Has consumer cloud-based editing arrived?
Recently I was sent a link to an article about JayCut.com. Because I work for a publicly traded company that develops non-linear editors of both the executable and cloud-based kind, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to get into the specifics of any vendor’s software design or business model. Anyone who saw Avid’s web-based editing demo at NAB or last May’s Editors Lounge has seen Avid’s vision of what editing in the cloud can be.
Long before taking up NLE design as a vocation I was enamored with the idea true “online” editing. Years ago I was a fan of JumpCut — the online editor eventually bought, then shuttered by Yahoo!
JayCut's UI is similar to those of consumer-facing online editors before it. Is its fate going to be similar too?
If Yahoo! couldn’t jump start JumpCut, what would make a someone attempt a consumer-facing web-based NLE again? The world has changed a lot since 2006 when I first encountered JumpCut. Here are just a few of the shifts that might make a consumer-facing NLE viable.
- Smart phones are the new camcorder. Nearly everyone under 35 has a phone capable of recording video. Assuming an unlimited data plan, sending even large files to the cloud is a lot easier than waiting to get home and tethering the phone to a PC to download videos. (JayCut can only do this from Android phones currently.)
- Facebook and YouTube are the de facto publishing platforms of the Millennials. They don’t make DVDs. They don’t even do email. If they want to edit their video, they will want to do it where their video lives.
- Cisco with its Flip cameras and other online players are interested in consumer video to drive traffic and revenue. Linksys + Flip = Lots of Cisco hardware being sold to ISPs.
Unlike JumpCut, JayCut is not a pure consumer play. It offering includes video distribution software and services for business, differentiating itself from Brightcove somewhat as a tool for online collaboration. (Mashups with a more adult-sounding name.)
Also entering this space is Kaltura.com/.org — an open source online video editing and distribution platform with a nifty WordPress plug-in to boot. Kaltura will host your applications and content, and also allows for DIY on your own server. The Kaltura player also allows for collaboration. Blog admins can set permissions for user to add, comment, and edit videos embedded in a blog post.
Perhaps these tools are still ahead of their time. But if not 2010, when?
The Web isn’t dead, browsers just suck
I spent a good part of the weekend reading up on Chris “Long Tail” Anderson‘s obituary for openness, Wired Magazine’s The Web is Dead. The article and its sidebars are a pretty dense read, but well worth it. Once again Anderson has done what he does best. He’s garnered a lot of attention making an apparently shocking claim that’s really not that shocking at all. “The Web is Dead” is a far better attention grabber than his actual thesis that Web browsers just plain suck on mobile devices.
Specialized devices, with hardware limits (screen size, lack of mouse/keyboard, etc) require specialized apps. They also tend to come with billing relationships built-in, so this is an opportunity to reset assumptions about what consumers will or will not pay for. No surprise that content producers are flocking to apps, a greenfield opportunity to find a more sustainable model for digital content.
The above is an Anderson quote from what I found to be the most interesting part of the multi-article feature, the robust debate among Anderson, Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle. It sums up the two key issues quite nicely. The browser-based Internet is challenged by the poor usability of the browser interface on mobile devices, and large content providers have failed to develop a sustainable business model for delivering high quality content over the Web.
Anderson believes the open Web is in peril because media giants like his magazine’s publisher have been losing money on it. Citing the railroads, telcos, and electric utilities of the 19th and 20th centuries as examples, standardization and lower barriers to entry eventually lead to massive consolidation because no one makes money in hyper-competitive environments. These markets (like most) evolve towards oligopoly. Anderson also points out that apps on mobile phones solve a lot of business problems — the networks are closed and provide gatekeepers, customers are used to paying for content on closed networks, and the billing mechanisms are in place to make small payments feasible.
Though touched on at times, the Wired articles fail to pay enough attention to Google’s role in this world. For the most part, Anderson and his colleagues relegate Google to Web company status. And that is a significant flaw in their hypotheses. Google is a mobile player. It might not own the networks, but it controls the fastest growing mobile platform in Android. Google’s more laissez faire approach to app developers promises a more open mobile world. Customers will demand Android remains open. (The various authors also pay scant attention to HTML 5′s potential.)
Whatever flaws exist in Anderson’s argument do not detract from the value of his main point. The threat to the open Web is less about net neutrality than big media consolidation. Furthermore, Steve Lohr carried the banner of evolution over revolution quite well yesterday’s New York Times piece, Now Playing: Night of the Living Tech.
Yet evolution — not extinction — has always been the primary rule of media ecology. New media predators rise up, but other media species typically adapt rather than perish. That is the message of both history and leading media theorists, like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman. Television, for example, was seen as a threat to radio and movies, though both evolved and survived.
The open Web will survive. Advertising will survive. Apps might just be the fad – if an HTML 5 site on an Android device can deliver the app experience without the middleman, meet the new Web, same as the old Web.
Not much there in Netflix deal
So Netflix is paying $1 billion to Epix for the rights to stream titles from Paramount Pictures, Lions Gate and MGM. This could have been a big deal, but it preserves the cable networks’ 18 month exclusivity window. At the end of the day the Roku box remains a gateway to sometimes good, but somewhat stale Hollywood fare.
HBO and friends live on for a few more years as they evolve their businesses. Cable companies can continue to force customers into bundles that lump four or five “movie” channels showing pretty much the same stuff. Do cable companies see their reign coming to an end, and are just cash cowing their existing business models? It’s clear the “movie” channels are weaning themselves from studio fare. They continue to expand their original programming efforts — and doing it quite well. But what about the cable companies? Beyond caller ID on my TV for the phone line no one in my family uses, we’re not seeing a lot of innovation from Comcast, Charter, and company.
