Digital Media Galaxy

Last Thursday evening, the folks at Creative Planet’s Digital Production Buzz interviewed William Henshall (a photographer/videography) and Signiant’s Tom Ohanian.

Each week Creative Planet’s Digital Production BuZZ keeps listeners in touch with trends and technologies, people and practices in order to keep their audeince up to date with digital production, postproduction and evolving distribution opportunities.

You can download Creative Planet’s interview with Tom Ohanian here.

 

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A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of presenting at the Boston Avid Users Group, held at National Video Boston. It was great to see many of the colleagues that I worked with at Avid and also to meet new members. The topic of discussion was “Accelerating Avid-to-Avid Transfers” which showcased the Signiant-enabled Avid Transfer Manager integration that we’ve completed. Directly from the Avid interface, the user can initiate a transfer manager send and that content is then secured and WAN-accelerated to its destination. Meanwhile, the Signiant administrator can log into the Signiant central manager (see screenshot), see all the transfers, and interact with those transfers by adjusting their network bandwidth utilization to get content to its destination when it needs to be there.

After the presentation, there were a lot of great questions so it’s clear that moving digital media content over networks is of concern and that, if anything, being part of the digital media supply chain whether you’re an editor, graphics designer, sound mixer, etc. will continue to place demands on working in distributed, collaborative environments.

But, of course, because it was an Avid event, prior to my formal Signiant presentation, I told a few stories about the early days at Avid (I was employee #8). While preparing for the event, I had done some rummaging through my Avid archives and started off the night by playing back what I believe is the earliest known video of “The Avid/1 Editing System”. This was done in August 1987 and prior to the system being given its formal name: “The Avid/1 Media Composer” (that came much later, in 1989). The video that you see below is the early prototype that ran on an Apollo workstation. Notice that the editing model is quite different than the eventual source/record model that defined the product in its first release. In this video, however, the filmstrip model is much more similar to early Quantel products. In any case, enjoy. It’s a piece of digital nonlinear editing history.

You can also find the video on YouTube. May the force be with you.

 

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Interesting question but isn’t the question much bigger than this little skirmish in the Digital Media Revolution and isn’t the cable operator that doesn’t respond in a timely manner just helping the media companies regain turf?

How people consume content is changing …

Just last Sunday morning, I sat on the couch with my two kids with “some” TV show on (I really don’t remember what show and I am in tune to what they watch). I was able to steal my kids’ attention away from the big tube to old Underdog cartoons on my iPhone – score one for YouTube vs. transitional viewing habits. Why? Well, because, I was able to watch what I want when I wanted it without having to move.

Just this week I was at a business dinner and the topic turned to Boston Sports (after all this is the “Golden Era of Boston Sports” or the good old days as our grandparents used to say). Well we brought up Fitzy from www.townienews.com (rated M for maturity) since many of the people were from out of town and he represents the stereotypically Boston fan. To the joy of everyone at the table, I was again able to access Fitzy videos on YouTube. Score two for YouTube.

Why is this relevant – well, people are going to get paid – whether it is pay-per-view / download, ad supported viewing, product placements, subscription, etc. In order to create high value content, there needs to be a business model in place to support it, that is, an undeniable truth. The difference is – people want to consume content on their own terms and not be held hostage to the old distribution models.

So – if the cable companies or any of the other traditional delivery companies do not want to respond to the consumers’ demands, they are going to become just a dumb broadband pipe. Imagine the impact on your stock value if you strip out the revenue associated with the delivery of high value content and just become a commodity connectivity company. This is the precise reason that Verizon is investing so heavily in FIOS. This trend has a name “over the top”, where Media companies and other upstart Video/Content aggregation portals are able to bypass the content middlemen (read: cable and satellite providers) and deliver their content right to the consumer.

What does this enable them to do? Since cable got a foothold in our homes in the 1970s, media companies have had to share their advertising revenue with the cable operators. If you are sitting in the board room of a broadcaster, this was a necessary but unholy alliance. You were basically forced to share your revenue with the cable company because they provided the entry into the home.

