Slashdot Mirror
Google Readies Platform for Video Distribution
Eric writes "According to BetaNews, 'Google is preparing a video distribution platform that provides a complete ecosystem of services for content producers, publishers and end-users.' The first phase of its video upload program rolled out today, and 'content owners will be able to control distribution rights themselves, even setting a price for their video clips. Eventually, users will be able to search, preview, purchase and play videos directly from within Google.'"
Evil buggers
is google answering a question nobody asked?
I don't see the MPAA adopting anything like this, and outside of them, is anyone really else doing large volumes of video sales?
Now MP3s I could see... and video in the future perhaps, but right now I'd say it seems useless. Of course I'm not a PHD working at google, so what do I know...
A few questions:
1) Will TV networks sign on to this? Will we able to download last night's episode of 24 for a small fee? How much will they charge?
2) Why aren't these files DRM-less (see the article)? But Google is an innovator, and maybe they can come up with something fair (though fair and DRM seem to be mutually exclusive nowadays...).
Get with the program. You need to jazz up your submission a lot. Your's is much too calm.
If a product is not going to "Kill", "Murder" or "Burninate" the opposition, I'm not listening.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
It looks like Google may have a solution to the problem of indexing video media on the internet; host the content yourself and request the meta-data from the uploader themselves. Then you can easily index the meta-data to make it searchable. It sure beats trying to index any available content scattered across the web with no easy way to extract useful meta-data, but it certainly has the downside that you need to use Google to distribute your video. What if other search engines jump on the bandwagon; we'll have to search all of them to find the media we're looking for, because they won't share their indexes (Which are the valuable part, after all). It could get rather non-customer friendly if we're not careful.
please be sure you own the rights to the works you upload
I think that's going to be the biggest hurdle for this service to overcome. I think this would be a great service for smaller production teams or individuals looking to release their creations (although there are a number of services that already do this I believe). But to me, this new service will be largely deluged with people looking to trade bootleg videos, pr0n, etc, as again almost all the other similar services are.
pending our approval process
so, is it someones job to look through every video when it's uploaded? To catch any copyright infringement. Again, this seems like a real problem for this and any other similar service.
-Teiresias
I always love it when words like "Ecosystem" are used to describe business models. It gives me a chuckle, and I know not to waste my time reading the FA.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I'm sure everyone on Slashdot has one by now, so use it to skip the sign up process.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
When are /. going to start distributing "-1 - Google Sycophantia" mod points?
I, for one, welcome our "we're not evil, but we are a publicly owned corporation, just like all the other fuckers; give it a few years before we turn into another bunch of wankers" overlords.
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
So Google versus Downhill battle.. I wish I could say the folks who brought us Grey Tuesday would win, however common sense tells me that the Googlemoth will overrun them...
Polluting the Internet since 2003...
http://percep
Ahh, Google, the emacs of Web services.
This is Old News. Click on the link for the proof that this story broke 17hrs ago. Come on slashdot, you can do better than this...
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
Great. A source for selling those "home movies".
Although I love the idea, particularly the part about pay videos if you want, the manual verifying of video uploads by some Google lackey isn't seriously cumbersome. I submitted a video yesterday (late afternoon) and it's still not verified 12 hours later. Unless this drastically changes, I can't see this being used to quickly put up new content for your site or anything where time sensitive material is a factor.
The Google Uploader app (https://upload.video.google.com/Google%20Video%20 Uploader%20Installer.exe) is, of course, Windows only.
I wonder how long before someone makes a third party tool to do this on Linux/Mac?
It's alarming how accurately the Google Grid seems to be forming.
This sounds great, but I wouldn't mind Google Image search results that didn't keep returning 404's.
In a recent recruitment video that featured on GoogleBlog the nice lady says Google is all about "ambitious ideas, fast responses, big acheivements" but it seems to me they want to pump out new services as testaments to what the Googlers are capable of and show off their cool attitude..without actually producing a well polished and maintained product.
