Incremental Blogger

David Pogue’s videos sure have gotten more interesting–in part because of their better production. The little details matter. He’s quite entertaining.

When I watch his clips it increases my belief that there need to be even better tools for producing nicer videos. I ask myself, “What technologies do you need to produce videos similar to how he does it?” or “What two or three techniques might make single-person produced even better?”

Where are Robots–or at least automated cameras–when you need them?

I want to revisit an idea I blogged about awhile back. I’d like to see video sharing/broadcasting/recording become an integral part of the OS experience–not just for computers, but for cameras, cell phones, and other digital devices.

A bit of background first. I was at a conference awhile back when I decided to take a picture of a session listing that was being displayed on some monitors. Simple enough right? Well sometimes the little things spawn ideas–and this one did.

As I was adjusting my position left and right to get the display in the field of view of my digital camera as well as to minimize glare, I realized I was going the long way around to capture something that was already digital. What was I doing? And it wasn’t just me. There were others standing next to me doing much the same. Silly, I realized.

I thought: Why can’t I receive a live, digital broadcast of what’s on the display, right within my WiFi-based camera? Why am I capturing “over the air,” if you will, rather than going direct?

The more I thought about this, the more I began to see that our graphics chips are throwing away a lot of opportunities for digital sharing of its content.

Now it’s true, that there are apps, such as SharedView, VNC, and the like which are designed to share the desktop, but what if the broadcasting experience was provided as a standard in the OS? Camtasia, WebcamMax/Superwebcam, and on and on would essentially be built in with a complementary broadcasting and recording feature built into computers, MIDs, digital cameras, cell phones, and the like.

First, back to the camera capture issue. Record directly is my mantra. In this digital world, there’s no reason to go over the visual spectrum.

So let’s say I want to capture what’s on my friend’s computer. Right now you have to adjust all over the place to get the lighting just right–all along trying to avoid seeing yourself in the reflection. When you’re recording on the go, this is silly.

What if instead, the person could (for instance), right click on their desktop and select from the context menu “Share Desktop” (or window or region or whatever). With this single click the OS would then appear as a thumbnail overlay on my camera (computer or whatever) which I could then select and record. I could record picture in picture or record to the whole frame, capture a single frame, capture a sequence of frames, or….or….or. Lots of possibilities here.

As I mentioned earlier, there are desktop sharing apps today, but what I’m advocating is that they become more “video” like with embedded content/command-and-control signals–with a two way option. With a common standard–not just a desktop standard–all manner of devices and apps could record the content–directly.

And once the content can be broadcast digitally, there’s the whole world that you can broadcast to. Imagine.

So what I’d like to see is an open sharing and broadcasting standard that makes its way into connected devices.

Flash is already starting to show the value of a “video” standard on the Internet. Now we just need to have the recording part opened up. The reasons for locking down the content are holding back a natural evolution of devices that can share, broadcast and record live, interactive streams. It’s not just the major studios that want to “broadcast.” In fact, I’d argue that they are a small subset of all broadcasting that would take place.

So imagine you’re at your next conference and someone is projecting a demo playing on their desktop up on one of several large screens. No more do you have to get just the right seat to get just the right shot of what the person is showing. Instead, they just have to share their desktop and broadcast its contents live directly to your camera or OneNote or whatever. Same goes for the doctor showing you your ultrasound of your unborn child or you MRI. Yes, you can share the files, but you can also share the playback experience with all the interaction…the sound….the movement of the pointer…and the content itself–all to your cell phone, MID, or laptop.

I’m checking out Yahoo’s new live video service: http://live.yahoo.com. It’s a product of Yahoo’s Advanced Products team which according to their blog is a “small incubation team at Yahoo! – our mission is to build stuff and launch it quickly, and respond to market feedback. Y! Live is a limited capacity release, so bear with us as and we may reach our limits in periods of high traffic.”

Right now the video is only live. No recording. No video on demand.

