Mobile Video: Distribution to the Fourth Screen

There is a lot of buzz these days about video distribution to cell phones. The idea of uploading an independent film, TV series pilot or even your demo reel to a place where anyone with an iPhone can see it sounds like “the next big thing.” Unfortunately, the ease of distributing to mobile devices is not nearly as easy as uploading a video to YouTube - at least not yet.

Over the next few articles, we’ll look at some of the complexities and strategies for delivering video to mobile devices. We’ll also look at how some trends will have an impact on production and distribution of video content. To begin with, let’s look at one straightforward question - why mobile and how are we going to view video on mobile devices?

Bringing Video to the Masses - Part 1 of an Interview

Live from the Voices That Matter conference, San Francisco, author Richard Harrington discusses the factors that have caused online video consumption to grow exponentially over the past few years.

You can also view part 2– here!

Online Video Delivery with Kyte

Author and video podcaster Richard Harrington discusses online video distribution with Cody Smith from kyte.com at NAB 2009.

Mobile Phone Distribution and HDTV with mDialog

Richard Harrington discusses the mDialog online video platform with Greg Philpott at the 2008 New Media Expo.

Podcasting is NOT Dead

I just need to rant for a second… I am sick and tired of people claiming that podcasting is dead. The truth is that it is far from it. While the names and flavors may change, podcasting is alive and well. Here’s what I have spent the past week doing.

I spoke in New York City for 3 days at the NY Post Conference. I was joined by great podcasters like Paul Vogelzang of MommyCast, Dusty Wright and Richard Burns from Culture Catch, and Alexandra Gebhardt from Inside Mac. We had healthy crowds with great questions. There were also big companies there, like TiVo and HP, as well as representation from several universities. I also had some great meetings with Apple and mDialog... two great companies with cool things coming.

Encoding web video in the age of the iPhone

The last time I looked, Apple had already sold over six million iPhones after just 13 months since its initial launch. I don’t think that there have been six million extra standard computers sold (desktops and laptops) in the past year, compared to prior years’ sales. As a result, I conclude that mobile handheld communication devices [like the iPhone (plus the iPod Touch, Blackberry, Treo, and some others)] represent the fastest-growing segment of Internauts (Internet users).

Increasingly, I find myself having to warn my friends and clients against using Flash for their website and web video, since Flash is simply not playable on the most popular mobile handheld devices. (There are some handheld devices that play Flash as Adobe quickly points out, but I said “most popular”!) The formats that the popular handheld mobile devices play well are HTML, animated GIF, and H.264. Many graphic designers are so into the Flash rage, they attempt to minimize this vital and practical issue, in the hope that someday Flash might play on the most popular mobile handheld devices. I don’t know about you, but my clients and I need to communicate, sell, and eat today, not someday. We can’t afford to prevent over six million Internauts from seeing our content by making the wrong decision.

The rest of this article has been moved to Allan’s PVC channel. Click here to view it.

Welcome to Web Video & Beyond

As we mentioned earlier, we are in the process of launching a series of “themed” channels on PVC. One of the new channels we’re most excited about is Web Video & Beyond.

The advent of cable and satellite television had a big impact on the industry, as they created a demand for more content - content that had to look as good as any “national” feed, but produced at a lower cost. This was fuel to the fire for the desktop video industry, highlighting the economic advantage desktop production brought.

Today, we are still in the early stages of another large explosion in content distribution: web video, and other alternate outlets such as cell phones, PDAs, intelligent multimedia gaming devices, and beyond. Even while the business models are still being built up, the demand for cost-effective content is as strong as ever. (I’ve talked about this before.)

But there are new challenges as well: the technology (Flash has a huge installed base - but it’s not in iPhones), new program formats (an attention span closer to a 5-minute podcast than a 30 or 60 minute network program), the impact of increasing bandwidth (the movement from SWF to FLV means traditional editors and motion graphics artists can use their current skill sets, rather than learn how to animate sprites), and the question of just how much production value is needed in this Web 2.0, user-generated-content, YouTube world. It’s confusing; it’s evolving; it’s exciting. We hope to learn together with you up here.

Speaking of learning together: We are always on the lookout for good writers for PVC, and this new channel is a new opportunity to share what you know. If you already have a blog and want to repost some of your “classic” articles here (as well as new content, of course), or previously wrote for magazines or other web outlets and now want to be part of PVC, let’s talk! I can be reached at cmeyer @ PVC’s web domain above. Writers share in PVC’s ad revenue based on their traffic.

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