Videoblog Revolution

mr_don't writes "Not too long ago Slashdot featured a post about photoblogs. It claimed that photoblogging is the next big thing, but really it has been around a while (notice how lots of folks posted a link to their photoblogs!). I think the next big thing will be VideoBlogging. Many have seen Peter Jackson's cool King Kong Video Blog, but you don't need whole a camera crew to blog using video. My made-on-linux video blog."

Comments

Bandwidth...

[SunPin]

... and nobody cares.

Two excellent reasons why videoblogging is a nonstarter.

Re:Bandwidth...

[LaCosaNostradamus]

It really makes me wonder. I can see that bw is a serious impediment to using video as text is used now. Lack of bw forces video into serialized information, which is much like accessing your computer's RAM like it was a paper tape unit. {Whirrrrr!} Only the most slovenly Internet sloucher can afford right now to spend the time using a videoblog like a textblog is used.

However, if common bw increases 10-100 fold over what we have now, will actual videoblogs be possible if we can use innovative features like context-searches and other indexing tools? On top of that, video proceeds at its own pace, so some sort of speed-change tool will have to become common ... kind of like FF/REV buttons on a VCR, but snazzier.

blog appeal

[LiquidCoooled]

Isn't this just buffered webcam viewing?

Somehow the thought of actively browsing the web looking for random folks sticking their fingers up their noses and generally acting strange reminds me of a couple of years ago.

At least if these folks have gone wireless and are in public, they may behave a little more civilised.

Wasting bandwidth

[cloudmaster]

Hooray for the next big bandwidth waster! Everyone needs to stream not just text describing what I did today, and not just pictures, but full-friggin-motion video showing just what I may have done today!

Seriously, whose life is 1) so exciting that video clips are required for full appreciation and 2) not too exciting to have enough time to record the whole thing on video?

Re:Wasting bandwidth

[AntiPasto]

There's a lot of bandwidth to waste! BitTorrent works like a jet engine in the sense that the more people are interested in something, the more bandwidth there is available to get it. Conversely, you shouldn't worry too much as bad ideas will stay bad ideas and won't propogate much. BTW, have you seen harddrive prices lately? WTF are *you* putting on your 200 gig drive?

Re:Wasting bandwidth

[akb]

Most people's text blogs are only of interest to a very few people, video blogs will be no different. However, as with text blogs, some video blogs will be of great interst. Some will be of news (Rodney King style), some will be from UN workers in Iraq, some will be from a future George Lucas. Portals and distributed reputation / recommendation services are what we need to help us find the things of interest to us.

I doubt it will be more meaningful than photos

[gearmonger]

The reason text blogging became so big is that it's easily searched and, thus, easily found via search engines.

Photos are becoming better catalogued, but anyone who has used Google's image search will tell you, we're still a long way off from something akin to "good."

Video will pose even bigger problems for search engines, meaning that most video clips that are posted will be ignored. Only those with something really valuable (political scandal, hot chicks, etc.) *AND* easily found will see any significant distribution and/or audience.

Just my prediction...prolly wrong.

Re:I doubt it will be more meaningful than photos

[British]

The reason text blogging became so big is that it's easily searched and, thus, easily found via search engines.

I think you meant to say "easily pollutes search engines".

Re:I doubt it will be more meaningful than photos

[AntiPasto]

Meta, meta, meta. Sure goatse.cx is a prime example of meta data failing us, but for the most part, when you go to cnn.com, you get cnn. If video gets cataloged correctly, and as technology improves to do more information extraction from it (video type, quality, length, etc... perhaps soon voice-to-text ala dragon or viavoice) I think you'll find that the archives of publically available video will start to resemble more or less a small portion of the private video archives that most TV networks have in the very near future.

How do you speed-read a video?

[ZakMcCracken]

One reason why blogging (or reading in general, for that matter) is popular, is that you can access the content at your own pace.

Watching a video requires the willingness and ability to follow the pace of the videomaker--which restricts audience. While you can skim through a bad writer's rantings and see very quickly if there is anything of value in a couple of pages of text, doing so on video is impractical.