Since broadcasters controlled ad rates since the days of Sarnoff and radio, they did not like this sharing model. Fast forward to October 6, 2006 and Google buys YouTube — wow $1.65B for a cute little video portal. The reverberation you hear today is the tremors that were heard in the board rooms of both the broadcasters and cable operators. Why? Because Google is attempting to muscle their way into their unholy alliance and do what it has done for Internet advertising (projected to be a $40b market this year WW) to every form of advertising worldwide (projected to be a $430b market this year). Google’s intention to capture market share away from the broadcaster/cable alliance is built into their $639 share price and imagine what will happen to the share prices of broadcasters and cable companies if Google succeeds in controlling ad rates and forces itself onto the content providers as their new partners?So what is going on is the Digital Media Revolution and there are at least 3 camps (I have not mentioned Apple, Tivo, Cisco, Microsoft yet and they all want to be heard from and to get their fair share of the pie) all vying to control how content is consumed and ultimately how we pay for it. Is all lost for the broadcasters? Well, no. Actually, the “Interweb” has armed the content providers with a weapon against their unholy “partners”. NBC has two weapons in this revolution - Hulu and NBCDirect – both aimed at delivering their content to the consumer without having to share revenue – either PPV or Ad generated with their “partners”. If content truly is King, then these two services are the queens or at least the Rooks and Knights.

So, if your cable company wants to send you their 800 number so you can cancel your service, they are merely setting themselves up to be just like one of the many failed dot-com companies of the late 1990s (anyone remember Pets.com?). You will find another way to get the content you want, when you want it on the device you want to view it on. The revolution is ongoing and if you prefer Fox Business over CNBC or you demand both - you will be able to consume them on your own terms. There are some very powerful companies with their eyes on dominating the media and entertainment markets - and thus ad revenue. All they have to do is meet your terms.

BusinessWeek’s Olga Kharif wrote a story today about retailers being fined for failing to post special labels on their analog-only TVs to notify consumers that, come next year, their TVs will stop working.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a non-event! People’s appetite for larger and cooler flat panels will continue as prices continue to fall and new features are added. Just look at Craigslist to see all the 42″ plasmas for sale with the comment “upgraded to a bigger set”. Look at all the CRT sets that people are begging others to take.

Strong sales of new TVs have nothing to do with the FCC’s magic date of 2/19/09. This problem will get solved by the cable providers (and to a lesser degree by IPTV and SAT providers). In fact - no one could be happier about this problem than the cable companies! Why? Well, two reasons…

1) Analog channels are sucking up valuable cable spectrum! The cable companies only offer analog channels because they are required to - based on legacy contracts that they made with the individual towns years ago. Each analog channel consumes 6 Mhz of bandwidth, whereas you can fit around 10 channels in the same bandwidth using Quadrangle Amplitude Modulation (QAM). Why is this important? More bandwidth for the cable companies means more channels, more phone services, faster data rates. There are approximately 78 channels of analog that now can be replaced with 780 (yes 780 channels of digital) or some smaller number of HD channels. The cable companies have been dying to orphan Granny and her old analog TV set and rent her a cable box for $10 per month and overwhelm her with new tiers of service. The only thing that has been preventing her from doing so - the FCC and the local cable commission. Well, now, the FCC has given them the license and the cable companies can’t wait!

2) With approximately 70% penetration of the 111 million US households - cable and SAT are looking for a catalyst for the rest of the market to buy their services. But people act for two reason: fear and greed. HDTV is one. After years of admiring my DLP, my father-in-law called to get me to install his 50″ plasma above the mantle in his retirement pad. We have crossed some chasm. Greed - check. Granny fears that Alex Trebeck, Katie Couric and that nice Regis guy with that perky girl could be leaving their lives soon. Well — here comes the bombardment of ads on how big cable or SAT company can make the world safe again and make sure that your friends enter your house every day (all for the low introductory price of $29.99 per month). Fear - check.

