or pyramid schemes;"  The TOS then further states that, "advertising to, or solicitation of, any Member to buy or sell any products or services through the MySpace Services," is prohibited.  So it certainly seems that MySpace is within their rights to include or exclude whoever they want from their playground in this instance.

It is hard to argue, however, that the relationships between 3rd party widget providers and MySpace has been all but one-sided.  MySpace and the large landscape of widget companies have all benefitted together.  Overall, the MySpace layout controls and functionality  leave a lot to be desired, and many community members have probably only stuck around (and invited their friends) because of the freedom that they have historically had over adding 3-rd party features & designs to their profile.  Widget companies have provided a benefit to MySpace by adding this advanced functionality and keeping development and associated hosting costs off their balance sheet.

Certainly as free services continue to try and find ways to monetize the eyeballs they’ve collected, disputes will arise.  I can’t imagine that PhotoBucket and MySpace are not able to get back to the table and find a possible financial solution for this mess.  But maybe that’s just part of the reasoning behind this move.

Technology and Web 2.0 pundits have been weighing in on the future plight of PhotoBucket and the frailty of building your business depending on the traffic of others. You can read more on TechCrunch, GigaOm and Scobleizer.

Congratulations! You’ve just purchased a new digital camcorder. Although you may have used a camcorder before, the new features and technology of a digital video camera can sometimes be overwhelming. It’s a good idea to get to know your camcorder a little bit before you do the fun part — record video! Some of the terms may not be familiar to you, but reviewing them will help you to become a skilled videographer in no time!

As you know, there are many different digital camcorder models out there. Your camcorder may not have some of the functions or features mentioned here. For those of you who are familiar with digital video cameras, some of these terms may be an overview, but for those of you that are not, now is the time to learn!  Here are the core digital camcorder basics you need to know:

Read the rest of this entry »

Proper camcorder white balance will ensure that your video looks the best that it can.  Luckily, white balancing your camcorder is very easy to do.

What is White Balance?
Digital camcorders use the color of white as a basis for the rendering of all the other colors that it records. When you set your camcorder white balance, your camcorder will be able to properly record other colors accurately as well.

When Should Your White Balance?
You should set your white balance on your camcorder whenever your lighting environment changes.  For example, if you are videotaping a wedding, you might go from a dimly lit ceremony, to an outdoor receiving line (with lots of sun!) to an evening reception.  If possible, you should white balance at the beginning of each of these scenes.

How Do I White Balance My Camcorder?

Most digital camcorders will have a white balance button.  If yours does not, read through your camcorder manual to see if yours has a menu option available to white balance.

Once you have located your white balance button or found the white balance menu option, find something in your room that is white — a white wall, or a white piece of paper (Hint: Carry a white hardboard card with you to make sure you have something white with you at all times) — and zoom in until all you see in the viewfinder is your white object.

Then press your white balance button, and you’re done!

Before jumping into the world of digital video, you need to understand the difference between digital and analog video and why analog video should no longer be considered an acceptable form of recording your video memories when there is a much higher-quality alternative available.

Analog Video vs. Digital Video
Analog video camcorders use an electrical signal to capture images on magnetic tape. A digital video signal is a pattern of 1’s and 0’s that represent the video image. There is no variation in the original signal once it’s captured, and the image does not lose any of its original sharpness or clarity—it’s an exact copy of the original. Due to the major advances in digital technology, I highly recommended that you shoot with a digital video camera over their older analog video counterparts.

Here’s why I recommend Digital Video over Analog Video:

• Analog video degrades with each copy you make.  Digital video quality begins and remains digital from your digital camcorder to computer via FireWire cables.
• Digital video resolution is higher than analog because you can choose how many pixels, some of which offer as much as 410,000 or more pixels per Digital CCD (charged couple devices). No matter what digital video format you choose, they all have excellent resolution quality. Although some digital formats have higher quality than others, the quality of analog can deteriorate only after 5 years.
• Analog recordings are highly susceptible to deterioration. Although a regular analog camcorder may be cheaper in price, it is imperative to use digital video with digital camcorders so that preservation of your video lasts and remains in the best condition.

The Digital Hollywood Media Summit started today with opening remarks from Terry McGraw followed by a keynote interview with Barry Diller of Interactive Corp.

An international audience of media executives listened in the standing-room only auditorium as the two executives both discussed the convergence of technology and content and the impending shakeout as growing amounts of money are chasing markets and opportunity that are not limitless.

Terry gave his views on the differing roles and values of content & producers vs. audiences and consumers.  With the explosion of media on the Internet and the tearing down of walls, consumers can grab what they want.  Consumers increasingly are wanting open doors and open content, but with accuracy and easy ways to find and sift through the mountains of information.

The discussion with Barry Diller was moderated by John Burn of Business Week. Here are my notes from the keynote.

On Ask.Com
Ask is the glue between all of our businesses.  They had a market cap of $1.6B.  A unique way of searching - content and community over popularity.  We liked the technology, but could we movie it up in position relative to other search engines?  Search is a media market, not a winner-take-all market.  We’re all in trouble if Google captures the monopoly.  Media models have multiple players, and that’s a good thing.  It may not be us, but the market shares will balance out over the next 5-10 years.

On Viacom - YouTube

Viacom just tole YouTube to take down their content.  Are they being shortsighted? In contrast to the music business, availability is not an issue.  Viacom has every right to say that YouTube can’t have it, but we’ll make it available through the right medium.  The issue is availability, and Viacom has said that they won’t go into the Google/YouTube market where they will get too strong and be the only avenue for online distribution.

Smart for Viacom, but how do you get paid?  Subscription? Advertising? Micro-transaction?  Don’t know if I would do it, but you are not going to take my content and control it for other people.  I don’t know what we’ll do, but you won’t do it.

