So there you are at this cool in dustry shin dig. As you navigate between the cash bar and the clam dip, you overhear people talking about “new media.”
Hmmm. It would be nice to join in and contribute something intelligent. But do you risk sounding like a digital dufus, not knowing leading edge from bleeding edge technology?
Well, you’ve come to right place for the non-geek’s 4-1-1 on new media.
A quick review
Streaming media. Often confused with downloading, streaming is video or audio data fed over the internet in packets of information to a Real, Windows Media, or Quicktime player.
Right now, audio streams are smoother and more stable than video, due to the re duced amount of bandwidth required. For example, a 10 minute video file would be up to 100 times bigger than ten minutes of audio.
Downloading. Instead of contin uous streaming, downloading cap tures and stores a file from an archive on a server. It could take 20 minutes to down load, versus five seconds to load enough streaming content to start watching.
Some content providers give you the option of streaming or downloading a file. But if it’s original content, chances are you can only stream it. Record companies, for example, don’t want you storing their proprietary stuff on your machine without paying for it (just ask Napster).
DVD and CD-ROM. Everybody knows these are the two viewing formats that will make VHS as obsolete as 8-track tapes.
But which do you choose for your next production? DVD holds up to four hours plus of high quality video. A CD-ROM holds 15 to 20 minutes.
DVD also delivers superior video. The MPEG-2 format of DVD has much more video information (higher data rate) than a Video CD (MPEG-1). More information means a sharper, more detailed picture.
The drawback of both comes when you need to revise or update the video. Mail 5,000 CD-ROM’s and chances are in three weeks there’s something you’ll want to change. Unless the content is set in stone, put it on the web where you can update daily.
MP3. In one of America’s weirdest success stories, a college student nicknamed “Napster” turns a little known digital audio compression format into a way to share music. His hobby becomes a white hot hit and burning controversy. And all because MP3 can squish an audio file to about ten percent of its size, making down loads seem less like waiting in line at the DMV. It works by dumping part of the digital information that your ears won’t miss. What’s left isn’t perfect, yet it sounds pretty good. But MP3 is just the beginning of what compression technology will soon be able to do.
Bandwidth, the big speedbump
In theory, streaming video works great. But with a 56k dial-up modem you get more spurting than streaming.
“A few years ago, it was awfully misguided to think with the current capabilities that streaming media was going to be big,” says Dave Strupp of Digital Solutions. “Frankly, it didn’t work. Few people had fast connection speeds. Even today I hear figures of only 11 to 15 percent with broadband. You can’t build a market based on that.”
Strupp says you need at least an ISDN line, 128k, to get decent streaming video—at least decent for talking heads, about 10 to 12 frames per second. Forget about watching a track meet, because the frame rate can’t keep up with the action. But move up to the 300k range (DSL speed), and you’re in the fast lane.
“We all need to get high speed connections so we can take advantage of this new medium,” says Strupp. “But infrastructure spending has been cut, and we could be into next year before it picks up again.” The good news is that broadband prices are coming down. According to Strupp, you can get a T-1 line now for $800 a month, about half what it was a few years ago.
If streaming video’s not ready for prime time, who’s watching?
Because high speed broadband is pretty much a given at corporate offices, business is putting a big toe into the video stream to address a number of corporate objectives.
“I’ve got more people calling us about streaming now,” says Shane King, President of three squared, inc. “Stream ing video was a tough sell when the mar ket didn’t know what it was all about and wasn’t ready for it. So we re-focused on taking their traditional content, like cor porate communications and training, and showing them how to upgrade it and make it more efficient content for delivering over the internet.”
Today’s specials on the new media menu
VIRTUAL CORPORATE MEETINGS.
One of the hot areas in streaming is in teractivity. Mark Sanchez, Streaming Media Ma na ger at Crawford Commu ni c a tions, produces in teractive-driven events combining Power Point synchro niza tion, chat, email, and polling (posing a question through the interface, then letting “attendees” answer by hitting a submit button).
Sanchez built all of that into an eight hour live financial conference produced for shareholders of a large company. “As the presenter at the live location was switching PowerPoint graphics, I was here switching them on the net, so people could follow along.”
