Video Comparison Shoot Out

I’m a great fan of blip.tv for all your video needs. Blip offers a great deal of functionality and features for very little expense. One of the strongest features is that Blip gives you a great deal of control over the quality of the final embedded video.

It creates flash versions of your uploaded format at a similar bitrate to the original file. This means you can create a flash embedded version of your file at exactly the standard, size and quality you want.

PC World magazine have created a video comparison of various video sites such as Youtube, Revver and Brightcove. They’ve uploaded a test file to these sites and compared the embedded flash version the sites create.

It’s slightly flawed because they’ve compared a Quicktime version from blip.tv against flash versions from the competitors. Nonetheless it’s still interesting if you keep that in mind.

The list of other great advantages of Blip is too long to go into when there is Christmas Shopping to do and my Best of 2007 CD to make. More harping on about blip.tv again in the New Year.

Evolution of the Tube

A display at the newly opened London Transport Museum showing how the tube has grown and developed over the years. Unless you live in South London of course. Of particular interest was all the information about Metro-land, which was a term I'd never really heard of. I also learned that the Victoria Line was a recent invention, built only in the 60s.

You can receive this and other interesting video bits and bobs on your ipod/phone by subscribing through iTunes.

Put video on every window you can find

I came across a very interesting new York Times article on how the internet is turning the traditional TV world upside down.

Lots of Little Screens: TV Is Changing Shape

The main point which grabbed my attention…

“One closely watched approach is the new online series “Quarterlife,” by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, who produced “My So-Called Life.” Episodes first appear on MySpace TV, then are available the next day on Quarterlife.com, and a week later on YouTube, Facebook and Imeem. There is talk that they may even appear later on network TV — but as the last window, rather than the first.”

Stop and think about that for a second. And another second. Yes it’s interesting that a distribution hierarchy is emerging, with the huge number of options available, that was probably inevitable. It certainly makes sense, having the content appearing on the originating site first followed by Facebook, Youtube etc.

But the really fascinating point is these producers are considering putting TV at the bottom of that hierarchy. And if you compare the lumbering giant that is bandwidth restricted schedule-driven TV broadcasting, to the nimble agile world of the internet, where viewers can get what you want when you want it - well it makes perfect sense.

The hierarchy will differ depending on the 'programme'. It's hard to imagine a world where Midsomer Murders or events like Strictly Come Dancing appear first on the web. But for a lot of other content, where else would you put your video first? That's where your primary audience is.