It’s our first month back and already there are surrounding reminders of our industry’s and online video is poised to benefit.

Just last week Google introduced the phone Nexus One, primarily meant to compete against Apple’s iPhone which has dominated the U.S. smartphone market. It’s notable that both phones have introduced key mobile initiatives in their race placing an emphasis on mobile video.

So what does that do for our online video industry?

At a minimum this means the expansion of a video ready universe. The two companies’ considerable marketing spending will mean that more smartphones will be purchased and therefore the experience of watching mobile video will just keep getting better. For example, the Nexus One’s screen resolution (480×800) surpasses the iPhone’s (320×480), which only means Apple will need to up the ante even further with its next generation. The range of video applications is bound to increase with more players fighting it out in the field.

Moreover there is no oligopoly within the distributors in mobile video like there is with cable and satellite which means that there is more flexibility in how premium video can be distributed to smartphones. Mobile world used to be where everything had to be approved and carried by the wireless carrier. However, that’s quickly evolving to an open sphere where there are no gatekeepers for applications and services making it seem more like an online distribution than traditional video distribution.

Furthermore by having its own device and operating system, Google is optimizing the YouTube mobile experience. The Nexus One is an improved way to search, view and upload YouTube videos making YouTube an even more valuable partner in the mobile race.

It appears as though 2010 is once again confirming itself to be full of sizable opportunities for growth with a prediction that video is a going to continue to be an increasingly important part of the digital experience.

Not bad for the first month back, huh?

Cellphones have surely come a long way since their first days….

Recently, mobile video has been dominating industry news with definite promises of growth, expecting to generate roughly $16B in revenues worldwide by 2014. Similarly, “Mobile Video Services: A Five Year Global Market Forecast” states that mobile usage will rise by 135% over the next 5 years due to more people embracing mobile audio and video. Not to mention the number of users are vastly increasing worldwide – mobile subscribers in Latin America and Central/Eastern Europe are predicted to be 50% 3G converted up from 5% in 2008.

Cellphone displays are getting larger and more powerful making it obvious that video is going to continue expanding in both usage per person and amount that is available. With more companies beginning to offer flat rate mobile data plans, mobile video is more accessible to the general public assisting the growth of mobile data.

Is there a valid explanation for this fast paced increase? The recent stimulated mobile video growth most definitely ties into the launch of iPhone 3GS. Since the launch, YouTube has stated that mobile uploads have been soaring over the last six month with over a 1700% boost. The daily uploads alone have increased 400%…. YouTube believes that the growth is mostly due to more mobile phones with video capabilities on the market, which makes sense of course. If you provide people with advanced technology, they will use it.

By the looks of it, the mobile industry looks bright but what effect does that have on online video? Are we able to co-exist together or will one form of video eventually rule out the other?

In order to understand similar relationships better, I found a few quantitative case studies.  For example, in a relationship between those who listen to music with online streaming vs mobile phones,  the numbers indicate that when one goes up, the other goes down. This means there is only room for one of the above …

However, on the contrary the analysis for mobile video vs. online video streaming states that the two do not compete. In fact, not only do they not compete but they correlate strongly (on a coefficient of .57 to be exact). This is the unique role of video in digital progress and we are all right in the middle of it. People want more video, through more devices, in more places and times – the possibilities are unlimited. That’s definitely great news!

Here to stay…

Imagine the opportunities available if mainstream consumers had the ability to access broadband video from the comfort of their own living room? Of course, I’m not only talking about the sheer “possibility” here. If that were the case most of us nerds who have already implemented such a system would be rushing to mass communicate instead of simply sharing ridiculous YouTube clips at our parties. No, not the possibility, I am talking about your mom and dad flicking on the tube, flipping to a central channel and then having the ability to easily integrate broadband T.V for their viewing pleasure.

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This is an article I found yesterday which takes a look at the potential effects the economic recession may have on broadband video.  It is definitely something worth checking out, it has some interesting ideas as to why broadband video will survive in tough economic times despite some labeling the media format as ‘experimental’.  The part I found fascinating, yet not suprising is that the fundamentals of broadband video have been laid down and in tough times, people would rather stop paying for cable TV over broadband internet.  High hopes for our industry in 09′!

-Reid

Nintendo has an interesting spot up on their Experience Wii YouTube channel. It doesn’t seem that special at first, but give it 30 seconds – it’s pretty surprising.

How do they do it? Well without getting too geeky on you…

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YouTube just launched a new addition to their Insight metrics package called “Hot Spots”

Hot Spots lets you drill down into your video’s timeline, giving you an unprecedented look at how audiences feel about each moment of your content. (more…)

With YouTube’s video annotations feature starting to get some momentum (see below for update), I thought it might be good to address the concept of interactive video. “Hypervideo” – the inclusion of dynamic hyperlinks into video on a time-dependant basis – isn’t particularly new. In early 2004, web ad technology company United Virtualities released their Shoshmosis engine, which placed a clickable Flash layer over streaming video. Before that, eline Technologies (now VideoClix) had a QuickTime-based solution complete with clickable objects that triggered contextual content alongside the playing video. But hypervideo has yet to penetrate into the online mainstream, and most web video experiences are still remarkably linear.

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We’ve been working a lot with the new H.264 support in Flash. Like the On2.VP6 addition back in Flash 8, the inclusion of H.264 opens up new potential for delivering high-quality video at low bitrates. One drawback is that Flash doesn’t currently support transparency in H.264 – you’ll have to stick to VP6 for your walk-on hosts and so forth.

The latest figures from Adobe put the H.264-enabled version (9.0.115) at 62% penetration for the US and Canada as of March. This is probably into the 80s by now, as the 99.4% of users with Flash 6+ get prompted to auto-update when they encounter Flash 9 content. There’s little reason to hold off from distributing in H.264 at this point: very few users will have trouble viewing it and the quality boost and/or bandwidth savings are significant.

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