Who hasn't noticed degradation of Google search results or lots and lots 404's on image search?
I just hope the grid doesn't crumble and burn.
Snow Crash
If your video is too poular, they can charge you for the bandwidth it uses...i wonder if they would warn you first...
http://tech-hawg.blogspot.com
So, using google, I will have to pay to see alien looking paris hilton?
Yahoo Video Search does it free for me!
Nobody has paid for porn, nobody will. Google is bound to fail - for once!
So what does this point to for Google? There might certainly be a market for Indie film distribution via Google. This would dramatically reduce distribution costs and open a whole new market for indie films.
Surely this is about the only category of amateur video that anyone will pay to see...
Not only BoingBoing, but CNet and Yahoo! News as well...
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
Watch me as I steal the semiconductor products from your high street. Just turn on your computer and (double)click a desktop icon. and see an uptodate vdeo stream!!!
Google is the Search King. Don't you think they'll be able to create an automated system for straining out bad submissions (porn or copyright violations)? I mean, even if the the title or description of a video submission itself aren't incriminating enough, the probably have plenty of other methods for getting context about a video. The probability that a violating video already exists on the net is large, so they could make a system to identify a video by general characteristics (obviously a digest-hash would not be appropriate across formats, but I'm sure there are other ways of doing it).
Hey man, he called it an ecosystem...
Killing and eating are implied. Even maggots on rotting flesh!
Will this project be moved out of the Googleplex and into a Biodome?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
https://upload.video.google.com/video_faq.html
# Can I charge for playback of my video?
Yes. Or you can allow users to play your video for free. This is totally up to you and your video distribution goals. As the content owner, you decide whether you'd like to give away your video for free or charge a price that you set for it. If you do charge a price, Google will take a small revenue share to cover some of our costs.
# How is my content protected?
Google takes the security of your content very seriously. We've put a number of measures in place to prevent copying or sharing of your content. For more information on our copyright policies and procedures, please read the Copyright section of this FAQ.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
This might explain their recent fiber-optic buying spree.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
They're breaking into the biggest industry on the net. Porn. First images now video...
How exactly does a person go about finding what videos are available for viewing on Google?
Back in the day, I loved that free adcritic website, what with all of the spec commercials and whatnot available for perusal and download. I imagine this could turn into a depository of marvelous to crappy short films, a next iteration place for all of those 'funny video' clips that propagate across the net.
I think I might actually get around to editing all those films I shot at NYU film school, just to get them published on some level. Thousands of intriguing shorts exist by students and enthusiasts across the earth; it would certainly be neat to have a place where such films can be organized and archived well.
Of course, this could be like ifilm or something else already in existence, but for some reason I intuit this seems to have more intrinsic cohesion. Since google is involved, it makes me feel more confident that all parties will less likely be taken advantage of, I feel like google, although not necessarily the most efficient will be at least reasonable in their monetary sponging of the users, and might actually allow artists a chance to share visions with the rest of the world. Either that, or it will become the most pointless extension of "america's funniest home videos", a terrifying prospect that no doubt drives fear into the heart of any person who has an ounce of class.
Come on Google, I though you had a clue! But NO LINUX SUPPRT and NO OGG SUPPORT?
You suck!
:T:R:A:N:S:
If Google wants to be the best in the future, the Internet is definately the way to go about it. However, requiring that its customers run a particular OS is not what the Internet is about, and in my mind not a healthy business plan for a service that doesn't charge.
Come on Google, what about the rest of us?
The jingle goes...
Googlevision, Googlevision
Video bars
See what the girls look like
in their drawars
Googlevision, Googlevision
what do you see
what the girls look like when they pee
Googlevision, Googlevision
Feelin Fine
Made chash from a feed
in that bar of mine!
1) Allow people to sell their videos through service.
2)...
3) Profit!
