YouTube partners with C-SPAN in multi-platform voter project

C-span steps up online video participation in US Elections

The "YouTube Voter Video on C-SPAN" initiative is a new online video project to build momentum toward the Pennsylvania primaries on April 22nd. The companies are inviting viewers to upload to the C-SPAN channel on YouTube videos answering the questions "what issue in this election is most important to you, and why?" C-SPAN will be showing a selection of the videos on its "Road to the White House" programming that begins on April 13th. The idea is to offer a much-needed extra dimension to the dry polling results that feature heavily in all the media throughout the US election period. Combined with the CNN/YouTube debates, Election Year 2008 exhibits the growing influence of broadband video on the political scene.

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Apr 9th 2008 21:20 // News // No comments

Brightcove seeks enhanced video syndication through partnerships

Video management platform Brightcove enters new partnerships

The broadband video market's drive for content syndication has gone further with video management platform Brightcove entering partnerships with Bebo, Meebo, RockYou, Slide and Veoh. Managing syndication is becoming a key part of video management on platforms like Brightcove as customers look to proliferate their content to multiple distributors. Social networks like Bebo are prime syndication targets because of their wide customerbase of engaged users who are able to drive huge volumes of video streams.

The issues that companies like Brightcove have to solve include rights management, monetization, tracking/reporting and business model implementation. For a company like CBS Television Stations, obtains 50% of its total monthly revenue streams through its syndication deal with Yahoo.

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Apr 9th 2008 21:15 // News // No comments

ESPN partners with AOL to go for online syndication

Sports broadcaster joins the online video revolution

Sports broadcaster ESPN has started syndicating video clips to AOL in another significant step towards a syndicated video economy.  In 2007 the brand generated 1.2 billion video views from its own site, placing it in the top 10 of all sites; in January 2008, it generated 81 million views using re-purposed on-air video and it also has an exclusive ESPN360 online subscription service. However the syndicated video deal with AOL deal indicates a future broadband video business model based on what blogger Will Richmond calls "accessing eyeballs" - at portals, social networks and devices - rather than "acquiring eyeballs" driving them to one central destination site. 

As video providers move from traditional scarcity-driven distribution strategies the dynamic is fragmenting audiences which may still coalesce around a relatively small number of influential new brands such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and the traditional portals. According to comScore, Google sites (dominated by YouTube) in January drove 3.4 billion video views, 42 times ESPN's video volume. Suppliers are anxious to put their video in front of all those eyeballs with more flexible business models that can produce opportunities and challenges for video providers to follow the evolving behaviour of consumers.

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Apr 9th 2008 21:04 // News // No comments

A New Kid on the Block

Photolibrary may not be a name as familiar in the stills and footage agency world as the more well known names like Getty and Corbis but as James Kearney demonstrates, it is making its presence felt with distinctive imagery

   Many footage and archive researchers to whom I’ve spoken have little idea of who Photolibrary Group is or what it does, so I’m hoping here to set the record straight and to give people a solid grasp why it’s worth contacting us.     

  Photolibrary Group was founded in 1967 in the northern suburbs of Sydney Australia and over the years has increased its presence with additional offices now in London (where I am), New York, Melbourne, Singapore, Mumbai, Bangkok, Malaysia, The Philippines, New Zealand and Dubai.

   As well as a growth in offices there has been a significant expansion in content; with over 2000 hours of footage and over four million images in a variety of genres.
  

   Photolibrary is known for its strong offering of generalist collections and when coupled with its recent acquisitions such as Garden Picture Library, Oxford Scientific (OSF) FreshFoodImages and Monsoon Images, the group can truly satisfy the visual demands of a wide range of clients.
  

   Oxford Scientific Films was the first acquisition in 2004 which was also the group’s major foray into the footage market until the relaunch of the Photolibrary site in November 2007. Oxford Scientific (OSF) was founded in the early 1960's and is revered worldwide for being the natural world specialist for both stock footage and images. Oxford Scientific's (OSF) stock image collection presents in-depth coverage of flora, fauna, mammals, science and the environment, while our stock footage offers over 2000 hours of footage specialising in the same subject matter and including treatments such as special effects, time-lapse, slow-motion, macro and micro cinematography.