On Social Networking // Match.com

We’re not in social networking, other than Match.com, but that has a paid subscription.  Social networks are an upgrade to the Mall or the phone for people to gather and talk to each other, but is it easy to sell advertising in that medium?  Maybe for promotions, but not sure about traditional advertising.  They are definitely an advertising business model, just not completely evident how successful it will be.

Match.com got into trouble because it added too many social networking bells & whistles and confused our audience. We went from 1+ million subscribers down to 880K subscribers before we stopped it.  We got back to our core and back to 1.3+ million subscribers.  They leave us after a while, but as life goes, they tend to come back.

On User Generated Content

We should not get all crazy about this.  Is there a limit to UGC? Anything interactive is UGC. What isn’t? The user posts things online and is part of an active process.  But after you’ve seen the cats or the people tripping around, what else is there.  There are only so many talented people who can create things that lots of people want to see.  It’s not 100, but it’s also not 1 million, I can assure you.  Stuff for your family isn’t anything — just scrapbooking.  That’s not business.

The professional talent will create the content that will make you laugh, cry, etc.  it’s not the long tail. A very short tail will create the content that massive audiences will watch. Professional content will retain its value.

On Collegehumor // Acquisitions

We liked what they did (along with their 5+ million uniques), but also the team.  They created Vimeo on "spit".  We want to invent product, starting with 23/7, a comedy news site. We’ll invest a few hundred million in capital in these kinds of services over the next few years.  It’s the perfect time now that there’s a pipe large enough for video, data, etc. 

We prefer starting things to buying things, but we’ll buy anything that walks if we thing it’s good. Valuations right now are not rational, and I prefer trusting people in your own house vs. people that are trying to sell something.  Most of the time buying things for more than they are worth doesn’t work out.

You judge valuations based on how much you can lose, not how much you can make. The height of craziness is to read forward projections and put money into it.  The only thing I can do is look at how much capital I’m putting out, and how much will I lose if it doesn’t work out vs. how much I love the opportunity.

On MySpace

I don’t care what we don’t do.  We passed on MySpace.  We didn’t get it, and don’t care that it worked.  If we don’t think it’s of value, then it’s someone else’s good or bad fortune, and not ours.

On Television

I don’t thing the TV business is lousy to be in right now, but it will be tremendously challenged by creative destruction in the next few years.  Some of these things will evolve.  I can’t tell you the tight distribution models will exist in 10 years. I don’t think they will.  This is a radical revolution, and there will absolutely be both destruction and creation.

That’s it for now.  Off to the first round of sessions.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Pizza and a Video Sharing Site, I recently purchased a system to begin watching video sharing sites on my TV.  It just got to be too much to have my family huddled around my computer to watch our home videos online or latest funny videos from YouTube.

After two days of dealing with the S-Video & Audio cable setup & swapping, I realized that a hard-wired solution was just not for me — too much work and too much of a mess.  After some (quick) research online, I ordered the GrandTec Ultimate Wireless PC to TV setup, primarily because it was the only one that had an S-Video input.

The setup was easy.  You have two key pieces for the wireless video & audio - a transmitter that you hook up to your computer, and a receiver that you hook up to your television. 

The transmitter can either hook up to your SVGA (monitor) port or your S-Video port, and has all the audio cables required to hook into the audio output of your sound card.

Unfortunately, the receiver is only able to hook-up to your TV via standard composite video cable, even though the packaging advertises "Composite, S-Video and RGB Video output via traditional cables."  This is a big negative in the long-run, as downloaded movies that you might want to watch will suffer in quality not being in at least S-Video resolution.

All-in-all, the GrandTec Ultimate Wireless PC to TV System is average — I would hesitate to wholly endorse it’s "Ultimate" designation.  The video quality leaves a little bit to be desired, and the audio tends to get static whenever my Gas FirePlace fan turns on (go figure).  But it sure makes watching video from online video sharing sites a lot more enjoyable for a group of people.

Whatever happened to pizza and a movie?  More and more, I find myself and my family watching more and more online video.  Our typical Friday night pizza and a movie has now been replaced by pizza and a number of video sharing sites.

I have three kids (9, 8 and 1), so the first stop is usually 30 minutes of checking out video sharing site YouTube for the latest crazy dog or cat stunts from Americas Funniest Home Videos.  Even though my daughter has probably seen many of the same sequences 10 times or more, she still busts out laughing every time.  Why YouTube instead of Revver, MetaCafe, etc?  Two main reasons come to mind - breadth of selection and a fair chance that most of the content will be appropriate for my kids (MetaCafe still allows adult content).

After the laughs come the memories.  I have used home video sharing site StashSpace to record, tag and organize over 50 hours of my digital home videos on my laptop, and have another 50 or so hours of analog video stored on their remote servers (Disclosure, I am a co-founder of parent company HomeMovie.Com). 

My son & daughter love looking back at individual video clips of when they were babies, and marvel at how much they both looked like my youngest son as a baby.  They also get a kick out of watching mom & dad from earlier times as kids ourselves (from old film we had transferred) or seeing our life without the kids.   

And although I have DVD copies of all my edited home-video movies, we find it much easier to search for individual clips (we’ve tagged most of them) and watch on my laptop instead of swapping out DVDs. We also recently bought a wireless PC to TV system (from GrandTec) so that we can watch the videos on TV instead of the laptop.

I don’t see this trend slowing down any time soon — we’ll continue to watch more and more online video.  We’ve already started testing out the movie download sites (personally enjoy Amazon Unbox the best), and usually download & watch one movie a week.  Now I just need to figure out how to get some more local storage for all this video….