Web users prefer professional quality online videos than user generated content, according to a survey released Monday.

Burlington, Mass.-based Burst Media, a digital media buyer, found that news clips were most popular form of video on the Web among users at 44 percent. Music videos were next with 37.5 percent and comedy videos were next with 35.5 percent. User generated videos ranked near the bottom at 15.4 percent.

According to Burst's survey 72.1 percent of respondents have viewed online videos. And while online video might seem more appealing to younger Web users, 58.6 percent of respondents 65 years and older reported having watched videos online.

Burst's survey was conducted over the Internet in December among 2,600 Web users 18 years or older. (Boston Business Journal)

So don't waste your time trying to produce your own video...get it done professionally by Ipermedia!

Posted by The Age

Television sets capable of directly accessing news, weather details, stock quotes and, eventually, on-demand video content from the internet will start hitting the Australian market as early as this year. The content will run as "widgets" alongside regular TV shows and poses a significant threat to established free-to-air and pay TV broadcasters, which already see the internet as a way for viewers to bypass their networks.

Samsung said it was aiming to start offering the internet-enabled television sets locally by the end of this year or in the first quarter of next year at the latest. Most other big TV manufacturers including Sony, Philips, Panasonic and LG have shown off similar models overseas but would not comment on their launch plans for Australia. Today, the internet can only be accessed on a television set through external hardware such as a games console or computer, such as the Apple TV.

"Your TV is becoming a computer entertainment hub - so it's not just for TV viewing," Samsung Australia senior product manager Evan Manolis said. "[Initially] you'll be able to have stock, news, sports and weather information streamed on your LCD or plasma."

The widgets could be switched on or off and positioned on the screen by the user but they would appear as a layer on top of the program, as is the case with the news tickers used on shows such as Seven's Sunrise.

But Manolis said the platform would evolve next year to including the ability to surf the web freely and access music and video content provided by a local content provider such as Yahoo7 or Ninemsn. Last month, chipmaker Intel announced a partnership with Yahoo to develop an internet TV platform called The Widget Channel, which will offer access to tools such as photo sharing site Flickr directly from the TV. The first manufacturer to add internet connectivity to television sets was Sony with its BRAVIA Internet Video Link product. This is different to newer iterations in that, rather than being built into the TV set itself, the internet feature is added through a separate adaptor.

In the US, Sony recently went into partnership with Amazon to allow Internet Video Link owners to stream movies and television shows directly to their TV sets. Paul Colley, Sony Australia's technology communications manager, said he could not comment on when the Internet Video Link would be available in Australia. He noted that the PlayStation 3 could already access websites and video content from YouTube.

Next year, Sony will release the PlayTV PS3 add-on in Australia, which allows people to watch and record TV shows through the console.

"The TV will continue to become the hub of our digital entertainment experience," Colley said.

"We will see our habits transition from watching internet entertainment on the PC to watching it on the TV. This will create a more intense experience for the consumer given that the TV is generally at the centre of our entertainment environment."

By Asher Moses

Once you've had the joys of solid state shooting and production, with formats such as P2 and XDCAMEX, its hard to imagine ever going back to tape. This is not to say that solid state doesn't come without its drawbacks: no shelfable master, re-wrapping processes, short record times are all tangible workflow concerns. But the advantages - speed, efficiency, on-set clip review - for the most part outweigh the drawbacks. Going further, the real advantage to be embraced is metadata tagging and media management. It's here that solid-state steps into a realm of its own.

Final Cut Pro has its log and transfer system for managing solid-state files which, whilst rather rudimentary, works reasonably well. Adobe's Premiere Pro CS4 goes much further with a comprehensive system for metadata and solid-state file management built into a dedicated browser inside the GUI. But there has for some time also been a software tool floating around deserving much more attention than it attracted.

Sony's decision to use the MP4 wrapper for its MPEG-2 based XDCAMEX essence often comes under fire from critics but the criticism is largely unjustified. MP4 is an open format wrapper, highly flexible and not proprietary. Many mistakenly associate the *.mp4 suffix with low-quality, high-compression H.264 codec files since this is where the MP4 wrapper is most commonly seen. But MP4 is a much more versatile wrapper than many realize. The only real issue is that so far Sony is the only company to use MP4 as a camera recording format wrapper.

In light of this, what Sony was always going to need to complete the XDCAMEX MP4 workflow for the EX1 and EX3 cameras was a dedicated software browser for managing the files into the NLE environment.