Sanchez and his team created a special viewer just for the event. “Because our minimum requirements were people with 28.8 modems, we decided to make it audio with graphics, which were the Power Point slides, along with a picture of the person talking.”
Positive feedback from the mara thon webcast exceeded expectations of both Sanchez and the client. “There were about 500 people watching on the internet, plus the live attendees, and people just loved it. They didn’t have to travel to attend the conference.”
MARKETING RESEARCH. Airlines sell millions of dollars in tickets to clients and agency people who barnstorm to several different cities, just to sit in dark rooms and eavesdrop on consumers confessing their innermost feelings about laundry detergent.
Today, you can watch umpteen focus group sessions in real time without leaving your desk. While this does nothing for Delta Air Lines’ stock, most clients love it.
The company that created the niche is ActiveGroup of Norcross. They claim to have streamed more than 6,500 live hours of events for over 75 Fortune 500 companies. ActiveGroup is plugged in to focus group facilities around the United States, Canada, England and Mexico.
“We’ve been able to save clients many, many thousands of dollars as well as time away from the office,” says ActiveGroup VP Tom Fuller.
“The advantage we have in stream ing focus groups is that they’re talking heads, so you don’t get the streaking that goes with action sequences. How ever, at 56k, you’re not going to get a pic ture. You’ll get only sound of the event.”
Client and agency folks can still in dulge in the kind of chatting that goes on behind those mirrored windows. “We created a virtual client lounge as part of our normal interface,” said Fuller. “It’s a wrapper around the video providing chat rooms and other functionality that adds to your viewing experience.”
Streaming a two hour focus group begins at around $500, says Fuller: “For that $500, we also archive the event for 30 days, so you don’t even have to watch it live. We also burn a CD of the session and send it to our primary client contact.”
PROPRIETARY ENTERTAINMENT EVENTS. One of the first big streaming projects Crawford did was about five years ago for a Kevin Costner movie. “We had live video of a battle scene being filmed while it was streamed over the internet,” recalls Pat Webber, Manager of Satellite Services.
“We brought the signal by satellite from the West Coast to Crawford. Costner would direct part of the battle scene while the film cameras rolled, then stop and discuss the scene with a live internet audience. The last thing he said was, ’I’ll see ’ya at the movies.’”
For Cox Cable, Crawford streamed live shows from Disney’s Animal King dom, The Smithsonian, and Cirque de Soleil. In stead of being seen by home viewers, they were piped exclusively into schools in Cox markets. The objective: to generate awareness of the broad band service that Cox Cable provides to schools at no cost.
ONLINE TRAINING. Three squared is a streaming media production company founded a few years ago by former iXL employees. Working out of a no frills warehouse space in Midtown, three squared survived the dotcom crunch with corporate work. One of the newest projects they have on their plate is com puter based training for a local property company.
“Instead of just a trainer standing there with a PowerPoint presentation, you’ll be able to see it on-demand on the corporate intranet,” says King. “You’ll also have the interactive benefit of ac cessing the trainer.”
King is especially jazzed about building a continuing legal education program for the technology section of the Georgia Bar. “It will help lawyers get their yearly training to keep their licenses. They’ll be able to pull stuff down on their compu ter and not have to take time to go sit at some conference across town.”
Not all three squared video streams are educational. Recent live events include a Beach Boys concert for Makita, the first annual Horizon Awards for the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and the Atlanta Business Hall of Fame at Turner Field.
Early on, three squared got jiggy with LaFace Records (before they were acquired by Arista). They built laface.com, then captured album release parties for the label’s artists, encoding and delivering them over the web.
Ad approvals. The technical wizards at Crawford are busy building a virtual editing suite. Clients and agency folks will be able to monitor edit sessions in real time from the office or home. The interface will allow chat back and forth with the editor.
Crawford is already using web based technology for approvals of work in progress. They encode a spot or segment and place it on a secured area of the web where users can view and ap prove it at their convenience.
DVD and CD-ROM productions. “In the past year, our CD business has picked up,” reports Rob Andres of Digi tal Market ing & Media. “A lot of the reason is deadlines. Clients have a pretty short time to get their content together. I’ve crunched up to 15 minutes of video on a regular CD. And it takes a long time to create 15 minutes worth of content. Filling up a DVD is a big project.”
