Video formats and concepts is taking a huge and unexpected blooming through new media; Till now, creators and owners were just moving their videos from original environmets to the internet, but now the evolution of new media forced to re-invent this way of communication to the new nature of the network; Video now is not an adaptation of our betacam tapes, but is re-birthing in other context, format, place, language and nature itself.
Technical format
While production companies were arguing about DV, HDV or HD standards during the last years, in other layer the fight is much bigger cause there is not standards in video through internet (even in internet itself). Every platform took its format and just broadcasted it. Now, the huge amount of contents is forcing the companies to make an effort to decide an standard format that allows distribution and exchange of contents. YouTube finally decided to abandon the 4:3 format and takes panoramic format. The standard H.264 is becoming the in-fact standard due to image quiality and weight, and even some platforms like Vimeo are allowing their users to upload their videos in HD (1280×720) or even Full-HD. Due to the quantity of distribution platforms and devices like tablets, smartphones, portable videogame devices, etc, experts think that there are too many formats and the challenge of future is to decide an standard of distribution of it if we really want to push the industry.
Source
The unexpected blooming of video in Internet come from the source of the videos: users are the main creators of everything; particular users uploaded millions and millions of videos ti Youtube or equivalents, and years later the Production companies waned about the opportunities and created their own online channels through the platform. But this romantic ‘power to the people’ it is not 100% true; at least 60% of contents that private users uploads are old TV productions, videoclips, and other stuff that they never produced by their own. Anyway, we can find three big sources of contents we can find in networks:
- Video contents created by users
- Contents by Production companies adapted to the network (Youtube channels, live TV)
- Productions oriented for Internet distribution
The distribution of video had the main push through Youtube and equivalents. After that times, now the contents disposal is multiplied by others:
- 3G mobile networks
- Social Media
- Blogs, personal pages and information sites of corporations
- Broadcasting channels
Copyright Law
Due to the facility of free traffic of contents in both ways upload and download, users may upload any copyrighted content and it is becoming a big problem for the Industry. If the shared-content age come with the internet exchange of contents, now there is a intense public debate about copyright, copyleft , intellectual property, creative commons licenses. No one knows the result, but new technologies are changing the nature of contents distribution and it will revolutionize the way we understand it.
Copyright Management
As the contents owners are facing the new nature of contents distribution, some of them are trying to adapt to the new context. Myspace two years ago signed a contract with Auditude for a service that allows to owners to place advertising in their videos broadcasted in Myspace TV, when any user upload it without author consent, through an invisible ‘thumbprint’ placed in the video and detected automatically. Other big platforms are following this trend.
Language
As audiovisual media made its own language seen on commercials, or TV created its own version of cinema movies (TV serials), we can not expect that video on networks be an adaptation of old formats. Now we are experiencing a newborn change in storytelling format, length and even subjects of contents.
Interactivity
One contribution of the interactive media is, obviously, the interactivity itself. For now we can find a few examples just considered as experiments, but we have to wait to check if interactive videos could be a new solid format. At least, this is a huge field of exploration for creativity.
Real time
Nowadays TV channels are broadcasting their contents via internet, but it isn’t new. The next real contributions are both:
- Ability to users for live broadcasting through platforms like Ustream
- The incoming trend for companies, brands and advisers to create their own live contents to show relevant information to their audience.
Conclusions
We don’t still know the final format that the network will give to video, but we can certainly know that we will have a new nature for a new format. And we are sure that the fast and special way of distribution, authorship, and technical capabilities will bring to us something really awesome for human beauty and knowledge.
Write a Comment