As a videocaster I try to keep up on the latest and greatest video players out there. From YouTube to Blip.tv to Revver to Google Video and many, many, many others. It seems that time and time again I end up using the Google Video player to embed video on my web site, and I would like to share with you why.

There are several things that Google does right when it comes to their player.

First, they understand that some videocasters may be looking to legitimately create longer form content. Sites such as YouTube (ironically also owned by Google) limit new accounts to 10 minutes of upload time only in an attempt to stop copyright infringement. All this really does is break the illegal clip up in to 4 segments, annoys users and stops nothing.

Second, Google understands that the Internet is a worldwide distribution medium. While I produce my new videocast SpaceVidcast in English, I have many episodes translated to as many languages as possible. Using the Google Video tools I’m able to upload a transcript and translation of the video to the service giving everyone a chance to view the material in their native language. Google has the ability to have multiple closed caption streams added to a single video. Check out the sample below from my Epsiode 002 SpaceVidcast (we run about 3 weeks behind in transcoding, although the larger the community gets the more we catch up).

Third, I can start playing from anywhere in the clip, but it doesn’t appear to be streaming. What the heck do I mean by this? Google Video uses an advanced form of progressive download which means that no matter your bandwidth you’ll be able to watch the video (it may take a while to download enough of the clip if your connection is slow). The problem with progressive download is that if you have a 2 hour clip and want to jump 90 minutes in you have to wait until that part has downloaded. Streaming video allows me to jump anywhere in the video but if I don’t have enough bandwidth between the server and the client they won’t be able to watch the clip. Google Video has a combination of both. I can jump anywhere in the clip even if it has not downloaded that part yet and watch from that moment in time even if I don’t have enough bandwidth for a real-time stream. It is the best of all worlds.

Finally, I think the biggest and coolest feature of Google Video is the ability to send a link that allows me to start at any time in the video. I have the ability to copy the video’s URL and add a time marker at the end to jump to that exact moment in time. If I want to share a part of the video that is 9 minutes in with a friend, just add a #13m32s to the end of the Google Video URL. While this feature was introduced back in 2006 it seems that most other video sharing sites didn’t see the power in that feature which is really too bad.

There are disadvantages of Google Video too. The encode quality just has not kept up with the rest of the industry. The audience base simply isn’t at Google Video, frankly they are at YouTube. Google seems to have mostly abandoned the Google Video project in favor of YouTube (which they purchased for a kabillion, zillion dollars). Tracking videos and plays on Google Video is abysmal (which is a big deal too). And the list goes on.

In the end I know that I have a worldwide community of people who want to see and understand my content. By using DotSub and a lot of community help I am able to make this happen with Google Video but not YouTube, Blip.tv, Brightcove, Revver, etc.

Do you have a favorite videocasting service? Do you know of a better service that allows for multiple languages, long form content and the ability to link to any moment in time for the video clip? Or do you completely disagree with my assessment of how the 2006 Google Video player trumps most 2008 players on the market today? Leave your insight in our comments!

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Amazon’s S3 storage system is a fantastic method for storing online video for videocasts, podcasts or whatever cast you want to have, but managing that system and tracking hits can be overly cumbersome. S3Dashboard.com aims to fix that by making it uber simple to upload, track and distribute your videocast all on Amazon S3.

This little booth was easy to accidentally pass by, but the product the have could be very, very powerful in the videocasting world.

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NeoKast, the
p2p video streaming service we showed to the world for the first time earlier
this year, has a new service called QuicKast, which entered beta this
morning.  QuicKast is Internet broadcasting for the masses — a way to set
up a broadcast stream using only a few mouse clicks and almost no parameters at
all.  I tried it and it worked.



Here’s what QuicKast ISN’T: it isn’t a way to do a two-party interview over the
Net, because the latency right now is about 15 seconds, which is WAY too long
between questions, even for Paris Hilton.  So think of QuicKast as a
strictly one-way presentation and you’ll be fine.  Any remote interviews
will require the addition of some other technology.  But beyond this
limitation it seemed to work quite well.  I plugged my Panasonic DVX100A
camcorder into the firewire port on an older HP notebook (USB 2.0 works, too)
and within seconds was sending a pretty good looking stream out to the
world.  And I mean TO THE WORLD since the biggest advantage of NeoKast is
its scalability, which is virtually infinite.   If every Internet user
in Korea wanted to watch my son Fallon take a nap, every Internet user in Korea
could do so, all at the same time.



But it is clearly beta software.  For example  I was forced to
reinstall the .NET player applet twice before it finally took.  
QuicKast insisted on placing my 4-by-3 DVX100A video frame in a 16-by-9
window.  It forced me to use certain presets that I might have foregone,
like 30 frames-per-second, which seemed excessive for a 384 kbps data
rate.  Though there is a “professional mode” it didn’t do much for me, but
that may change as the beta period continues.  After all, this was just the
first day.  I’m sure our Benjamin Higginbotham would be supremely
frustrated by the lack of knobs to twiddle.