For now these two missing features are quite unfortunate–at least for how I like using video services, such as UStream.tv and Mogulus.

There is an API and developer center than I’l lahve to take a look at. There might be something interesting here in terms of creating online, group, video events. Still looking and learning.

Layne and Lora set up a page over on WhatIsNew that is going to make my life of tracking Tablet PC and UMPC YouTube videos a snap.

It lists all the videos by category and author. So far he has three categories for videos:

UMPC Videos
Tablet PC Videos
MID Videos

and three lists of authors:

GottaBeMobile
TabletPCOwner (me )
Hugo Ortega

This is a first pass list so if you know of some other categories or YouTube authors that make sense, post a comment on WhatIsNew. Oh, Josh Bancroft–he has some great videos–that’s one good one to add to the list.

Layne also needs a way to sort by date. I’ve read that there’s an orderby term that can be applied to the YouTube API.

Ideas anyone?

I have a nice-and-small Microsoft LifeCam NX-6000 webcam, which works reasonably well (outside of the audio which I think has a faulty connection), but what really gets me is how warm it gets when it’s attached to my Tablet PC’s USB port and not in use.

The notebook is specifically designed for “Notebook Mobility” according to the Microsoft site, but the heat that the webcam generates makes me think it’s being a power hog. There’s no reason for the webcam to be hot when it’s not in use.

I went out this weekend to look for a replacement webcam, but there are so many I need to do some more research. I don’t want to replace one so-so camera with another.

I’ve been introducing quite a few people to live broadcasts from Justin.tv and Chris Pirillo at live.pirillo.com (via UStream.tv). Most people check it out and go “huh” and tell me they’re not interested in watching either of them. Some get uneasy at the idea of being broadcast live across the Internet. I can understand that. However, what I tell them to watch for is not these particular personalities, but rather what they are doing. They are live broadcasting–inexpensively, with a minimal amount of equipment, and with mobile setups.

Compare what they are doing to let’s say a live remote on CNBC. Sure CNBC’s production value is much higher, but broadcasting live on a TV network requires lots more equipment, lots more people, and lots more money.

The Internet live broadcasters are bringing up the low end. Rapidly.

Take a look at Moguls.com to see how the low-end is invading the TV broadcasting metaphor too. Cue multiple cameras, recorded segments, and on and on. Create your own live or recorded TV station. Effortlessly. The advertising model that Mogulus is implementing I’m not so convinced of, but the idea here is simple and disruptive.

Justin’s personal channel may not be all that interesting, but then again the same setup can be used to give a live view from backstage at a concert, internationally broadcast a non-profit’s meetings, or share public events from a personal vantage point. At minimal cost. That’s the key. Focusing on whether the camera is broadcasting all the time, is paying attention to the wrong thing.

Live video feeds on the Internet are becoming main stream, first from the media providers, but increasingly from small, creative content creators using services, such as UStream.tv and Stickam.com. There’s Justin.tv, chris.pirillo.com/live, SeeMeWin.com, and others. We’ve done some live video casting at CES and more recently at Mix07 using both services. It was a lot of fun–even with all the technical problems and pressure to stay online as much as possible.

Currently the tools are so-so. I use WebcamMax which isn’t too bad, although it’s more of a virtual camera tool than what I really need–a single location to cue and control multiple cameras and effects. Mogulus is getting the closest to providing a video console like I want though it’s biased to creating content for their broadcasting channel. I want something I can use wherever I need it, whether that’s Mogulus, UStream, YouTube, or simply a video I’d like to store online.

Of course, there’s similar video content (although not live) being created by many video bloggers and content creators, such as Robert Scoble. Many of them use a variety of video editing and encoding tools to produce their content–to great effect.