As well as being available on the OSF website (osffootage.com); all of this content was additionally integrated in to the search function on the Photolibrary website (photolibrary.com), giving footage clients a new service on a par and in some instances exceeding what was already available by other stock footage providers.

   Over time, the footage offering at Photolibrary has just kept getting bigger and bigger. As well as the ever growing Oxford Scientific (OSF) collection (which includes footage shot by the likes of Michael Herzog, Skyworks, and Simon King), we’ve signed representative agreements with some of the major players in the footage world. They include Blacklight who we represent worldwide. The collection is 35mm originated and consists of more than 10,000 clips with content ranging from stunning locations to contemporary lifestyle. With its superb combination of specialist time lapse and macro work, it is a collection which beautifully compliments Oxford Scientific’s (OSF) classic style, as well as offering an impressive catalogue of general stock shots, enabling us to offer our customers even greater variety. Photolibrary’s collaboration with Blacklight strengthens the overall content offering available to a further field besides the UK visual community.
  

   We also have representation agreements with Corbis Motion, the Archive Films and Imagebank brands via Getty and also Framepool.
  

  On the stills side, we took on the Garden Picture Library, which provides customers with the opportunity to view and purchase superb specialist imagery that cannot be purchased elsewhere.  The library contains in excess of 400,000 images accessible at gardenpicture.co.uk and covers all garden and flower related subjects; from plant portraits and garden design details to garden views, floral graphics and practical gardening.  

We then acquired Monsoon Images, with its incredible collection of contemporary photographic fine art and highly stylised imagery from a variety of unique photographers. Whilst some of the content is extremely unconventional, other images are universal in theme. Monsoon offers fantastic artistic imagery that jumps off the page (or webpage for that matter!) and succeeds in embedding itself in the mind of the viewer.
  

   The group also includes New York-based Index Stock Imagery, which is a leading source of photographs, illustrations, and digital images. It represents over 1,600 professional photographers and 80 independent still image providers and was the first stock agency to begin storing and distributing images electronically. It started scanning its collection in 1992 and launched its first e-commerce site in 1994. It can now boast more than one million images. We’ve also recently launched Index Open on the UK market (indexopen.co.uk), a stock photo subscription service that has been running for over two years worldwide with great success. For a single price, you get access to over 200,000 High Resolution Royalty Free photos. You can download them as you need them.
  

   And finally (after all this writing, I’m hungry), FreshFoodImages (formerly The Anthony Blake Photo Library or ABPL) is a leading specialist in food and drink images. From fast food to haute cuisine, from paddy fields to supermarkets; whatever you're seeking out in the world of food, you will find it here. The FreshFoodImages collection of over 200,000 images (that’s over 567 years worth of dinners to the famished stills researcher) includes the work of over a hundred of the best talents in food and drink photography such as Tim Hill. Additionally, the FreshFoodImages collection houses the Anthony Blake Food Library (ABPL) – a pre-eminent collection from the UK. Combined, this makes FreshFoodImages the “go to” collection to sate the desires of even the fussiest appetites in stills research. Looking through the collection for the first time made me unhappy that I was heading home for a ready made Shepherd’s pie, rather than hottailing it to a restaurant for Pondicherry stuffed lamb noisettes!
  

   In recent years the Bill Gates adage ‘content is king’ has been overplayed a little, as ease of access to content seems equally important. Well we don’t fall down on that side either. Last November, we launched a new website which proved as good as an early Christmas present to both new customers and clients who regularly access the website. Featuring clearer navigation, more focused content and a cleaner user interface for enhanced usability (to the uninitiated that means it ‘works better’), the entire site was built in direct response to Photolibrary’s research into what their customers really want.
  

   With access this easy, a cornucopia of footage and stills from some of the most well known brands plus unique content, we think that it won’t be long before more people are talking about us!

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Mar 9th 2008 21:07 // General // No comments

Review: Toki Shot Hitting the Mark

Software that promises to use algorhythms to analyse a movie and take much of the drudgery out of working out useage of acquired materials in a cut, has to be more than a shot in the dark.