In the TOS, if you decide to charge for your google video, they will pay you only up to 70% of gross income. If it costs more to host, they will deduct more. For a free service, it rocks, but as a method for commercial distro, it seems kind of pricey.
Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying. -- Anonymous
Sounds like they're trying to be the cafepress.com of online video distribution. Should be interested.
And wouldn't this last article mean they'll have some competition?
Curiouser and curiouser. Is video delivery the next big thing on the internet?
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
From the TOS:
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
This is great, making it harder to watch TV on the device of your choice - the Broadcast Flag (77 days till lockdown) will seem like a stupid idea now there is competition.4 235&mode=thread Opening Up of the BBC's back catalogue will get things started. But they are banning anyone outside the US from watching all those great Dr.Who back episodes.e ction=feature_films&PHPSESSID=b0292fc08fb009353794 c2240ea8cbb6 licenced B-movie, Charlie Chaplin and 50's Superman Fleischer cartoon collection is a similar great service, but their encoding sucks.
Now Tivo's and PVR's can really take off with RSS enclosed VIDEO AND Film.
Don't forget Ourmedia http://www.ourmedia.org/ which does a similar thing, although they don't have a noporn rule.
The http://technocrat.net/article.pl?sid=05/04/13/225
The Archive.org CC http://www.archive.org/movies/collection.php?coll
Folks always ramp on about how low quality downloads are. A properly ripped DIVX watched on a 16.7M colour hires monitor or projector beats the pants of DVD.
And this will mess with Sony's heads, as they plan an i-tunes for movies but knowing Sony, totally crippled by DRM.
And you can charge for people watching your stuff if you like.
BTW the TOS say no porn.
If I want to watch a television show, which is easier, playing with a Tivo, recording it, tuning in to channel X, or searching for it and downloading it? Also, which is easier typing in a domain name or Googling it?
Google gets lots and lots of hits for people who simply search for a domain by entering the domain name... Why?
This is exactly Google's/search's strength. Ask, and thou shall receive.
1. Shot vid of topless neighbour.
2. Upload to GoogleVideo
3. Profit!
4. Neighbour find video
5. Sues the living shit out of Google
6. Profit!
7. Google shuts down video service
8. Profit!
pr0n, etc
If you RTFA, you'll see that they prohibit pornographic or obscene material.
I have to say it sounds like an extremely interesting twist on the distribution of video content. For me to be able to upload content and distribute it for free is quite amazing. This means they will not only be gaining access to the subscribers or paying customers but also the families etc who are going to use it to share their videos. It benefits everyone. Google gets more impressions to sell advertising on and content producers get an easy and efficient market place/distribution system. Add the advanced searching that is sure to follow and this will be an extremely powerful resource. Of course when they start to put in some pre-roll or instream advertising for the unpaid content their revenues and profit margins will be even higher than they are now.
Go Google Go!
How does Google know it's "video"? Can't I just pipe my own CDs into the audio tracks of a blank MPG2/4 file? Then I can listen to my own music anywhere, over those famously fat Google pipes. This is fair use of content that I legitimately own, even according to the entertainment industry before the Supreme Court. By extension, can't I rename any file "..mp4", and use Google to distribute it? They're not going to watch all these movies, are they?
--
make install -not war
Be careful with the TOS, though. Most of the stuff is the standard Draconian crap (i.e., "we can do whatever we want with your stuff"), but most notable is this bit: "If You have not designated a price for Your Authorized Content and We incur extraordinary costs and expenses in hosting, indexing and displaying Your Authorized Content, we may charge a fee in order to defray these costs." So if you release a popular free video, Google may charge you for the bandwidth? I'll stick with Ourmedia for the free media distribution, thanks.