However, everyone has been running into an issue that I think is solvable with a bit of technology. Here’s the problem: For us tech-oriented people we often want to capture or record what’s being displayed on the screen of a computer. When we own and control the computer ourselves we can use Camtasia, WebcamMax, or similar products to “record” or copy portions of the display and even integrate the “screencast” into other video content that’s either been recorded or even live. The screen capturing these programs provides is nice because it gets around having the problem of having to struggle to find just the right angle to shoot the screen using a typical video camera. Glare can be a problem, but so can be the problem of getting close enough to see anything meaningful.

Anyway, this is all fine–unless you don’t have control of the machine you want to record. What I’d like to see is a new standard emerge–one where computers are able to digitally broadcast portions of there screens to anyone that would like to record it–whether it’s a classroom of students or people walking past a kiosk or attendees checking out the latest product at an expo.

Ideally a screen-capturing capability like Camtasia could be built into the OS or at least provided along with the OS. I’ve blogged about this before. But that’s only a piece of the puzzle. What would really be cool is if you could make your live screencasts public–kind of like making a folder or file public on a system. Then when someone walks up with their notebook or Tablet PC, they can see the live feed within OneNote lets say and take a snapshot or short recording. Or imagine someone recording a person demoing an app with a digital camera and then when they step in range an option is displayed that enables a crossfade to a screencast directly from the computer.

Unfortunately, there are several things that would need to be developed to pull this off. There is one possible solution that gets pretty close to working today. It’s a bit inefficient, but here goes. The idea would be to run a screen capturing utility that provides a virtual webcam feed which can then be made public via UStream.tv, let’s say. Then what’s needed is a way to take the download video stream from UStream.tv and convert it into a webcam driver format on the fly. Why as a webcam? So that the video stream can be embedded into a variety of apps and devices that support it. It’s a “common” format. Of course, with an open API apps could just as easily grab the video stream from the Internet and process it directly, but the FLV (or Silverlight) -to-webcam converter has the advantage of being more universal.

With the video feed people can use the content as they would any other video stream. They could display the content full frame, picture-in-picture, cropped, or whatever. They could record it, grab a single frame, or use the “video” live.

I’ve been looking around to see if anyone has created a webcam driver like this for Windows, but I haven’t found anything yet. I see there are some open source projects that might be worth studying to figure out how FLV processing might work, but I’m guessing that when you’re talking real-time that what’s out there probably isn’t sufficient. That’s just a guess.

I also am curious if Silverlight has more to offer here. Is there an open format here for its video stream? More to learn.

Forrester Research: “…advertising models will drive the online video market.”

I’ll be broadcasting what I can at Mix07 via UStream.tv. (More details later.) Likewise, Robert Scoble is going to be broadcasting wth his hallwaycam. And Dave Winer was at least contemplating broadcasting his session. Anyone else going to be broadcasting via UStream.tv or Stickam?

Makes me wonder: Will there be more live broadcasters at Mix07 than at Web 2.0 Expo last week? Based on this count, I’d say no. It would be cool though if Mix07 led here. Maybe I should bring along a couple extra webcams to hand out to those who want to give it a go. Hmmm. I’ve got a couple XP-only cameras (no integrated mics) and a couple Vista-supported webcams. I’ll add them to my bag. It’s a good idea to have some backup equipment anway.

In terms of knowing who is doing what at Mix, Dave Winer set up a Wiki for those that are attending. It’s a great way to see who’s going. I’ve been following blogsearch.google.com, but Dave’s Wiki has the best information so far. I haven’t added my name to the list. I keep thinking: I’m not really attending the conference. Then again, I’ll be there. Same goes for the blogger room that Microsoft is setting up. Can I drop in? Don’t know. My thought now is I’ll try and if I’m asked to leave, I will.

The New York Times has an article today about a former startup, Intertainer, that holds nine patents related to video downloads. The company has brought suits against Apple, Google, and Naptser to force them to take out licenses for the patents. I haven’t looked into the patents, but I can see a dispute like this happening. Why? Because a handful of companies are beginning to break out in providing video downloads and as a result they become targets for those who tried earlier and sought “early-mover” protection via patents.