   It has long been a dream for anyone working with acquired content to be able to account for its use in a time based format like a TV programme using computer analysis of shots to take away the drudgery of analysing the video from this viewpoint in realtime. This French software which derives from the audio world, offers that possibility. It works on both Mac and PC platforms, where if you can put the DVD or movie video into Quicktime format - using conversion software or taking the output from popular edit programs like Final Cut Pro - this can be imported into Toki Shot. Once the detection settings are set to define the sensitivity of the shot analysis to the cuts, you leave the program to do its work. Miraculously, a complete shot breakdown appears in the main panel, with thumbnail images of the in and out points of each clip, the corresponding timecodes and even the durations. There is room to put in text descriptions or other metadata in a special field as you run down the analysis from the top of the screen. This is pretty important to add at this stage.

   The most useful way of working with the software in its current form, to achieve tallies of archive used, is to add descriptive tags such as the source, bulletin, stockshot number etc in the scene description, then print a PDF of the whole document with the thumbnails before exporting a shot EDL and text file. It can be fiddly doing all of this and the user needs a set routine to maintain accuracy because the text export appears to supply durations for the individual shots but often seems to generate inaccurate outpoints and therefore durations. However with all three documents open, it is straightforward to run through the EDL which is accurate, marking key shots with the descriptions from the text file. It’s a pity these do not currently appear to be capable of being combined. The job of editing the shot analysis to leave just the relevant shots is a long and tedious task that has to be done manually, so this is best left as the master document for the analysis of the cut that includes everything, then the text file - which helpfully lists all the shots with descriptors attached first in its running order - can be used to edit the EDL into a proper reflection of the data which is relevant to the analysis, the archive clips for example.
  

   All of this may sound a bit of a workaround the houses, but as with most of these kind of systems, once the software is set up and the routine is settled, it works rather well. The analysis takes a few minutes to run but then the three outputs provide a concise picture of the cut with the acquired elements listed. With a bit of judicious editing in the EDL list, a comprehensive breakdown of these components is shown. Durations can be added from the master document either in Toki Shot itself or from off the PDF.
  

   That sounds like good news for anyone logging usage, who has ever had to sit down with a DVD, a stopwatch, an EDL and a pile of shotnotes to work these things out. The next incarnation of the program may nail some of the inconsistencies and make the software even better for this purpose. Imagine being able swiftly to delete the non-relevant cuts in the breakdown and export into an Excel spreadsheet or Filemaker database all the important data, to be retrieved by source, timecode, cost base or whatever is needed for compliance with all the licensing issues involved in using the material in the production. There are a good few production managers, editors, producers and archive researchers round the world who would eat their timelines to have that.

tokitest.com

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Mar 9th 2008 20:41 // General // No comments

Editorial march 2008

The changing face of content supply and making money from it.

