Marketing with Video and Rich Media Blog

You are here: Home / Archives for Video Standards

Is your TV Connected? If not, it will be very soon.

October 5, 2010 by 2 Comments

The internet is coming to your TV and it’s going to get ugly… for a while.

I  vividly remember the ‘experts’ confidently defining two distinct media participation modes – ‘lean forward’ (i.e. actively engage in a specific task… on a computer) and lean back’ where you consume passive entertainment (generally on your television). The experts were correct for a couple of years. Then we humans did what we often tend to do – we adapted. Check out your teenager today on a computer watching a video, texting their friends and updating their facebook status, all at the same time. Are they leaning forward or back, and does that distinction even matter? None of the experts even considered the third critical media consumption mode, ‘walk forward’ (mobile). “OK” the experts concede, the ‘lean forward/back’ paradigm really just applied to the television set. You still only lean back in your family room, right? Wrong…

Google has quietly been applying it’s considerable brain power to GoogleTV. Like Apple (and Apple TV) Google is betting that the most important and lucrative screen in the world (your TV) is going to open up into a platform for much more engaging ‘lean forward’ type of activities, and they are looking to put themselves in the middle of your family room.

Everyone is fighting for control. The networks are fighting for their lives to control when you can watch your favorite shows. Apple wants to own the big store that you get all your shows from. The cable companies want to limit what you can and can’t see. Google wants everyone to be happy, free and open as long as every commercial is served through their advertising delivery network. The TV manufacturers all want a piece of the action. The set-top box companies are all scrambling trying to figure out why nothing they have created to date has ever caught on. Microsoft is hoping they can spend their way into your hearts by making x-box the single device that solves all of your integration issues. Netflix wants to provide you access to every bit of media ever created for one low fee. Hulu isn’t really sure what they are doing but the networks that own Hulu are at least trying to stay ahead of the wave and not make the same mistake that the good folks from the music industry made. Exciting times!

What does it all mean? Very, very soon, your TV, if it is not already connected,  is going to be connected to the internet. New micro targeted channels, games, tools, applications,  the long tail of media, new services, cloud-hosted everything and a bunch of stuff we can’t even imagine are all going to be accessible on your TV. It’s the wild west for a number of years until Google or Apple (my guess) or someone else becomes the dominate interface to all content, gaming, applications, and other stuff that you will be leaning forward, backward and sideways to do on your family room ‘TV’.

——–

An example: Sony has partnered with Google and are introducing Google TV on some of their new displays:

…and a timely example of ugly:

Filed Under: General, Online Video Industry, Video Standards, Video Technology

7 things you won’t hear from your video production company (even if you should).

March 31, 2010 by 12 Comments

All video production is the same right?

Video production is growing in it’s importance as part of the overall corporate marketing mix. With that growth comes specialization, complexity and a host of issues that many video production customers may or may not be aware of.

Here are 7 things that you wouldn’t want to hear from your video production company:

1. “We don’t have general liability or errors and omissions insurance.”
What could possibly go wrong? One of the crew drives over a customer, they forget to get a permission form signed, they use licensed material that you don’t have a license for, a light falls on someone… etc. Chances are things won’t go wrong, but if they do you had better be working with a company that is well insured. Standard insurance coverage for a video production company is $2,000,000 for errors and omissions and general liability.

2. “We do a bit of everything – websites, PR, SEO, graphic design, print, advertising… and video.”
The market will always support a range of generalists and specialists that service the same business audience. That said, a good rule of thumb is that if the number of services offered by a company is greater than the number of employees you might want to consider getting a second quote.

3. “We don’t really understand the web, or social media, or marketing .”
The vast majority of corporate video today is being delivered either exclusively or predominantly on the web. Creating video for the web is not the same as creating video for broadcast, or for entertainment, or for presentation at an event. Viewing behaviors are very different online. You also have to consider delivery platforms, hosting options,  interactivity,  conversion techniques, social media aspects of your video and many other factors that are unique to the web.

