YouTube co-founder Steve Chen has confirmed that high-quality YouTube video streams are coming soon. The site is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer’s Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if they want it.
Chen expects that high-quality YouTube vids will be available to everyone within three months.
Chen also confirmed that in YouTube’s internal archive, all video is stored at the native resolution in which it was sent in. However, he said, a large portion of YouTube videos are pretty poor quality to begin with — 320 x 240. Streaming them in high-quality mode isn’t going to help much.
Wizzard Media has made several announcements in conjunction with the Podcast and New Media Expo, September 28-30 in Ontario, California.
Wizzard announced that the latest version of the LibsynPRO enterprise publishing service has been opened up to a small group of beta users. LibsynPRO is a media publishing solution for podcast networks, media companies and other businesses that need to manage multiple podcast shows under a single account.
Features:
Detailed statistics and time-sensitive reporting available in three formats - a web interface, a downloadable spreadsheet or a customizable layout.
An easy-to-operate interface for LibsynPRO’s advertising system - tasks like content insertion and removal can be handled quickly and easily, with the ability to schedule customized campaigns in real-time. Wizzard Media’s partnership with Nielsen//NetRatings has extended into the LibsynPRO system to ensure accurate reporting for users, agencies and advertisers.
For non-technical content creators, LibsynPRO is designed to act as an easy publishing tool. Users can customize the system to suit their business needs allowing for the creation of custom levels of administration for multiple users. Clients can take advantage of the built-in quality control process that guarantees content receives approval before it is released to the public. Automatic creation of iTunes-compliant RSS feeds assures that content is ready for the web.
For the developer, the LibsynPRO platform offers support for the building of custom publishing applications through a rich application programming interface (API). Advanced features for Power users include a set of tools to schedule the release and expiration of media, precise placement of dynamic advertisements, and controls over the feeds created by the platform.
Wizzard also announced that over 500 more podcasts, representing more than 22 million monthly downloads as certified by Nielsen//NetRatings, have joined Wizzard’s advertising network. These podcasts have agreed to allow Wizzard Media’s national ad sales team to represent them to agencies and media buyers.
Yahoo’s decision to kill off the Yahoo podcast portal has generated a lot of discussion, and appears to be a sort of Rorschach test that reflects people’s attitudes about podcasting.
Does Yahoo’s Decision Reflects The State Of Podcasting?
At TechCrunch, Duncan Riley suggests that podcasting’s growth rate is the reason for the closing, saying that “podcast directories have struggled, as a medium that years ago held so much promise was surpassed by the rise of video.”
According to Read/WriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Some would argue that podcasting hasn’t caught on like it was expected to, that it’s been dominated by existing media giants and beaten as a medium by the rise of video.” Kirkpatrick also puts some of the blame on Yahoo. “I don’t know how many people ever cared for the site anyway. I hadn’t looked at Yahoo! Podcasts since just a few months after it launched, when there were no RSS feeds and you had to login with a Yahoo! ID in order to download audio files instead of listening to them through a pop-up Yahoo! audio player.”
Or Was Yahoo’s Podcast Portal Just Lousy?
Lisa Barone says Yahoo’s decision wasn’t because of problems with podcasting - it was because of problems with Yahoo’s site. “Frankly, the site could use a little clean up,” says Barone. “The current podcasting directory isn’t altogether user-friendly. There weren’t any RSS feeds and users were forced to log in with a Yahoo ID in order to download any of the content.”
At Web Pro News, David Utter echoes the argument that Yahoo’s site failed to compete with iTunes, calling Apple’s proprietary podcast solution the “elephant sitting in the middle of the podcasting industry.” Or as Utter puts it - “If this were a game of Clue, we would guess Yahoo Podcasts was done in by Steve Jobs, in the server room, with the Cat-5 cable.”
CenterNetworks’ Allen Stern puts the blame squarely on Yahoo. “THE DAMN THING NEVER WORKED,” notes Stern. “I spent hours trying to get CN podcasts to upload and never could get it to work. Emails to support went unanswered and I left. I wonder how many others were in the same boat.”
Probably the most positive spin on Yahoo’s decision comes from mobile podcasting guru Rob Greenlee, who says that the decision is a sign of the podcast industry’s maturity.
“I am not surprised Yahoo has decided to close down its podcast directory site on Oct 31,2007. It jumped on a hot trend and did not have a long-term vision,” according to Greenlee. “Listeners and directories need to have a one-click to subscribe and listen process. This explains the success of iTunes + iPod solution. Any other successful platform needs to have the same equation and Yahoo just did not have this connection to a portable or mobile phone player.”
StreetIQ.com has announced the launch of a Facebook application (registration required) that provides quick access to more than 400 business and financial podcast channels and integrates them into the social networking experience on Facebook.
Using the recently launched software platform at Facebook, StreetIQ.com lets Facebook members access their favorite business and financial podcasts and to share them with their friends and colleagues. StreetIQ.com will also promote its partners and its community of subscribers exclusively through Facebook Groups.
“This is a bold move for StreetIQ.com driven by a firm belief that the viral nature of Facebook will enable us to market our services more effectively,” said Stephen Malaster, founder and director of programming at StreetIQ.com. “In addition, this platform will enhance the user experience for existing users while giving us exposure to new audiences.”
Filmmakers Arin Crumley & Susan Buice have released their film, Four Eyed Monster, in full on YouTube. The movie’s creation was documented as the Four Eyed Monster video podcast,and the movie is said to be the first full-length film officially released on YouTube.
Crumley & Buice’s work is notable for the ways that they have experimented with using the Internet to raise awareness of their film. They debuted the Four Eyed Monster video podcast in October of 2006, gave the movie a virtual showing in Second Life in January of this year and have been distributing the DVD independently via their site.