We are now in the grip of a race - not necessarily for power though that competition there is never relenting. In the world of traded content, there is another battle going on. Every month there seems to be another conference somewhere in the corporate world where theoretical papers suggest strategies to win the war. Everywhere there is real fear that it may just be engaged in a struggle that is pulling us towards the edge of disaster.
   What is this war? Technology is making content free but at the expense of possibly outdated notions of ownership. The fight is to monetise content...to make money from the stuff that is increasingly out there, being used but not necessarily traded, at least in the accepted sense of the word. For a business that has existed by buying and selling stills, music, audio, film footage, it has to be an odd idea that the basic principles are even open to question. But that is the extent of the point the technology is taking us towards.
   There is the inevitable discussion of YouTube copyright abuses and the kind of DRM in movie downloads that allows users to view a film in a set time frame, but the underlying issues are churning deeper. As newspapers are dismantling their pay walls and TV startups like Joost are finding, there is so much choice around now for content, that the paid-for subscription economic model is no longer working; people are no longer prepared to pay for it, at least in the conventional way. This has profound implications for all kinds of content - from publicly funded TV channels to rock bands giving their albums out free. How it impacts on the micro-economy of those agencies that supply the outfits that supply the content to the outlets is hard to say but vital to consider. It is now increasingly easy to copy  and manipulate all kinds of material from music to movies. The only protection for the people who create or make their living from this content, is flawed technical defences and legal recourse. Neither can adequately cope with the progress of the mashup culture.
   One tactic being unrolled everywhere is the pre-roll insert ad. As systems develop to target with more sophistication the individual with their unique profile of needs and desires,  the idea of embedding messages in every kind of content is no longer the far-fetched imaginings of the sci-fi scenario. The new reality of branding pieces of content is a direct result of the audience-fractured, advertising-averse world in which we now live. Now the brand needs to be a part of the content story. This points to tighter links between ad agencies and the creative community.  Rather than paying for the production when it is virtually wrapped up, the agencies will be brought in as early in the creative process as possible, and given the opportunity to help shape the story narrative. The early days of sponsored "soap operas" on TV have given this kind of intertwining something of a bad name.
   Empowered by broadband-led technologies, consumers are becoming choosier in their media consumption habits, with advertisers losing out and the content creators finding their budgets ever more squeezed as a result. With technology increasingly defining our lifestyles, this is a trend that will only intensify. The Oglivy agency has set up a unit solely to create, execute and manage the opportunities in branded entertainment. Broadband video's nascent development is unsteadily tottering towards effective monetisation mechanisms. The chance to experiment opens new possibilities that are much needed if the creative business is not to collapse. There will be elements like product-centric viral video initiatives, more product sponsored and conceived programming and more user-generated video contests around products. Viral video creation has a longer pedigree than  YouTube, but when Chad Hurley and Steve Chen launched their visionary Flash-based video-sharing platform in early 2005, there’s no question that everything changed. For the user or the content creator, barriers to distribution have been dismantled.
   The corporate takeover scene is showing the importance of these new channels. Yahoo acquiring Maven Networks while Microsoft makes a raid on Yahoo....headlines that reveal the need to increase the scale to compete with Google in the online advertising space. Search and display advertising monetises content that can be leveraged through what Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer calls "emerging user experiences" by which he means video, mobile, online commerce, social media and social platforms. The concept of scale, being able to both reach large audiences and drive massive traffic from them, is essential for broadband video advertising establish its place within the marketing mix for big brands. Search-based advertising has been driven by long-tail advertisers, but broadband video advertising is driven by big brands that are shifting their spend from TV to broadband, as the availability of high quality, targeted video inventory grows. The outlets have to be able to offer advertisers greater reach and interactivity, reporting, social features, etc. This is the area Microsoft is aiming to reach in its attempts to take on Google and its YouTube market leader.
   It is difficult to see how this big picture will have an impact on the secondary market where the content trade works, but there is little doubt it will. As suppliers put more content online, search engine optimisation is becoming the key marketing skill The fragmented clientbase needs to be able to find your offerings, even if they are feeding their products into the bigger pool of finished productions where different factors apply. Driving traffic to websites and increasing click-through on online advertising to produce income on whatever microscale is a fundamental to business success of all kinds. Content suppliers are no different in that respect....it could be that end user licensing revenues decline relative to these sources of potential income, hard as it is to imagine right now. Already, the need to be findable through consolidating portals is crucial. Cross syndication between big players is another indication of this trend. The network of suppliers is becoming a dense mesh where income distribution from the search is as important as licensing on the backend. All the quota rules from particular players, job minimums and attempts at editorial control by the producers contributing the content can only ultimately put a finger in the dam as the current runs decisively the way of the end user. Some of the more enlightened archive houses, music libraries and broadcasters have realised this; those that have not are going to have to wake up to the new realities of life online. If effective ways to monetise content at all levels are not found - and Google is pointing one way and blazing the trail at the same time - there will be no incentive to producing and trading content. Just as blogs are the fast food of the journalistic world, so YouTube cannot nourish an entire audiovisual culture, but that does not mean that these mechanisms have not stumbled upon the secret of making the whole game pay. As Lee Marvin says as he crashes around the corporate world he finds on release from Alcatraz in Point Blank, “someone’s gotta pay.” The problem comes when the gangster he’s turning over, explains he never carries cash. The world of content is now that poor confused soldier. It would not want to end up like the Marvin character, swimming in the bay, unsure whether alive or just a ghost of a previous world.

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Mar 9th 2008 20:22 // General // No comments

CNN cooks up more than alphabet soup

The new appointment of David Sheehan at CNN Imagesource is bringing a new approach to managing a news archive and the tricky business of handling legacy formats.

For David Sheehan, newly appointed VP for Content Licensing, Sales at news supplier, CNN Imagesource, it is a pretty exciting moment in the business. He has been brought in to drive the digitisation and global sales expansion. We talked to him as his business strategy got into gear.

