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Filed under: Distribution •Web Video •

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?

Market Overview

Mobile is the most personalized and direct marketing tool that we have access to today. Mobiles are with people wherever they go. People rarely lend out their mobile phones, even to family members. Whereas a household may only have one or two TVs, it is just as likely to have four mobile phones. With over 270 million phones in the US and over 2.5 billion worldwide, mobile is the most ubiquitous connection on the face of the Earth.

2008 marked the first year that Symbian, Java or J2ME, Brew, Palm, RIM, Windows Mobile, and Apple. (We’re leaving Linux off of this list as it operates on top of other operating systems at the moment.) Because of the wide variety of systems, video players do not necessarily work on each of these systems. And to further confuse things, some platforms have developed their own proprietary players.

Secondly, this gets a bit more complicated with the wide range of handsets available to consumers. Within the US, there are over 20 major manufacturers of mobile phones, some with their own proprietary video players. And even if they share an mobile OS, accessing the video player requires tweaks along the way.

Lastly, there is no equivalent SMPTE standard for mobile video. The diversity of mobile operating systems also means an equal diversity in video formats, size, frame rates and codecs. Even worse, documentation on those important parameters is hard to find, and often buried deep within the manufacturer’s developer websites. Telestream’s Epsiode and Flipfactory products have the best documentation and support for these uses. But, even on this website, information is sparse and hard to find.

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