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Remixing News Video On The Fly

Posted by timothy on from the when-the-going-gets-absurd dept.

slashdotbs writes "The New York Times writes that 'A handful of Web users are programming their own virtual TV newscasts and eclectic collections of video clips using a free media-sharing tool called Webjay. The site makes it easy to build, share and watch playlists of audio and video links culled from around the Internet.' Although the site was originally intended to be used for audio playlist creation, it turns out that it can also be used effectively for video. In addition, you can create "video mashups", where you blend audio and video together to present a new message. By using simple smil commands in a URL, a CBS news report can become a short clip of George Bush saying "I can't do my job" (the third track on this playlist)."

9 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. I don't believe the news anymore these days by Real+Troll+Talk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How can we TRUST the big bully corporations to tell us the truth?

    After F9/11, I just don't trust anyone with $ any more.

    --

    If you liked my post,
  2. Already Common in Music by dancingmad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This has already been done a lot in music. A lot of /.'ers might remember the DJ Dangermouse "Grey Album", which mashed Jay-Z's Black Album with The Beatles White Album.

    I remember getting the impression that after the press the Grey Album got mashups would become more popular in the music biz or either they are harder to make than it seems (Dangermouse is a talented guy - check out his Ghetto Pop Life CD for proof) or people are scared of getting sued.

    What's the legality of A/V mashups? Could people get in the same hot water Dangermouse did?

    --
    "There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
  3. Playlist by stevemm81 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know how indicative that playlist is of the kinds of things produced in general, but I can't say it left me feeling overly impressed. A 5 second clip of Bush saying "I Can't Do My Job" doesn't seem very revolutionary...

  4. Better watch out by nfras · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The article says that Gonze thinks his site is legal because it transmits urls rather than files. A news feed is copyright, audio and visual and altering a copyrighted work is grounds for legal action (and TV companies tend to be litigious). IANAL but this seems like very shaky ground.

    --
    You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
  5. Call "The Onions" lawyers... by ranger5 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How long until some small news agency in some small country reports one of these as an actual video clip or news snippet? I guess it could even be just a down on his luck, non-scoop having newspaper writer who doesn't do his research...

  6. Re:Can we rate articles? by Karma+Star · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And I'd like to mod you -1, Flamebait, but I don't because some of us believe in freedom of expression sans the persecution. *Sorry* if the author of the clip has a different opinion of GW than you...

    --
    Me email iz skyewalkerluke at microsoft's free email service.
  7. Old News - Babylon 5 "Illusion of Truth" by rm3friskerFTN · · Score: 4, Interesting
    By using simple smil commands in a URL, a CBS news report can become a short clip of George Bush saying "I can't do my job"
    The concept of "selective editing" (a la Mike Moore ;-) was demonstrated very well in the Babylon 5 episode "Illusion of Truth".

    The B5 ISN news reporter Dan Randall edited the footage in an unethically truthful way just like Mike Moore

    From "Illusion of Truth" plot summary (spoiler warning)

    From a second "Illusion of Truth" plot summary (spoiler warning)

    From a third "Illusion of Truth" plot summary (spoiler warning)

    And finally a fourth "Illusion of Truth" plot summary (minor spoiler warning)

    BTW, this Babylon 5 espisode is available on DVD
    --

    I believe Juanita

  8. you can sue, but you won't win by iriles · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At least the big news companies can be sued for libel/slander if caught outright lying.

    Technically you wouldn't be able to sue over libel/slander unless they "fabricated" a news story about you. But regardless you're going to have a really hard time beating any major corporation in a law suit.

    These two reporters (http://www.foxbghsuit.com ) tried to sue Fox News over a falsified news story. They had a good case too, but Fox won in the end. How? The appeals court decided that "lying" in a news story, technically isn't against the law.

  9. software availability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Ah, alrite I see the problem. SMIL is a WC3 standard but it has only been implemented by Real. Personally I have stopped using Real's products because they are the Founding Fathers of spyware.

    I have mixed feelings about end-user editorial freedom (SMIL) coming from a spyware and corporate-control vendor. To make an analogy, there is something dangerous about getting people hooked on clean, bottled water only to find out later that the bottle is cancerous.

    To put it bluntly, I don't think the industry supports this or similar projects. Personally, I use hardware mixers, but I see the convenience of SMIL drawing from online streams. My best advice is: Lobby Winamp for smil support.

    Video mixing software seems conceptually not too difficult. Assuming you have access to bitmap streams, compositing them is really just the process of blending the pixel colors, one by one. In fact...
    for i=1 to 100
    for j=1 to 100
    red_output[i,j]:=streamone[i,j] + streamtwo[i,j]
    green_output....etc.
    plus the relevant masking (off, or on), and timing (again either off, or on) for each stream. Once you cut through the codecs to get raw bitmap data, smil support is like a 100-line program.

    You can also tell Andrew that Site59 says hi :) Small internet, to be sure.