Additionally, a good-paced video is actually hard to edit, and not something that most of us have been trained for in school, contrary to writing.

Sounds like a gimmick doomed to fail.

Re:How do you speed-read a video?

[geoffspear]

Coincidentally, this is also why TV and movies will never supplant the novel as the dominant form of entertainment. Oh wait...

Re:Err....

[geoffspear]

Uh, yeah, because Star Trek invented the concept of a captain keeping track of the events on a ship. Right.

Re:"....whooooooosh....."

[stratjakt]

I can't hear anything over the crickets.

(Why is "hey did you guyz know you can put video files on teh intarweb!" front page news on slashdot?)

Re:Does anyone remember...

[pchan-]

please. "push" technology is the next big thing. pretty soon you'll all be running thin clients, getting push content, and riding segways. and there will be xml, and set-top boxes, and portals, and aeron chairs, and it will all be written in java. just you wait!

Bandwidth / storage solved

[AntiPasto]

Besides the fact that the Internet Archive has promised unlimited bandwidth and storage for life for any Creative Commons licensed material, it should be noted that BitTorrent is also playing a role in this.

By syndicating .torrents automatically, channels of swarming mirroring can be formed to amass what could be called efficient broadcasting. On private lans, there's also no reason why you couldn't run VLC and Myth, and have a complete video network with on-demand-downloadable-by-bt type content, as well as redistribution of streaming media already out on the net (remember the internet tv article?)

This is big, and it is hot. It's not *entirely* the downfall of big media, but it is in fact the eventuality of big media as our channel list grows, and our options for consumption and means of consuming this media grow.

Some claim that this means TV and Film will die, or that all this material will end up looking like the lamest of public-access tv....

Well, public access TV looks almost exactly in production, quality, and distribution as mid-80's regionally-produced TV shows (like Romper Room, or Cleveland's SUPERHOST!)

Also, your kids are going to school and learning video production... on DV equipment in some cases.

So, it's not the end of big media... it's the start of a new decentralized wonder. It'll probably both be worse than today (ads that make Futurama's attempts at advertising parody not funny anymore), and much purer (how about a family, community, slashdot, or special interest group TV show? Commercial free?)

As a side note, some of these patterns will most likely be evident in tonight's Frontline on PBS about the "persuasion industry" ... I'll be watching that one!

Anyway, start looking into this stuff, because it is what you make it. If you want to bitch about it, well, start your own damn TV show.

Only with RSS2.0

[ptlpc]

and iPodder will video blogging take off - if at all. I tried it using pMachine and a Nokia 3650 video phone and quickly realized; 1) I have a boring as s&^% life and 2) I'm one lazy Bas()*(^%.
Check it out here: www.videoblog.tv
Now there are a few new tools that will make the second problem less severe:
1) Wirecast & VideoCue by Vara Software
2) Live Channel by Channel Storm
3) RSS 2.0 with enclosures.

I disagree with the post about audioblogs. I load 'em up using iPodderX and then have an huge library of "talk pod" on my long drives. Adam Curry won't be able to take bong hits on a video blog however.

Re:Current big thing: Podcasting...

[akb]

Richer metadata is definitely an active topic in the community. Unfortunately, progress is slow as there's no agreement on how to represent a multimedia object and its potential related items (ie, different formats, different bitrates, a transcript, subtitles in another language, a shorter version, sign language representation, etc). Even if this problem is overcome, the difficulty in creating a transcript makes it not very likely that the searching problem will get better soon.

Ben Brown was an early videoblogger

[AtariDatacenter]

Anyone remember Ben Brown by chance? He was an early videoblogger with his Ben Brown show that went on for a number of episodes. (It seemed like a creative outlet for an unemployed techie.) It was pretty well known to the Metafilter/Fark crowd, at least.

He went away, but I have to say, that was a pretty good archetype for the video blogger. Just I think that video bloggers have even more of a problem in that they're not easily searchable, and one has to dedicate time to see the content more than pictures or text. It is far easier to turn people off than to turn them on because of the time a viewer needs to invest.