3. Use of Content. By accepting this Agreement and uploading Your Authorized Content to Google, you are directing and authorizing Google to, and granting Google a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive right and license to, host, cache, route, transmit, store, copy, distribute, perform, display, reformat, excerpt, analyze, and create algorithms based on the Authorized Content in order to (i) host the Authorized Content on Google's servers, (ii) index the Authorized Content; and (iii) display the Authorized Content, in whole or in part in the territory(ies) designated in the Uploading Instructions, in connection with Google products and services now existing or hereafter developed, including without limitation in products developed for syndication. This license gives Google the right to copy, excerpt, distribute and display Your Authorized Content via both streaming and progressive downloading technologies, and to display limited excerpts of Your Authorized Content for no fee to the end user. Google reserves the right to display advertisements in connection with any display of Your Authorized Content. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Google is not required to host, index, or display any Authorized Content uploaded, and may remove or refuse to host, index or display any Authorized Content. Google is not responsible for any loss, theft or damage of any kind to the Authorized Content. Sounds a bit evil to me...
"What types of videos are you accepting?
We accept any type of video content, with these restrictions:
* You must own all necessary rights to the content, including copyrights toboth the video and the audio.
* You must be able to upload the video to us electronically.
* The video must not contain pornographic or obscene material.
The content may be reviewed prior to being made available online. If we cannot use it, we'll let you know."
There's this neat little flash animation called EPIC, about the future of Google. It's been around for a little while now and is eerily accurate. You can find it here: http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/
MacroHard - Boning you in a big way! (TM)
major news will be able to preview and bid for footage. it's about time.
I wonder why Google skipped over the idea of doing this for music distribution? This would be a killer app for me, and I'm sure a lot of other musicians too.
1) Upload MP3 content.
2) Pick price
3) Marketing / advertising / word of mouth
4) User access, pay, download
5) Profit???
Google provides an application (the Google Video Uploader) to upload video content to their servers. As expected, the program is Windows only. So, I guess Google wants your video, as long as you're not a Mac or Linux user. ;-)
Interestingly, all of Google's desktop applications are all Windows only. Given their hiring blitz and their well-advertised work incentives, Google could easily find Mac and Linux programmers, so the lack of support for other platforms must be intended. Other companies can make the argument that the cost is too great, but Google can clearly afford it. So, what exactly is the strategy here?
i.e. One or more folks are in charge of Kids' birthday videos, one or more in charge of original animation, and 10,313 are in charge of the various porn categories.
They are "trained," "paid" based on performance, and are moderated (e.g. if copyrighted works slip through on their watch, they are somehow penalized).
The verification bottleneck opens up significantly without Google's staff of Full Time Employees expanding exponentially.
The Google Network ...
The Google Philosophy.
"Do no evil" (now written as item 6)? The two most evil things that MS does - forced upgrades due to locked-in proprietary formats. 2) continually releasing buggy software.
Ok, so...google has all this stuff in "beta" right now. But with the public gmail "beta" being over a year old now...shouldn't it start working right? Yet some of my most simple filters (like, anything emailed to a particular list) still get applied to the wrong things (like things sent to me, and not that list). And though I'm seeing the "unavailable" message less and less now, I'm still occassionally seeing it...what happened to philosophy #10, "Great just isn't good enough?"
But even better yet...what about philosophy #2: "It's best to do one thing really, really well. Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat." So instead of doing yet another thing, shouldn't some of the public betas come out of beta first?
Speaking of "Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat," how about this financial advice? Or, how about this chat program?
Sounds like Google needs to do some *serious* revamping of their "philosophies." You'd think if they specifically mention 3 things they don't do, they could at least do everything in the world except those 3 things (and hell, they might be doing horoscopes out there somewhere I don't know of). Hey Google - how about ya get what is out there working right, before putting out more public betas?
Anyone remembers the days when Google said how they want to focus on search and search only?
They are certainly not focusing on it so much any more, and are adapting to the market forces. Nice and agile.
Simpy
Markets these days (read post dot-com) are very conservative. The main issue with video distribution is noone is A) sure it will work, and B) there are business models out there *based* on the fact that you can't get the content any where else. (Think Supper Bowl commercial time slots) So you've got the one side that doesn't what to invest in something that has no (we'll say commercialy) proven market and the other end that just has no intrest.
