anything media

Several months ago I sat in on a presentation by a representative from imediasee.com given to a bunch of local “professional” videographers about how these videographers had to use imediasee’s state of the art streaming (and proprietary) services to deliver high quality content for marketing to potential clients and delivering online content to clients. I sat there biting my tongue for most of the presentation for two (make that three… his PowerPoint was by far the WORST PowerPoint presentation I had ever seen… can you say 10pt type in a rectangular room that was at least 50′ deep with people) reasons. One, having done a ton of research on streaming services/technologies for a project in my former job, I knew that much of what he was feeding these uninformed observers was half truths that sounded REALLY amazing and positioned them as the only way they could provide quality service to their potential clients and clients. BUNKO! What he was saying when asked, “Are you the only guys doing this?” was “Yes” but what the casual observer didn’t hear him thinking was “at least with the code we’ve written… there are others out there that provide high quality streaming also for extortion level pricing, but they are not using our specific code to do it so I can say yes and make you think I’m your only source.” Five years ago when I was heavy into research on streaming technologies, there were a number of major players (Akamai for one, NineSystems -now acquired by Akamai for good reason-, and several others) already delivering exceptional quality.

The second reason I was livid during his presentation was the lack of responsibility upon those hosting the conference to provide an alternative viewpoint. The group that was gathered was an association who’s purpose is not only networking but also helping provide relevant and accurate info to it’s members about trends and developing technologies. The glaring elephant in the room that was never addressed was the effect services like YouTube would have on folks like imediasee and other extortion priced services. The Blair Witch Project ushered in a new era in videography. The grassroots, handheld look became a very popular format and one many shows including the highly popular Battlestar Galactica have perfected. Add to that the proliferation of YouTube (which in October was the number two site used for search on the Internet… Google 1 and YouTube second… for ANY search… do you know how huge that is?) into everyday life and you have an enormous issue developing for videographers who make a living with pristine video quality and techniques.

Now, with the recent YouTube upgrades including a wide format player and the enabling of HD content the high dollar streaming providers had better lookout. Before I would have chosen to place my video marketing videos on YouTube just for their gargantuan audience, but now, as a videographer I will definitely place all my marketing videos on YouTube for the simple reason I can get great quality and have my videos before millions of eyes rather than just the eyes who happen to hit some proprietary site which I have to pay big bucks to use.