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Honestly NOT trying to trash broadcast TV… just reporting what I see on my newsfeeds these days…
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[Bill Davis] “The competitive video world of the net is clearly a place of 1 to 5 minute “information and entertainment blocks” served up on demand. That’s what that market wants. And when I need to figure out quickly how to change a tail light on my car, or want to personally hear what a thought leader said yesterday, its a system that satisfies it’s audience far better than appointment viewing.
Competitive for what? How many views (and how much money) does a 2 minute tutorial video on replacing a car’s head lamp generate? There’s a company (can’t remember the name off hand) that’s one of the ‘how to’ video kings and they pay something like $100 for each finished video. Great for them, not so great for the people making the videos. The market may want to watch a video of goats laughing to kill a few minutes at work but the market will not pay for it. Charlie Bit my Finger? Hilarious… when its free. Put YT behind a paywall and watch it’s numbers crash instantly. Views without monetization is like a store with high foot traffic but barely any sales. Monetization, not popularity, pays the bills.
The bottom line is that I respect the production and post traditions we all grew up in. But the industry (and more, the market!) is evolving fast. And in a garden experiencing fast growth, weeding and re-planting can be as critical as initial plant selection.”
Many reports have pegged Netflix as the single largest bandwidth hog in North America at 30% of total internet traffic. YT is at 10%. YT completely dwarfs Hulu when it comes to viewers but Hulu became profitable w/in 2 or 3 years of launch. People watch YT for minutes and other services for hours. YT, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, etc., are all starting to create original, premium content because viewers and/or advertisers will pay to support it. YT’s problem obviously isn’t a lack of traffic, it’s a lack of traffic that can be monetized and, unlike in b’cast where transmissions are basically a fixed cost, every viewer eats up resources and counts against the bottom line of a streaming service.
In 2005-ish I started working for an established website helping to produce their orignal content and while a some parts of the production pipeline were new I think most things were basically the same compared to the broadcast and cable work I’d done. In 2011 an indie doc I cut called Looking for Lenny (about the comedian Lenny Bruce) got domestic distribution on VOD and streaming and possibly in years past it would’ve just sat on a shelf gathering dust. I’m certainly aware of the changes taking place but in the end I don’t think the landscape will look nearly as different as the internet echo chamber (which I know I’m part of) thinks it will.
I remember back in ’99, at the height of Napster, people saying this would be the death of the major labels and artist’s would just directly sell to fans online. Well, it’s 2013 and the major labels are still around. Sure the field has opened up some but the majors are still the majors and artists are largely still struggling to get their fair share whether it’s from CD sales, iTunes downloads or Spotify royalties.
In old Hollywood stars rebelled against their studio contracts and a number of decades later there is similar insurrection in the digital age.
“YouTube Stars Fight Back: Machinima and Maker Studios, two of YouTube’s most high-profile networks, have come under fire from their own talent”
https://www.laweekly.com/2013-01-10/news/machinima-maker-studios-YouTube/full/
Even some people that were on the cutting edge of new media a couple of years ago aren’t as enamored with it as they once were. Trent Reznor, who had a famous and bloody fallout with his old label, even concedes that labels do some things right and has partnered with Columbia on his current project.
“Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and other digital pioneers sour on ‘pay what you want’ music”
The names of the gate keepers and money men might change but they won’t disappear because they provide services that both content creators and content consumers need.
Meet the new boss, pretty much the same as the old boss. 😉
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[Bill Davis] “The competitive video world of the net is clearly a place of 1 to 5 minute “information and entertainment blocks” served up on demand. That’s what that market wants.”
I disagree. If you look at the successful content providers, they are actually following relatively standard “network” models and simply using the ‘net as one of – both not the only – delivery vehicles.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Chris Harlan] “Sure, X has a lot more stuff, but these others get the job done just fine, and at a fraction of the cost. And, many if not most of them can stay on their native platform.”
Ah, now THIS is intresting.
OS might be a big deal for you or me. But for my son it’s inconsequential. He’s as happy on Linux as he is on Mac, or iOS, or Windows. Evolution is strong.
Besides, since I’ve long been around the retail world, I see price as a pretty artificial thing in all senses. Back in the dawn of my working life I produced radio ads for a local stereo shop. There I learned about price targets. To satisfy the most customers, you wanted products in pricing tiers. Perhaps $299, 399, and 499.
There were customers for each. But back then dealing in physical products, one kinda had to differentiate the products either by features or caché. The expensive product, while basically the same, had all the circuitry of it’s less expensive cousin, but more holes drilled and more switches and nobs to provide more user options and controls along with perhaps a beefier power supply or amplifier section.
Today, what ARE the differentiators between the zillion lines of code that makes up Premier verses the zillion lines of code that make up FCP-X?
Certainly nothing that impacts price in a realistic sense.
If Apple sells their code in one bucket for $299 and Adobe sells more varied code packages in six buckets for $1200 – what is it that makes one approach more valuable than the other? Theres literally not much tangible difference in the quantity or in the production costs of the deliverable. A bigger production or sales team here – whether or not you’re licensing code or paying royalties there – that’s about it.
The product is just software. Experessions of ideas about arrangement and interface. Isn’t the rest mostly just “perceptions” about the utility of one approach over the other? X does function A fast. Premier does function B better . And I carefully say PERCEPTIONS of utility after significant thought. Because while there’s a lot of hue and cry about this feature or workflow or that one – few here would argue that given a hard drive of the same content, either one of us working in our favorite NLE couldn’t come up with an EXACT duplicate of a finished program someone told us to re-create.