But maybe that’s the whole point, eh?



1) QuicKast will allow anyone to stream live from their home PC to a broadcast,
Internet-scale audience.



2) It simplifies the process so that any novice can use it. You don’t need to
understand bandwidth or resolution or encoding or any of that. All you have to
do is connect a digital video camera to your computer, it will be automatically
detected, and press “Start Stream.” The quality settings can be changed, but
only if the user chooses to manipulate them, otherwise they will be optimized by
QuicKast. There is a Pro version coming that will be more flexible, but the cool
part is that the user won’t have to get caught up in all of that. The QuicKast
provides a nice stream even if the user doesn’t understand any of this, and they
can generate the stream in a few clicks.



3) QuicKast automatically tags video when it begins streaming. It identifies the
publisher and tags it as their stream. Now, the user can tag it however they
like but again the default setting of QuicKast are such that the process of
generating and publishing the stream is incredibly streamlined so that the user
only takes the most necessary and relevant steps to produce the stream that they
want to produce.



There is an article on the
NeoKast
blog about how to stream using a mobile Internet card. NeoKast’s Adam
Johnson reports having streamed his brother’s graduation, a couple bands, and
other events around Chicago and Los Angeles with no electrical outlet or
Internet connection using only a laptop, a digital video camera, and a firewire
or USB 2.0 wire and an EVDO card.



None of this is new to Technology Evangelist of course.  Ben and Ed and
Jeremy have streamed their way across the American heartland in the TE Ford
Expedition, sharing their deepest inner feelings for fast food with a faithful
audience reached also through a Sprint EVDO card.  The difference with
QuicKast is simplicity and scalability.  It isn’t better, just a whole lot
bigger and maybe a bit easier, too. 

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It looks like Anheuser-Busch, America’s largest brewer, is close to ending its
experiment with Bud.tv, the company’s Internet video site launched earlier this
year.  This is according to
Advertising
Age, which seems to know about such things.  Bud.tv was launched with
the expectation of serving 2-3 million unique visitors but seemed to be
generating only about 10 percent of that number despite A-B having spent a
reported $30 million on the “network?”

So what happened?  Why can that dancing guy or lonelygirl or any number
of other video projects (Rocketboom, anyone?) reach numbers WAY better than
Bud.tv and do so on little or no money.



The first problem, of course, is Budweiser, itself. The King of Beers? 
Hardly. 



Here’s the typical lifecycle for new technologies as compared to Bud.tv and
YouTube:



Stage 1 –  Technology is developed by a
geek or geeks who think it is a cool idea and just have to have
it.



    Bud.tv was developed by highly-paid ad and marketing
executives who can’t code and wouldn’t watch Bud.tv if they weren’t being paid
to do so.



    YouTube was developed by three geeks who thought it was a
cool idea and just had to have it.



Stage 2 — Revenue does not appear in
substantial amounts for several months.  Business either lives or dies as
a result.



    Bud.tv cost $30 million so anything less than millions in
revenue would be considered failure.  Business was doomed.



    YouTube cost nothing to develop and began with a $99 per
month server, scaling-up as traffic and revenue grew… pocket change to
begin.



Stage 3 — Early adopters find site, making it
modestly popular.



    Bud.tv couldn’t find enough early adopters who drank
Bud.  No surprise there.  Business was doomed.

   

    YouTube early adopters not only provided enough revenue to
grow the system, they provided the CONTENT to grow the system.



Stage 4 — Absent viral growth, early adopters
get bored and go away.



    Bud.tv didn’t even get this far.  Users failed to
provide content, losses too great.  Business was doomed.



    YouTube experienced viral growth and never looked back.



Stage 5 — Business has enough capital to
survive post-early adopter dip, eventually finds market and
succeeds.



    Bud.tv was over-capitalized, over-produced, and never had a
chance to make it this far.  Business was doomed.



    YouTube sold to Google for $1.65 billion.  Film at 11.



So Bud.tv was doomed from the start.  It attempted to build buzz around
something not very buzzworthy, spent WAY too much money to ever be profitable
in the imagined time frame, and generally used content created for pay by
people who didn’t drink Bud except at client meetings.



Now it is easy for me to write this in retrospect, but I think most people
could have predicted it.  The better exercise at this point might be to
figure out how such a site might have been able to succeed, because I think it
can be done.  Here’s how:



1)  Choose a different beer. 
The problem with Bud as a beer is that it is aimed at people who don’t
participate much in social networking or video sharing web sites.  In one
sense this was deliberate on the part of Anheuser-Busch because they were
ideally trying to attract new drinkers, but the web just doesn’t work that
way.  You have to start with the enthusiasm then add technology, not the
other way around.  To be successful, beer.tv (our straw man) ought to
start with a beer label that already has a fanatical following among
techies.  I’m no beer expert, but Sierra Nevada, Samuel Adams, or even
Anchor Steam would have had far better chances of succeeding than Bud, in part
because they are more modest operations with more modest aspirations.



