May 26 2007
Why web video isn’t working - and how to fix it.
Assuming you are not a teenager, not chronically unemployable, and have cable as well as broadband - chances are that the real allure of web video lies out toward the end of the long tail.
You are looking for information you can use, and the value of that information has to justify the time you spent looking for it.
If that sounds like you then you’ve probably made the choice to spend most of your productive time online with text and photos rather than video and motion graphics. Would you pay for youtube?
Broadband video hasn’t changed the brute fact that it takes two or three times as long to follow a live lecture as it does to read a transcript. For speed readers that equation is multiplied by 10. The permission threshold for a one hour video is far higher than for a properly formatted 5000 word written presentation.
This issue really hit home with me when I googled Rajiv Chandrasekaran earlier today. One of the links google returned was to an interview on scribemedia.org.
Scribe media lists dozens of intriguing articles, “Monetizing online video”, “Transitioning from print to net”, “Creating viral video”. But they are not articles - they are all video productions, and they are loooooooong!
The interview with Rajiv was 58 minutes. So I skipped it and spent 10 minutes reading 3 other interviews. I am pretty confident that that 10 minutes probably gave me more relevant information than the hour long scribe video.
No big deal except I am a video producer - the idea that a vast sector of the media is better served without video didn’t sit well.
But the problem is not with video so much as the format - the complete lack of formatting. Video needs punctuation and paragraphs just like text.
Why not divide the video up into chapters like on a DVD? Why not provide a brief synopsis of each chapter in a text window below the video screen? How about combining text and video in the same presentation? None of these ideas are new. Why aren’t they being used more widely?
Could it be that the folks at scribe media are wary of burning through their bandwidth? Or is it that we still have to assimilate the full implications of the fact that new media is not just old media with new distribution.
This is an excellent topic.
My own experience is that I can’t put up with a video segment that goes more than 3 minutes or so.
I managed to stay awake for an hour of a lecture on quantum electrodynamics given by Richard Feynman that I found on the web this January. I was highly motivated and Feynman was an excellent speaker, but the last 20 minutes were murder.
As you pointed out elsewhere, web viewing or browsing is a “sitting up” experience, while viewing television is best done (for information or pleasure) “sitting back.”
That leaves one to wonder: is all web content doomed to 3 minute segments? Or, will some hybrid device (formatting or a gizmo) show up that can bridge that gap?
Even chapterizing or synopsizing is applying an old format to a new creature. I’m with you: something different has to happen.
I’m just glad I’m an observer and don’t have to come up with a solution myself. Thankfully there are folks like you who are critical of digitizing every video and serving up every clip.
Clearly, that sound off in the distance is the web a-comin’ down the track. A working formula for serving video content of more than a few minutes will become necessary quite soon or web video will remain in the hands of YouTube.
I’ll be watching and commenting. And if I figure it out first, I’ll license the technology for very limited fees :).
Jim - thanks for the response you bring up some interesting points.
Feynman - I have difficulty following complex concepts with my ears. It’s not just an audio-visual thing its also that with current technology video video is linear - I can’t jump back to re-view a section as easily as I re-read a sentence.
Rich media - flash allows you to do anything. If you check out the video samples at timberlinevideo.com (link in sidebar) you can see I customized a simple video player to provide some of the functionality I mentioned. Beep.tv provides transcripts of its video interviews directly beneath the video player.
Washington Post - Rajiv - the guy I mentioned googling in the original post is the managing editor for washingtonpost.com. They have some very interesting rich media presentations. The one I checked out was “Being a Black man“.
Personally I felt the interface was way too cluttered and a little too slick. I lean towards Howard Owens view that videojournalism is the new punk rock
Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water….
Last night I found Silverlight - a spankin’ new Microsoft cross-platform cross-browser plugin that may help get us further towards the goal of actually *using* web video content.
Fox used it to create a media player which uses mouse gestures to create “chapterizing.” go look at http://silverlight.net/fox/ to see it in action (it’ll make you install the silverlight plugin, but my guess is that everybody will have to have it soon anyhow.)
I’m going to try to build something with it this weekend to see how difficult Microsoft made it. If I can figure out how, I’ll let you know.
I am certainly no flag-waver for Microsoft (and I hate that they are still shoving Microsoft Passports and .net technology down everyone’s throat, but I have to admit that this player is incredibly slick.
I spent my formative years with U2. I’m right along with you and Howard.
Jim
Right on the button Peter. That’s where deep video would work, er, video hyperlinking or otherwise frankly Iworks6’s use of chapters when posting to Itunes. A really neat way of allowing users to dip or home in onto the areas they want from chapter description.
Is it perhaps that we really yet t understand, I mean this on a general scale, how video can be used on the Net, as opposed to its tried and tested use on TV etc.
Peter - you raise an interesting point about chaptering. My first attempt at vlogging last year ended up as chapters - especially while I was covering specific people for daily posting. I ended up learning by trial and error and it worked out pretty well.
Now that I’ve gone through the trial by fire, I’m even more convinced about video online as a means of distributing content.
I think what Howard says about video journalism being the new punk rock is appropriate - it’s about non-conformity to the established ways of presenting content. I email with David and Michael on a semi regular basis and I tell you their forward thinking has reignited my passion for telling stories the way I want to tell them.
The recent diatribe over on Michael’s blog from Nino and others only reaffirms that we punks are making waves.
Nice site BTW