Unfortunately for Crumley & Brice, Four Eyed Monster is no El Mariachi - it’s more of a quirky art-house flick, and they managed to rack up tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt making the film.
So they are now experimenting with using YouTube to promote the film and Spout.com, a filmmaking online community, to help pay off their debt. It might be a revolution in filmmaking or it could be a little pathetic, depending on your perspective:
You can find out more about the project at the Four Eyed Monster site.
Wizzard Media, the leading podcast hosting network, distributed over 70,000,000 podcast episodes in March to an audience of millions, according to the company.
In the first quarter of 2007, Wizzard Media’s network growth surpassed 50% of the 360,000,000 episodes it distributed in all of 2006 for its 8,000 independent and corporate clients. Daily requests for its publisher’s shows surpassed 2,300,000 episodes per day.
Podcasting Audience Growing Rapidly
“The audience for audio and video podcasts is growing substantially as more consumers become aware of the vast array of high quality, free content available not only to iPod owners but to anyone with a computer or MP3 player”, says Chris Spencer, CEO of Wizzard. “This is a result of a user generated content hungry audience who appreciates the mobility and time shifting capabilities of podcasting.”
SplashCast today introduced a new service, MyPodcastNetwork, that lets users embed a podcast player in Web pages, similar to the way you can embed YouTube videos in Web and blog pages. What makes the player interesting, though, is that it’s not static audio or video that gets embedded, but a customized channel of podcast content that will automatically update as podcasters update their content.
“The basic idea is that it’s an easy way to collect all your favorite audio and video podcasts and display them live on your startpage or webpage,” explains SplashCasts’ Marshall Kirkpatrick. “It’s an easy way to show off your brilliant taste in online media to your website visitors.”
Here’s Kirkpatrick’s example MyPodcastNetwork:
The embeddable player looks promising and could introduce a new type of social networking into podcasting.
All Your Podcast Are Belong To Us
One aspect of the SplashCast’s new service may prove controversial, though. The site appears to be caching podcasts. This means that podcasters whose shows are republished through the service have no way of knowing how many times their content is being downloaded. This could effectively steal money away from podcasters that are trying to monetize their shows.
SplashCast is aware of this concern, and is looking for a solution.
“We’re working on finding a way to make this work asap. In this first step in our MyPodcastNetwork feature - our stats reporting is not what it needs to be and we understand how important this is.”
At this time, anyone can add new feeds to SplashCast. Until SplashCast resolves the issues associated with caching of podcasts, they should limit the service to podcasters that opt-in.
Update: SplashCast’s Marshall Kirkpatrick dug deeper into the stats issue, and added some comments (below) that clarify the issue. Per Marshall’s comments, SplashCast points to podcasters’ files for audio podcasts, which means audio podcasters’ stats should not be distorted by the service.
For video podcasts, SplashCast is caching and transcoding the files for Flash distribution. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because this could reduce bandwidth costs for podcasters, which could save publishers money. It could also speed up things for end users, if SplashCast can scale a robust infrastructure.
Anytime you republish a podcaster’s content, though, you need to get their permission. Some video podcasters may be glad for the additional exposure and not worry too much about the stats issue, while other publishers may not want anyone getting between them and their audience.
SplashCast is looking into this issue, and it looks like they are making it a priority. We’ll be interested in how they end up dealing with it.
Veoh Networks has announced its official launch, offering publishers and viewers a “new era of Internet television”, according to the company.
According to the Veoh, their automatic syndication and reporting features lets video publishers reach and manage the largest audience on the web. For viewers, Veoh offers a comprehensive set of features and viewing options, including a downloadable player that turns a viewer’s computer into a virtual DVR that can download content from video sites across the Internet. Veoh’s peer-to-peer network, built from the ground up for video distribution, is designed to ensure that publishers can provide viewers with a full-screen, DVD-quality experience.
“Veoh’s mission is to bring the next generation of television to people wherever they are–office, living room, or on the go.” said Dmitry Shapiro, CEO, Veoh. “Technology will allow us to dramatically improve the experience, and we believe our formal release today is an important step towards realizing our goal.”
The service offers several interesting new options for publishers and viewers alike. (more…)
HDNet’s Mark Cuban is skeptical about the future prospects of BitTorrent technology for the distribution of large media files.
He cites several reasons:
Conflicting Clients. There are a ton of clients, with the number growing all the time. Although they work on basically the same source code and protocols, they all install and operate as if they had exclusive access. They want to control the PC so that they are in charge of what resources are available. At some point they get considered to be malware and the clients will get uninstalled
End Users dont understand how P2P works, and once they do, they get concerned about giving up bandwidth. Most users dont know how to go in and edit the default settings. So even if they settle on a single client and are happy with just the content available on that network or to that client, they arent going to be happy about their banwidth being in constant use to save a content provider money .
The P2P model of seeding is a huge problem for those using wireless broadband with bandwidth constraints or per bit or per minute costs. People are going to wake up and find that they owe Verizon, Sprint, whoever a lot more than they ever thought possible because they installed a client on their laptops. That could lead to these networks blocking the protocol.
There is a misconception that there is bandwidth savings for the end user. If you want to download a 1gb size file, 1gb of data will be delivered to your PC. There is no savings of bandwidth on the client side. In fact, the client is charged a bandwidth premium because after they have received the entire file, they are asked to particpate in the peering by delivering parts of the file to other users.
Cuban view may be influenced by his investment in traditional television, but BitTorrent hasn’t seen the widespread adoption of some file-sharing technologies, possibly because the publisher benefits more than then end user.
YouTube co-founder Steve Chen has confirmed that high-quality YouTube video streams are coming soon. The site is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer’s Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if they want it.
Wizzard Media has made several announcements in conjunction with the 