2)  Choose different developers — a
different kind of developer, too.  Start with beer drinkers –
fanatical beer drinkers — then get them to fight for the chance to develop
your beer site.  It’s all about the beer.



3)  Spend less money.  Rather
than building a network, create a seed that encourages a more organic network
growth based as much as possible on user-generated video.  The network
acts as a catalyst providing the hosting and the social networking structure,
but counting primarily on users to fill it out.  This is not just to save
money but also to allow the intelligence of the mob to rule, taking the site
where it SHOULD go to reach more eyeballs, not where you and your experts
THINK it should go.



4)  Spend money more wisely working to
catalyze content.  Commission some examples, sure, but spend even
more money running video contests with prizes that involve huge quantities of
brew, NOT money.  Don’t make shows as much as events.  Think
redbull.tv.



5)  Scale the business up over
time.  Start small and grow as-needed, not as-fantasized.



The saddest part about Bud.tv is that it might have succeeded had it been the
brainchild of the wacky nephew of an A-B regional distributor.  As they
did it, though, Bud.tv was far too professional to have succeeded in the
current market.



 

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The great challenge of video on the web is how to make it fair for
everyone.  Viewers want content that is cheap or free yet retains high
production values.  Producers, networks, and movie studios want to be
rewarded by ALL viewings of their works, not just the first one.  The ways
we have attempted to resolve these dissonant desires haven’t been very
successful.  Viewers sometime illegally copy or share video content. 
Producers, networks, and movies studios do all they can to make such sharing and
copying technically difficult and legally perilous.  The sad part for the
U.S. is that we have twisted our laws in ways they were never supposed to be
twisted, generally to serve the interests of content creators, which is often
not in service of the public interest as copyright law was intended to be.



Can’t there be a simpler way?



Maybe there is. 
Hiro
Media, an Israeli startup, thinks we simply ought to add commercials to TV
shows and movies, thereby changing both the associated business model AND the
balance of power.  If shows come with ads attached in such a way that they
can’t be easily removed, then why be opposed to copying and sharing?  In
fact copying and sharing should be ENCOURAGED.



The drag, of course, is the ads, which in Hiro’s case are not only difficult to
remove, they are difficult even to skip or fast-forward through, unlike
TiVO.  You can fast-forward the show in the Hiro system, but NOT the
commercial.  And those commercials change every time the show is
played.  If an Internet connection is available at the time of playing, the
ads will even be coordinated with a  database and targeted at the interests
of the viewer.



Those who have seen the technology say it is both unique and impressive. 
It has been in trials for a year in both Israel and Australia and will shortly
begin trials in the U.S. with NBC on one of their lower profile shows with the
idea of expanding it to their other content. A second test will shortly begin
with Turner Broadcasting, with most of the other major players looking on.



Now if Hiro can only survive the Joost PR blitz.

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Wondering what’s happening at CES but only have your Treo with you? Want to watch the latest videos from Technology Evangelist on the go? Now you can!

We have just upgraded the mobile site. Take your Treo 700p or other RTSP/3GP enabled phone and go to TechnologyEvangelist.com. You should see a mobile version of the site, if not try hitting TechnologyEvangelist.com/mobileindex.php. At the top you’ll find the latest video from TE! Simply click on the video title and it will start streaming to your 3GP enabled phone!

This is tested and working on Treo 700p phones. We don’t have it working on Windows Mobile devices yet as we have not yet found a 3GP player which supports RTSP (alas, CorePlayer won’t work). I believe this will work on Nokia smart phones, but it’s as of yet untested since we don’t have a Nokia phone to try it on. If anyone can give us some help there it would be appreciated.

I believe the following phones will work, and this list may be much longer. Let me know in comments if your phone is supported and we’ll add it to the supported device list:
Samsung A900/A920/A940, SPH-A800, and Z107
Sanyo MM-5600/7400/8300/9000
Sony-Ericsson P900, w800/900i, etc.
Nokia 6620 and 6680
Nokia Series 60 (3230, 3600, 3650, 3660, 6260, 6600, 6620, 6630, 6670, 7610, 7650, N-Gage QD), Series 80 (Communicator 9300, 9500), Series 90 (7700, etc.)
Palm Treo 700p (650, 700w, 700wx and 700v not supported at this time.)

Let me know what you think. Trying to get our videos on any device, any platform and this feels like a good step. Big shout out to MoveDigital for making this possible!

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CES is just a few days away, and with it comes the High Definition coverage from Technology Evangelist. Below you’ll find a list of RSS video players and the associated links to subscribe to our streams. We prefer the use of Democracy Player as it will help relieve bandwidth stress, keep our costs down, and will deliver a faster experience to you the viewer. As an added bonus, we’re bringing back the 1080p feed!

We hope you enjoy the show.