Enter Google
Google starts playing with searching video. Fine. Issue is that all video on TV is copyrighted and 'Fair Use' is not what it used to be. Fine. So someone says, "Hey, lets get people to upload they're own video and we can test with that." Great. The blogger group shifts from photo blogs to video blogs. Google has content. User satisfied the strange need to document the life and times of their gerbil. Everyone is happy. You have eyes. It's a small stretch once you have content to play with management. (And management in a manor that you control, not some big company demands) It's brilliant! They are going to end up with a content base (Dude, now my rock band can distribute mp3's and our killer concert footage) and audience. It's built, the market's there. All the big companies have to do is sign up.
Google is getting big, and I would argue that they are starting to approch the SpiderMan-great-power-great-responsibility dilemma (some may argue we're past that) Our last remaining hope is that the key mentality in leadership that is leading to Google's success is linked the good side of the force. i.e. if evil forces take over the innovation dies. (Still, anyone want to bet on if Google-AOL-TimeWarner exists a few years from now.)
dictionary
captain learning brings you your Word of the Day! (patent pending)
sycophant Audio pronunciation of "sycophantic" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (sk-fnt, sk-)
n.
A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people.
Hi, 1996 called, they want their starry-eyed optimism and wanky neologisms back, if you don't mind.
Pfft.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Wait, you're saying that Google should pay the producer for providing popular video. And the grandparent poster is saying that the producer should pay Google for hosting popular video.
I'm so confused.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I've gotten used to watching movies on the monitor. (I've got a pretty sweet 19" flatscreen, so it's rather easy on the eyes.) I can't go back to the low resolution and blurry edges of a regular television now.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
High Impact Halo story
I was just about to upload a video and this showed up at the top of the page...
.mpg, .mpeg, .avi, .ra, .ram, .mov, .wmv, .asf.
Upload video
Before uploading your video to Google, we prefer that you encode your video files using mpeg-2 or mpeg-4 codecs with mp3 audio (learn more about the preferred file formats). We accept the following file types:
Can you guys please add support for the Theora-Vorbis files soon ? pretty please ?
...and let me eat some pancakes with Google syrup on top of them for breakfast. Then I can finally get out of the 3BD/2BA Google house that I bought on Google Real Estate and head to my job at Google [insert previously independent company name here].
I just hope my mail-order Google bride remembered to fill up the Google car before she went to her Google book club this morning. Damned, bitch. Leaving me with the Google adoption service kids every Thursday morning to be a woman.
Where the hell is my Starbucks coffee?
IronChefMorimoto
"Eventually, users will be able to search, preview, purchase and play videos directly from within Google."
What about us people who live too far to go to their offices?
Technically every service they provide revolves around search though, does it not?
gmail provides powerful search funtions to email, for example.
C17H21NO4
There seem to be a lot of comments suggesting this is a deviation from Googles core focus on search, but the interesting part of the TOS is the reserved rights to:
"reformat, excerpt, analyze, and create algorithms based on the Authorized Content"
To research ways of searching video, and to get the best algorithms you need a lot of video at your disposal, and, more so, you need a lot of video with some sort of meta-data already attached that you can start working out those algorithms from. Ergo, get lots of people to upload videos to you and provide relevant metadata - and you then have a really large base of data you can work from, and, thanks to the fact the video has been contributed voluntarily and in line with the TOS above, video that you have legal rights to mess about with for research purposes.
So maybe search still is at the centre of this one - and the video distribution side of things is a side benefit.
Wow, the /. effect could pointedly suck money directly from people's pockets!
Normally I'm the last one to bring up a platformist issue, but in this case Google's strategy bamboozles me.
Most content-creation happens on the Mac platform, yet Google's video uploading tool is only available for Windows.
How the heck is *that* supposed to support the filmmaker?