What really caught my attention in the article though, was the first paragraph:

“In 1997, Jonathan T. Taplin, a veteran film and television producer, stood up at a cable industry convention and asserted that in the future all movies would be distributed over the Internet. He recalls being laughed out of the room.”

Laughed at? Really? Maybe they didn’t think the technology was there yet, but really, did they not see it happening?

Here’s why I’m skeptical of this: During that same year, 1997, I worked on a network management system for a satellite modem company and this was one of the several scenarios we were working on. I didn’t attend any of the meetings with the content providers, but if I remember correctly Lucas Films was very eager to digitally distribute their movies. So was Disney. And I’m sure there were others. They were looking at all different ways to do it. Dedicated systems. Internet systems. You name it.

I do remember that most people considered the idea just ahead of its time, not necessarily because the technology couldn’t be built, but rather the practicalities weren’t there. Meaning the cost would be too high at the time. I think everyone agreed that the day of digital distribution of video was coming down the road.

Anyway, I imagine Mr. Taplin could have felt rejected at the time because maybe the cable companies weren’t ready to put money into his video distribution idea or they saw it as competition that they wanted to misdirect, but believe me they weren’t laughing. That’s silly.

Update: Don Dodge questions the validity of this patent too: “Did Intertainer invent video distribution on the Internet? No way. Real Networks, and others, were doing it long before Intertainer. But the US Patent office gave them a patent and now real companies must spend time and money defending themselves and fighting against a patent that never should have been issued.”

Likewise, Mike from TechDirt worked on a similar project that he thinks puts the patent(s) in doubt: ” I worked for a company in 1998 and 1999 that did many of the things described in the patent, and we were far from cutting edge at the time.”

I have no idea if the patents are valid or not, but it looks like there’s quite a bit of concern. One thing most people seem to agree upon: The US patent system needs reform.

Smart.

Can I easily bring this content down to my Tablet running Media Center on Vista Ultimate? If so, I’d love to download the videos and take them with me on the go.

Which is better? YouTube, Google Video, or Revver? Chris Pirillo makes an arguement for each one.

Very clever. Chris might have spawned a new generation of synchronized video blog posts.

Too bad to hear that Comedy Central took themselves off of YouTube. Maybe they’ll wise up and make an agreement with YouTube.

Actually, it was kind of confusing to have the various homemade recordings of Comedy Central shows, such as the Daily Show. Quite often there were duplicates. And if you knew what you wanted to find, you couldn’t. Or at least I couldn’t.

Now if you want to watch you have to go to the Comedy Central website.

Microsoft is announcing the launch of a video hosting and sharing service, called Soapbox (http://soapbox.msn.com). The site’s iin beta so the best you can do is sign up for a beta at this time or get an invite from an existing beta user.

On the technical side, Soapbox will be crossplatform and support Flash as well as Windows Media technologies. You’ll have up to 100 megabytes according to Kurt Shintaku.

It’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft handles copyright issues here. Will XBox (and possibly Media Center and now Zune) enthusiasts be allowed or encouraged to generate fan movies from some or all of their content and share them on Soapbox? It would seem like a natural. Maybe this is all becoming a part of fair use anyway.

I do have one question about all of these video hosting services. Doesn’t it make video searching even more important? For instance, if someone tells you to go online and check out the video of the cat that does a flip over a guys head, how do you find it? And what if the video is posted on 32 different services in 4 different variations? Can a search tool practically match the videos up and provide you with a more concise view?

As more and more videos get put online, searching is becoming more and more important. Personally, I don’t find YouTube’s search and list box view all that useful. In fact, when I want to find a video, I go to Google. There’s lots more to do here.

Mark Cuban: “Take away all the copyrighted material and you take away most of Youtube’s traffic.”

True. Although imagine what services like this would be like if copyright laws in the US had stayed more as they were.

Might YouTube be more like a Ted Turner style Super Station? Or would it be little different?