The whole NLE debate sometimes makes me get flashes of the Microphone debates I occasionally get caught up in as a 30 year professional VO guy and narrator.
The truth is that the Mic is pretty far down the list of important tools I use when I do a VO. Actually not even in the top 5. Yeah, I own a $1000 mic because at the time I bought it, I could easily justify buying a tool that put the “mic quality” issue out of my own mental debate. But when I’m on the road, and a client needs a quick tag for the existing spots? I use other mics and recording processes out of my suitcase and nobody ever notices.
Discovering FCP-X for me has been a little like recording my first national level VO on my Zoom H4n -rather than through the recording chain into ProTools back in my studio.
Simpler and easier and nobody could really detect a difference at the ad agnecy or on the air.
So my thinking for so many years that the ONE “proper” way to do VO work was in a studio with classic tools was ripe for change.
Before I learned X, I had no clue that range based keywording built into my edit interface would transform my whole approach to my work.
But now I value Favorite/Reject +keyword software database access WAY MORE than tracks. It’s hands down, no contest. And I didn’t know they’d be so damn useful until I had them and could spend a good year developing a system for using them with intent.
Just as in my VO practice where I want to be able to do them as easily from a hotel room in San Diego as in my studio in Scottsdale – the new tools have changed how I operate.
So Chris, the answer is that everyone has to decide on the type of tools that makes them happy. And it’s not any ONE thing – it’s everything in sum. How features and price and payment model and COMFORT all mix together.
How I feel about it anyway.
FWIW.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “Tv is basically factual and non-factual storytelling, news and sports?”
Actually – I forgot narrative lottery systems there – Roman Colosseum Pop Idol thunder dromes.
We’re Monkeys in the end – we scream at that stuff?Hope Lotteries are audience heroin really. Bottom line – however troubled the TV construct might be – lots of it directly belongs to it.
Television is a big psychological construct – it is also a central object in your home. It has the Telephone beat there.https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Andrew Kimery] “Views without monetization is like a store with high foot traffic but barely any sales. Monetization, not popularity, pays the bills.”
Tell that to Psy.
Somebody figured out there would be a path between the ability to attract human eyeballs and monitization. It’s not as direct as Broadcast through Neilson ratings through Ad Agnecies to Corporate Adveritising coffers, but it wasn’t all that direct in the early TV era either.
I dont think Psy’s hurting financially. Or Justin Bieber or any of the other modern content creators who’ve struck it big via early internet fame.
Sure the also leverage other media. They’d be idiots NOT to. But you can mock the “dancing cat” crowd all you like – I see EXACTLY those same clips played day after day on the Today Show – Good Morning America, and the other “traditional” broadcast outlets as much as I see them on the internet.
And they GET to network TV because they’re popularized on the web.
If you can’t see the value in that, you’re beyond blind.
Again it happened yesterday. My wife came back from taping her local TV segment for Monday to report that once again she had a chat with this years smart and and beautiful and telegenic young intern who’s been at the station through a program with the Walter Cronkite Journalism school at ASU and who is about at the end of her internship. My wife mentioned that once again, for the 3rd year in a row, that young lady is NOT looking to get into TV. She’s after a career in “digital media” on the web.
For me, that’s game over right there.
If traditional media is losing the contest to bait the best and brightest of our young men and women into TVs ranks, what kind of future is this industry possible building?
Honestly?
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Oliver Peters] “I disagree. If you look at the successful content providers, they are actually following relatively standard “network” models and simply using the ‘net as one of – both not the only – delivery ve”
See my post above referencing the intern that works at the TV station where my wife regularly appears as an on-air contributor for a long running local broadcast show.
That’s the long game right there. And, IMO, TV isn’t doing a very good job of winning it.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[David Lawrence] “A “share” button does not a revolution make. Just sayin’. ;)”
Well, for me it kinda does.
Because it makes me grin wildly every single time I hit it and know I won’t have to spend another frustrated hour burning another freeking client review DVD!
That, as the ads say – is Priceless.
The stuff of real, personal happiness.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] “OS might be a big deal for you or me. But for my son it’s inconsequential. He’s as happy on Linux as he is on Mac, or iOS, or Windows. Evolution is strong.
“Not my point. I started on some flavor of CP/M and have used some form of everything else, from DOS to GEOS to UNIX to Windows to OS X. My point is that people who own a Windows machine, and want to toss a DIY video up on the tubes, might possibly not be interested in going out to buy a whole new computer just to do so.
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[Bill Davis] “See my post below referencing the intern that works at the TV station where my wife regularly appears as an on-air contributor for a long running local broadcast show.”
I did. The intern simply bought into the hype and will likely make a fine barista. 😉
Look, I’m not arguing that TV isn’t changing. I am arguing that many of the folks in the so-called traditional media have a better handle on succeeding in the new media world than folks think. In the end, none of this matters to the core of FCP X’s success, because I don’t believe that X is any better (or worse) suited for this world than that of traditional post.
X is different. It suits one-man bands well. It can also suit others equally well with significant workflow rejiggering. That doesn’t change with the media outlet involved. The same can be said for Adobe or Avid.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Bill Davis] “Because it makes me grin wildly every single time I hit it and know I won’t have to spend another frustrated hour burning another freeking client review DVD!”
Your clients still ask for DVDs? You need to train them better!
DVDs make me sad, but happily, it’s been years since I had to deliver in that format. I thank HD.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
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