No sooner was the EX1 camera on the market than the XDCAMEX browser software was released. Sony already had a similar browser for its optical disc format, XDCAM and indeed the XDCAM browser, designed to work with the MXF format their shoulder mounted XDCAM cameras use, could import and rewrap XDCAMEX MP4 files. But the XDCAM browser was still not optimized for or focused on solid state XDCAMEX so a different and more dedicated application was released.

(Although, that said, the differences between the two browser apps have caused much confusion among users and indeed the decision to call the two formats themselves-- XDCAM and XDCAMEX-- names that are almost interchangeable, was far from smart).

The first version of the XDCAMEX browser had the capability to browse, tag, and import XDCAMEX media. But it still seemed a very bare bones tool. What seemed to slip under the radar more recently however has been a new release of the browser to version 2. The new release now possesses a very useful toolset for solid state production and makes the application much broader in scope.

The XDCAMEX browser will most often be used to re-wrap the MP4 format to more NLE wrappers such as MOV or MXF but it would be a mistake to think this is the extent of purpose for the browser. The browser can certainly rewrap the MP4 to MXF which will suit many NLEs such as Avid and Vegas, but If you're using Premiere Pro you don't need rewrapping at all as Premiere will read and import the MP4 files natively. If you're using FCP by contrast you'll be forced to re-wrap the files to MOV which the XDCAMEX browser can't do. But neither of these scenarios rules out the usefulness of the XDCAMEX browser. Its real power lies in markup, management and on-set file wrangling rather than just re-wrapping; a process which can be handled elsewhere if need be.

XDCAM Browser overview

The browser sees the XDCAMEX media direct on the SxS cards and provides a comprehensive set of tools for the mark up of that media. Clips can be renamed, annotated with descriptions and notes, in and out points can be set and new independent subclips or trimmed clips can be generated from the originals.

All the metadata generated from the Browser is embedded in the clip and viewable in any NLE capable of reading the data (which is virtually any pro NLE) The XDCAMEX browser also allows for the thumbnail image to be nominated to better visually indicate the content of the clip.

Particular to the XDCAM and XDCAMEX formats is the use of essence markers which are essentially time based metadata flags inserted in the clip. These clips can be inserted to mark particular moments, lines of dialogue or any other cue point the camera operator or editor may want. The essence markers can be viewed in the clip in any NLE which supports essence markers. Sony's own Vegas NLE (as you would expect) has particularly superb support for XDCAM and XDCAMEX formats including essence markers. The XDCAMEX browser application allows for essence markers to be viewed and inserted and thus provides a perfect middle ground for markup between camera and post.

XDCAM Browser tagging

All these resources for marking-up clips ready for the edit environment is well and good but the XDCAMEX browser also serves a number of production, rather than post production purposes. Primary among these is on-set file wrangling. The rise of solid-state tapeless shooting has seen a subsequent reinvention of the role we might traditionally have known as the clapper-loader. Where once the responsibility of the CL was the management of film stock, reels, salting and labeling, the new Clapper Loader in the digital age serves the role of data wrangler, responsible for importing files to a laptop on-set, clearing the cards ready to shoot again, and the digital labeling and management of the rushes. It's to this role that the XDCAMEX browser is perfectly suited.

Sony has done very well to maintain a succinct efficiency of processing to match the fast 1/4 real-time importing of XDCAMEX files. Even on a busy set the browser makes it very easy to not only copy the files from the SxS cards to hard drive but also to quickly mark good takes and bad ones, add shot info and assign essence markers with a few keystrokes.

As a particularly useful feature, the new version 2 has added the capability to export compressed rushes from the master MP4 files. With an efficient 2-click batch processing mechanism, the browser can export the files to a variety of formats for end-of-day rushes in H.264 or WMV as well as DV. This export to DV also means the XDCAMEX browser can serve as a very effective bath-processing tool for creating off-line files at SD res and DV compression.

What's missing however is the capability to export to QuickTime, which will frustrate the QuickTime environment of Final Cut Pro. I suspect this option is missing due to licensing issues but it's one many editors would hope Sony will address in the future.

The XDCAMEX browser is an application arguably under exploited by those working with solid-state. This new version adds a good set of improvements and functions that position the browser as much more than post-production importer and more in line as a powerful production data management system.

The browser can be downloaded free from
http://www.sony.ca/xdcamex/software.htm

About the Author:
Mike Jones is a digital media producer, author, educator from Sydney, Australia. He has a diverse background across all areas of media production including film, video, TV, journalism, photography, music and on-line projects. Mike is the author of three books and more than 200 published essays, articles and reviews covering all aspects of cinematic form, technology and culture. Mike is currently Head of Technological Arts at the International Film School Sydney