Will there be lawsuits, of course. Like soldiers holding out on an island at the end of WWII - there will be people that feel the public trust has been violated. Why should they have to go to their closest big box store and shell out $19.95 for a converter to extend the life of that 1982 Sylvania set? But ultimately, this will get all get sorted out. Why, because there is lots of money in it.

Let’s just hope Granny gets taken care of and that the lawyers don’t get too much of it.

Customers and prospects keep asking the question…Does Digital Media Distribution helps the Media and Entertainment industry go green? You’re damn right it does. Tapes, dubbing, electricity, couriers (unless they’re on bicycles), traffic, exhaust, more tapes, DVDs, you know stuff that winds up in landfills….packages, bubble wrap, those disgusting packing peanuts that wind up everywhere…

Put a fork in it. Put digital media on networks. Move that content around. Schedule it and get it to where it needs to be. We have a customer who we spoke to yesterday who said that they needed to get a half-gig file from LA to Santa Monica and to a really creative guy who works out of his house. No gas, no traffic, no crazy lost productivity time. Cable modem, baby, open Internet!

WAN-accelerated software that secures and maximizes that open Internet connection. Voila! Happy customer, happier environment.

Paul Kedrosky has a post on the Fox Business/CNBC showdown (or as he calls it “smackdown”) that sets the stage nicely for what should be an interesting storyline heading into 2008 as major networks figure out how to capitalize on their digital media assets.

Whether or not Fox or CNBC becomes the first to put live, free, and streaming video on the web, there is an underlying thought that I think all of this is prefaced on. And that is that people want choice: choice of what content they’re going to watch, where they’re going to watch it, and when they’re going to watch it. And sites like YouTube only force us to understand that “choice” isn’t just the notion of programs online. The bottom line is that these “channels” enable you to see content from people who, for the most part, have no chance in hell of ever being on “broadcast television”. And what about the sheer nature of video on the web serving as either a fix for what ails you or research for something you’re working on? Wanna see close-ups of cataract eye operations? Yep, they’re right there. Wanna give your kid a quick introduction to Alvin and the Chipmunks? Yep, those frenetic furries are there too.

There was a point not too long ago when I watched Geoffrey Rush’s Oscar® winning performance in the 1996 film, “Shine”. I had seen the film when it first came out but watching the film again made me seek out “The Rach”, which for those of you who’ve seen the film know that this refers to Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3—third movement. For a week or so, I was intensely interested in seeing as many performances of this piece. And “in the past”—oh you know—a year or so ago—I’d have gone to the library and hoped that there, in a fat chance, there would be an old, tired VHS tape of a performance. But, naturally, I didn’t do that. Instead, I went to that beautiful World Wide Web of interconnected computers and found some amazing performances, one of which is the unbelievable Horowitz who doesn’t even look as if he’s broken a sweat after 15 minutes and 13 seconds of playing.

The point: I entertained myself, found as much as I could handle and did it without turning on “the television” once. For that need, that Internet connection was beautiful….

And to Kedrosky’s point, would I have put up with ad-supported? Did it have to be free for me to partake? All I can say is that when you want to find something that’s meaningful to you, and immerse yourself in that subject, as long as it’s not an egregiously large output (money, banner ads, etc.), you’ll do it.

Listen in as NBC Universal’s Nader Kazemi, Deployment Manager for Digital Media Delivery, explains the challenges he faced before having Signiant in place and how Signiant solved his problems. It’s less than 10 minutes long and worth the listen! Nader specifically discusses having:

• A globally distributed environment with high latency

• Many different workflows with a number of variations, requirements

• The need for a central management of aggregated systems

 

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In this episode of the Digital Media Galaxy podcast, Tom Ohanian and Tony Lapolito discuss what’s been happening at Signiant these last few months. The pair discuss the recent success of IBC and Tom offers the details of a couple of new Signiant customers and the problems that Signiant solved. The two also dish on ravioli in Italy…you’ll have to listen in!

We hope you enjoy this podcast. If you have any comments or feedback, please email editor@digitalmediagalaxy.com.

 

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