4. “We just do corporate video to pay the bills, we’d much rather be doing television.”
Very few people go into video because they want to help businesses sell more products or services (marketing and sales stuff). Film or television is usually the goal, doing corporate work is just what pays the bills. While there are a number of great companies that do both very well, unless your video production company is working under the direction of an ad agency or marketing firm, or they specialize in marketing video you shouldn’t be surprised if your video is wonderfully irrelevant.

5. “We didn’t really focus on business results per se, but we think this video might win an award.”
Creative work is wonderful if it serves a business objective. If it doesn’t you’ve wasted your money. Very few industry awards consider business results in their selection criteria – which is unfortunate because business results are the only thing that matter.

6. “There will  be many different people working on your video project.”
You met the president of the company and his senior team. Are they all going to be working on your project? Every services organization operates with some form of distributed work model. It’s up to you as a client to ensure you get the best people working directly on your video project. If you’re not sure, ask.

7. “We’ve been using the same equipment for the last five years.”
Considering that video technology (hardware, software, delivery systems) is changing literally every month it’s hard to imagine any company not taking advantage of so many cost saving and output quality advances in video production.

Filed Under: General, Managing Video Projects, Marketing with Video, video production, Video Standards Tagged With: , ,

Adobe’s purchase of Omniture is a very big deal

September 17, 2009 by 1 Comment

adobe logo

Content is king, if you can track it.

Up until… this week, a large disconnect has existed between web-based content creation and content measurement. That chasm may have narrowed significantly since Adobe announced its purchase of Omniture – the online marketing, web analytics (and data collection) company.

Adobe has taken a significant step in moving beyond it’s digital content creation roots into what may turn out to be a much, much larger business. Network and cable television are closed systems. The Internet is an open system. The first company to establish smart, economical and trusted methods of tracking and monetizing any and all types of content on the Internet could become the new platform for web content delivery - that’s a very big deal.

Flash comes as close to ubiquity as it gets on the web (however, Google and Apple continue to shut Adobe out on their own respective ’mobile web’ platforms). Imagine if every flash player also tracked and reported usage, supported trusted digital watermarking processes, facilitated micro payments and helped to connect the social media and viral distribution dots. Adobe is trusted – especially by the creative and development community so it would be comparatively easier for them to set the standards and to ultimately evolve into becoming ’the platform.’

This acquisition could also be seen as a defensive move as Adobe will be under some pressure to add more value to flash because the implementation of the new HTML5 standard (whenever that happens) will include video tags which don’t require a video player plug-in.

The holy grail of marketing has been to find a way to track the results of your marketing program. Adobe has made a very strategic move in purchasing Omniture. Content developers and their customers should look forward to implementing new ‘commerce modules’ with future Adobe product releases.

Filed Under: General, Online Video Industry, Video Standards Tagged With: , ,

Should my corporate video be 16×9 or 4×3?

December 9, 2008 by Leave a Comment

 

The two standard aspect ratios (ratio of width to height) for commercial and consumer video are 16×9 – which is the new standard for high definition video and 4×3 – which is the old standard for television. (Cinemascope, which is the movie theatre standard is 21×9).

You will start to see all new televeision shows being broadcast to fit the new 16×9 standard. New computer monitors now generally conform to the wider 16×9 format. YouTube – a bellwether for the online video industry – has recently switched it’s video standard to 16×9.

The majority of new commercial and consumer video will be shot in 16×9 format in the future. 4×3 will start to look ‘dated’ in the next few years. You still see many corporate videos being shot at 4×3 – this is because the videos are being shot with 4×3 format cameras or because the company has chosen to continue with an established corporate standard for consistency or to fit into a pre-formatted player.

16×9 is the new standard. I would recommend, where possible, to shoot your corporate videos at 16×9.

Filed Under: Video Standards Tagged With: ,