As a creative professional I know a truckload of filmmakers, editors and animators. And they use Macs. I don't care why, you don't care why, let's not debate it -- but the point is Macs are the INDUSTRY STANDARD there.
WTF, Google?
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
I think you meant Googlebucks...
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
This is screwy. I can send video by Google mail
without anything more than a web browser. Why would
I need anything more for this new service?
Really? I meant briefs -- how the hell am I going to work at Google [corporation name of your choice] commando, buddy? What sort of office pervert are you? ;-)
IronChefMorimoto
*imagines a new era of amateur porn... smiles*
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
sounds fun!
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
The TV networks won't upload any content without DRM, hence its inclusion by Google. The interesting question is price.
If the networks are stupid they will assume that downloads can only cannibalize their DVD sales. This is a natural assumption. TV series on DVD appear to be a hot commodity recently. The natural resolution to this assumption is that downloads should appear months after DVD release and cost a lot.
If they are smart they will realize that they are actually competing against P2P networks. This means any revenue is better than none. If the networks release decent quality videos immediately at a relatively low cost then they have a chance against P2P alternatives.
I wonder how google will handle the DRM restrictions... In the past google has "tampered" with certain search results, but can you imagine what they are going to have to do when their spider picks up on a "Remove DRM from Google Videos" website (or how about a few thousand of them!)?
I seriously hope that major content providers (e.g. TV stations, movie studios) will not even test the water with this new service, because if they do, they will put an incredible amount of pressure on google to remove links and caches of webpages that explain how to remove DRM restrictions, or where to locate software that does such a thing.
I've got my money on "Google Video" being a flop!
I meants googlebucks coffee. unless you want your briefs to be made of recycled coffee grinds. That'd be great, coffee ground briefs. wash a load of them and drink coffee from the washing machine.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
So, you compute hashes when a video is uploaded. Each video takes about 1 second to process, and then from then on, the hashes should be able to be compared in microseconds, and I'm sure Google will be able to do several thousand comparisons in microseconds using their farm. Thus, 1 second for creating a hash, and a few milliseconds (maybe 1 full second on a slow day) for comparing against several thousand (maybe up to a million) other hashes.
I told them they should distribute video content, then they could collect stuff from throughout the ages, and let everyone rate the stuff.... Now let people select groups they're affiliated with, so you don't get deomcrats liking something and republicans hating it, etc etc. Its just a little bit complex, but not much.
God spoke to me.
AdWords? Picasa? Blogger? Urchin? :)
Sure, you can tack search onto most things...
Simpy
Google can take their DRM and go to hell with it, just like every other DRM pusher. screw em
It looks like indexing will initially be manual, but it'll be interesting to see what sorts of content-based searching and indexing methods Google will end up implementing. For those unfamiliar with it, content-based methods allow for information extraction based on the actual video data, rather than manually-added metadata. Searching google scholar and google web for "content-based video" methods comes up with some interesting results. The current state-of-the-art can do some impressive things, but there's clearly still lots of room for improvement.
Now that I think about it, having uploaders manually index the videos the submit is a fantastic way for Google to bootstrap an automated video indexing system.
One neat project is Sivic & Zisserman's Video Google (no relation to the Google company, I think). They have a demo available where you can search for automatically-extracted objects in a movie. They also show the results of doing things like detecting Bill Murray's tie throughout the movie Groundhog Day.
However, Google does have one caveat in its upload terms: "The video must not contain pornographic or obscene material."
Why would I want to see anyone's home movies that weren't pornographic or obscene? Much less pay for them.
Isn't it great to have large corporations imposing American morality on the rest of the world.
It appears that Google has eliminated the one thing sure to bring about a successful outcome. Imagine if Sony had placed such a restriction on the use of the VHS tape format -- it would have gone the way of quadraphonic sound The Internet just isn't fun anymore!
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
Google nailed down the search thing quite sometime ago...i'm glad that they're expanding their reach. is this new service free?? i'd assume so, but i thought i'd ask.