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Enforced Ads Coming to Flash Video Players
Dominare writes "The BBC is reporting that Adobe is releasing new player software which will allow websites that use their Flash video player (such as YouTube) to force viewers to watch ads before the video they selected will play. 'But the big seller for Adobe is the ability to include in Flash movies so-called digital rights management (DRM) — allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts, or restrict copying. "Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it," James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research said.' This seems to have been timed to coincide with Microsoft's release of their own competitor, Silverlight, to Adobe's dominance of online video."
Suddenly I feel strong urge to support Free Software
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
Damn fucking straight. A similarly sized file in WMV or RM format plays silky smooth, but on Flash it comes out all choppy and pixelated on my older system. A standard for large video aggregation sites is okay, but why does it need to be such a shitty standard?
Adding DRM to off-line viewing of videos is new, but for the typical scenario of online viewing of Flash videos via a Flash player embedded in a HTML page, the ability to force ad viewing is nothing new. It's always been easy to roll a Flash video play that doesn't allow skipping or scrubbing through the video ad, but then enables that feature once the main video begins. Many sites that feature Flash video do exactly that.
Those rose-colored glasses must make it hard to read numbers. In the 60's advertisements made up 9 minutes of every hour (15%). Today advertisements take up 18 minutes of every hour (30%). That's a lot more than it used to be but it's not quite the 33% you say that "advertisers have pushed it way past" and nowhere near the 50% you claim.
Flash is a lot more standard than AVI, WMV, RM, DIVX, MOV and OGG. So what should we be using instead? I've only ever had problems playing Flash content under PPC versions of Linux. Windows, Macs, i86 Linux it's fine. What the hell are you running?
Adobe isn't going to force everyone to watch ads. They are doing exactly what a lot of their customers are asking for. People who are creating their own video casts (merlin mann for example) may want to monetize their videocasts by adding sponsorship to their videos. This allows people to redistribute their content much easier and still guarantee that their sponsors are being seen. Currently, the average video blogger/caster doesn't have a lot of resources for managing this themselves. (adding video to the beginning of the video file) Think about it. A video blogger will be able to change their sponsors without reprocessing their videos. Seems reasonable to me.
Robby Russell
PLANET ARGON
Robby on Rails
This is much ado about nothing. The reason they can make you watch an ad before the video plays is that the Flash format is a virtual machine, not just a video format. This has been possible for as long as Flash has been around, and if YouTube had wanted to do something like this there has been nothing stopping them. It sounds like this product is just a common API or a new content creation UI that doesn't require Flash or Flex.
Mochi Media has been offering a service for ads like this for the past 5 months, but it's being used mostly for casual games.
His point is that Gnash has no restrictions on its features, and could theoretically support features like enabling copying of Flash movies or permitting advertisements to be skipped. The official player will never support that since Adobe is introducing these features specifically in order to prevent bypasses.
~ C.
Umm.... WMV and RM really aren't any better. I mean, regardless of what you think of quality, they're also shitty proprietary formats. How about mpeg4?
Turner Broadcasting only runs cable stations. They include CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, TCM, Court TV, and others. I'm sure if you have cable that you've watched at least CNN a fair amount. They are NOT operating on public airwaves, and if you watch any of these stations there is a contract that you signed that at least implies that you understand it is ad-supported and that is ok with you. That's not to say skipping commercials is stealing like Mr. Kellner says, but you are misinformed and wrong.
It's not going to kill self-made video.
It's just going to kill any service provider stupid enough to try to use this technology.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
"...have even forbidden my 11 year old son to buy CD's and instead come to me if he wants a song. I pick it up with what ever the current download method is. The draconian ways in which the media industry is treating your customers is also rubbing off on their artists. I consider any young band that signs up with a large label as bad and stupid as the record company they go with."
Of course, many new bands are signing up with indie labels that function more as cooperatives than "old school" labels and ensure that they get a signficant portion, if not the lions share, of the profits from singles and album sales. Glad you're training your kid that it's okay to rip them off too.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.