“We have to adopt an aggressive digitisation policy at CNN because there are new companies moving into this space”, he says, “people like Thought Equity - which are making a major impact.” He has applied a new broom to the approach to sales that has seen Atlanta grow into an important port of call for web forays for content. He clearly wants to enhance its presence on the horizon: “the brand is key, no question. With offices in places like London and Tokyo, there is a recognition factor here that has stood news companies like CNN in good stead down the years. We can guarantee a comprehensive coverage of events that other broadcasters find difficult without extensive syndication of footage shot by other parties.” He is not against developing strong representation deals with sources that are complementary to CNN’s, but he senses that the company might not always have exploited its core values to maximum effect. “It depends on the product portfolio” he says. “The variety of content we can offer means we start from a position of strength and would only look at partnerships that enhance our inventory in a qualitiatively different direction....but we start from this core.” There are clearly trails to be blazed in this territory, but only after comprehensive analysis of the current holdings has shown the best direction to take.

David Sheehan has been recruited as a high profile figure to oversee this effort, for the archive to step up a gear. He has joined the CNN News Services executive team as vice president for content licensing and sales. Susan Grant, executive vice president of CNN News Services said on his appointment: “David’s vast understanding of the video licensing market provides focus to CNN ImageSource.” Grant emphasized the importantance of anticipating the needs of the full range of broadcast, corporate and commercial clients.
Sheehan moved from ABC News VideoSource which had achieved record sales of ABC News’ stock footage on his watch. There he established key partnerships with a range of content partners. Sheehan had been with ABC News VideoSource since 1995 and he also
serves as co-president of the Association of Commercial Stock Image Licensors, the nonprofit association dedicated to promoting and advancing the professional interests of the stock footage industry. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Kenyon College.

The CNN ImageSource online catalog contains more than 480,000 items.The collection comprises footage owned by the network and material from sources it currently represents, at present includeing more than 700 US news affiliates and the French news agency AFP.  The newly video-enabled CNN ImageSource website offers registered users access to close to 130,000 digital items for browsing and provides features such as online ordering, saved searches and FTP delivery of non-watermarked, high-resolution files.
CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, has a reach extending to nine cable and satellite television networks, one private place-based network and two radio networks. CNN Newsource claims to be the world’s most extensively syndicated news service.

Like other key news suppliers like ITN, AP and NBC, the strength of the source is also a potential weakness. It’s one thing to have such a comprehensive coverage of world events, but news is by its very nature a high churn instant hit low shelf-life product. Some of the big developments in the archive world are in the premium sector - that means High Def - not a habitat that news suppliers find a natural pasture. For Sheehan, this a question of carefully managing a transition. “It’s churning are right now. Players are looking for position. We can’t rush at it because inevitably much of our stock is held on legacy formats like Beta and Beta SP tape, but we will deal with the issues in a progressive way. CNN’s first base will always be to get the news out there, so inevitably the studied high end market is for more specialist suppliers.” However, the scope to supply the burgeoning pro-sumer market and other non-broadcast users of content is a crucial focus for the archive, especially the use of video on the internet.

In terms of reaching those increasingly dispersed customers, CNN Imagesource is placing great store on its upgraded website. “It’s a good site getting better” says Sheehan. “More visual elements and just more content to browse with bigger better search capabilities - that’s what everyone wants and it’s central to all our efforts.” In common with competitors like AP and ITN, the archive is looking to the site to drive not just preview but full ecommerce sales eventually.

David Sheehan won’t be pushed into chasing fashions on all this....he knows from his years at ABC that building a solid performing business is more important than flash visuals. The move from New York to Atlanta has brought a raft of new challenges. He knows the value of reliable systems, knowledgeable staff and speed of turnaround. “Listen, CNN started in 1980, but we’re still talking in terms of managing a large amount of native assets” he emphasizes. “Essentially the task is about managing a flow, it’s an upgrade channel that takes all of this material and makes it as widely available in the appropriate format of the moment, as we can.” Building from such a solid base at CNN, where the attitude towards the customer was always friendly and helpful, Sheehan should be able to steer the supplier expertly along that route. When he defines his mission in terms of managing an “on demand” provision, you will not find many archive bosses disagreeing with the sentiment.

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Mar 3rd 2008 14:05 // General // No comments

A new Wicked Words article

The summary for a new Wicked Words article. Preview Test.

The main content of a new Wicked Words article.

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Feb 28th 2008 12:37 // General // No comments