Leo Ticheli, President of Leo Ticheli Productions (Birmingham based, but with an Atlanta office and edit suite), likes DVD because “it’s a lot more plug and play. If a CD-ROM will be played from laptops, we have to get one from the client and keep testing it until we de ter mine the highest video level the ma chine will play. With DVD, it just plays. It’s also interchangeable from computer to a DVD player.”
MP3 DELIVERY OF RADIO DUBS. Next time you finish a radio spot, forget dubbing and shipping. Just do some en co ding and clicking. That is, turn those files into MP3’s and email them to stations. Once they hit the air, nobody can tell the difference. Pro duction Directors at major Atlanta stations report they now receive up to 40% of their spots on MP3, with the percentage growing all the time.
HIGH DEFINITION VIDEO. Tele vision is an old medium that’s about to be born again, thanks to the digital wunderkind known as high definition.
Ticheli is one director who’s high on high def. He expects “most everything we shoot from now on” will be with their HD camera.
“We see the jobs we formerly did on 16mm disappearing altogether. The only real competitor to high def would be 35mm. In our blind tests, everyone preferred the high def images, even on a standard definition monitor,” says Ticheli. “I’ve never seen anything to rival the significance of this.”
Ticheli believes high def can also lower costs. “I can save my clients from $5,000 to $10,000 per shoot day using high def in stead of 35mm. Even corporate clients will benefit. They’ll be spen d ing tape bud gets and getting the highest quality available.”
Not everyone is banking on high def just yet. Joseph Tucker, Information Tech nologies Manager at VTA, says “we’re not investing a lot of money right now, be cause we don’t see demand growing like we thought it would.” Still, VTA is ready when high def hits. Tucker reports the company has installed high definition telecine trans fer, cameras, and edi ting capabilities.
What’s next?
INTERNET TWO. “Internet 2 will not only be a larger system of pipes to handle the in creased bandwidth requirements, but it’s a new way of addressing,” says Jeff Blau of Digital Marketing and Media. This two way, fiber optic superhighway will enable, among other things, audio better than CD quality. Musicians can jam in different cities, or on distance continents, and be recorded in real time. Blau believes we’re about 18 months to two years away from Internet 2.
Short for third generation wireless services, 3G enables reception of video and audio in real time on wireless devices. It’s all the rage in techno-hip Japan. But before you can watch the Super Bowl on your Palm or PDA, Uncle Sam has to do some shuffling of U.S. spectrums to find enough space for 3G.
MPEG-4. Being touted as the “MP3 of the video world,” MPEG-4 will be a magic wand for content creation. You’ll be able to put together an entire presentation in one module that contains any number of different elements, then stream it.
“The compression is so good. I think we’ll end up with MPEG-4 as the universal media player over Real and Windows,” says Strupp. “You’ll start to see implementations this fall, and 2002 will be the big year.”
DIVX is a new video compression software based on MPEG-4. It one ups DVD by enabling high quality at lower bandwidths. Early adopters see it as the ultimate home video format. Imagine watching “Titanic” on a mammoth screen with full fidelity stereo, all from a single CD-ROM.
Streaming high def video. “I think the technology will follow along quickly when broadband is widespread,” offers Sanchez. “AT&T and others are looking at a set-top box to deliver streaming media at 1.5 to 3 Megs (enough for HDTV). 2004 has been marked as when we’ll be light years ahead because people will be more connected by broadband.”
When that happens, say Strupp, “it won’t be just 500 channels, it’ll be my chan nel. If I want to see all the episodes every made of a particular TV series, I’ll have that capability.”
Convergence, the holy grail of new media. True believers say the time is near when TV and the internet become one incredible, interactive media nirvana. And while we may not be zooming over the connector in sport utility flying sau cers, it will definitely be a “Jetsons” life style when you kick back with the tube.
Strupp envisions interactive possi bi lities that people over 40 can’t imagine. “It’ll be these kids who are doing video games, developing a hybrid form of entertainment that’s light years re moved from sitting on the couch and passively watching.”
The new media hype or hope questions still remain. Nothing is yet writ in stone. If hope springs eternal, and hype is short-lived, only time will tell which new media will become a way of life.