A more disruptive deal from Netflix would have forced big cable’s hand. We’ll just have to wait until the next round of studio deals with distributors to expire.
Internet-enabled TVs take off
It took a lot less time for IPTV to reach its inflection point than it did for HDTV. It’s not surprising as it’s hard to imagine a consumer technology roll out as flawed as HD. iSuppli released a report last week predicting Internet-enabled television sales in 2010 will significantly outpace 3D TV sales.
Global shipments of IETVs—i.e., TV sets with built-in Internet capability—will amount to 27.7 million units in 2010. In contrast, 3-D set shipments will total only 4.2 million this year. While 3-D television shipments are set to soar in the coming years, iSuppli’s forecast shows the biggest near-term growth story is in IETV.
iSuppli expects the trend to continue through 2014. By 2014 I would expect every television sold in the developed world to be Internet enabled. Never will every TV be 3D capable — stereoscopy in the kitchen or bathroom can lead to some unexpected outcomes. But predicting IETV sales to exceed 3D set sales is like predicting tires will be a more popular accessory in motor vehicles than convertible tops. To paraphrase Seth and Amy — Really?
What is truly interesting is that by 2014 iSuppli expects there will be about a quarter of a billion IETVs in homes. That is going to be like a tsunami to the broadcast and cable industries. If you think the audience is fragmented now, just wait until the cost of starting a viable “TV network” hits the mid-four figures. Micro-pay per view and Google-like ad models will destroy traditional cable subscription models.
While the cable companies might be seriously injured, they are likely to survive. The IETV roadkill will be the set top box manufacturers — Roku, TiVo, and Apple TV (if Apple doesn’t mercy kill it first). The standalone IPTV device will go the way of the standalone GPS. Navigation will be as common on phones in the next few years as cameras are today. Who’s going to need a Garmin? Even Steve Jobs kind of agrees.
There’s an obvious pattern emerging in consumer electronics. A market is created and validated by a single-use device, then the single-use device is pushed aside by multi-use devices delivering the same functionality. That’s why the Android platform is the death of Garmin, and the iPad will flatten the Kindle.
Of course what we don’t know yet, is Aunt Mary in Peoria going to have any idea what to do with an Internet-enabled TV.
Recommended reading
For a trip down memory lane read Joel Brinkley’s Defining Vision about the two-decade HDTV debacle in the US. Manufacturers, legislators, and regulators did just about everything they could to destroy HDTV.
Rumors of 3D demise greatly exaggerated
Every campaigning politician recognizes the pattern. The media build up the candidate until his or her victory is a forgone conclusion, then begins the process of tearing the candidate down. Ascendancy and demise sell papers, so every candidate is always rising like a rocket or falling like a lead balloon. For a pundit to garner enough attention to retain the title of pundit requires that said pundit is 1) definitive, and 2) just ahead of the curve.
Pretty much the same holds true in the world of consumer electronics. Yesterday’s Next Big Thing is supplanted by today’s Next Big Thing. Just a few months ago technology pundits were tripping over themselves declaring of the rise of 3D in living rooms and theaters throughout the world a sure bet. 3D in every living room by 2015 was the sure thing flying cars by 2000 were in 1950. David Pogue was among a handful of pragmatists and questioned the hype just after CES 2010.
First of all, those glasses. E-w-w-w. Do we really want to have to put on glasses every time we sit down for some TV? Don’t we lose something when we look around the room to exchange glances, and we can’t see anyone’s eyes? Do we really want to nuzzle up to our fiancées and spouses with those things on?
Certainly very few (if any) consumer electronics or studio executives believed the hype earlier this year, but who’s going to argue when the mainstream media is declaring your latest and greatest a smashing success? You don’t get to run these huge companies without some understanding of your customers’ technology adoption rates – especially after the decades-long gestation of HDTV. They knew that standards battles loomed. A sober assessment of the 3D landscape shows the industry has been making reasonable investments in the technology. No film was slated to be released 3D-only. No television network was going to make 3D-only programming. No set manufacturer announced plans for 3D-only sets. Everything was not going 3D. Jennifer Aniston and Oprah were to remain 2D experiences.
Any wannabe technology pundit worth his blog’s revenue stream, can’t say, “Everything’s going fine. 3D is coming at a reasonable rate. What you want to see in 3D you can, and in a few years when you’re ready to buy new TVs there will be just enough 3D content available that you’ll consider a stereoscopic set.” What’s the fun in that? So here come the 3D obituaries.
Last week Adam Frucci asked in Gizmodo if 3D is already dying. The blog entry is not terribly over the top, but its overly simplified arguments and limited statistical sampling should be questioned. Frucci cites the downward trend of 3D revenue as a percentage of total box office receipts of five films since Avatar as evidence 3D may have peaked. He are the key flaws in his arguments:
- Five is an awfully small statistical sampling. It represents about half a year’s output. While acknowledging Avatar was unique — marketed as a 3D event, he fails to consider that the rest of the films sampled appeal to a younger demographic. Among preteens, mom and dad often make the decision whether the movie is watched in 2D or 3D. Price consciousness and concerns whether a squirmy eight year-old can stand to wear glasses for two hours factor into the decision.
- Frucci also assigns a direct relationship between the success of 3D in the theater with the success of 3D in the living room. That’s nowhere near a sure outcome. The television networks are not depending on 3D Hollywood fare to be the primary driver to build demand for 3D broadcasts. They are clearly betting on sports. ESPN and BSkyB are not looking to the studios to supply them with content, and Discovery is looking to produce its own non-fiction 3D content as well. The 3D set manufacturers don’t need Blu-Ray 3D players to drive sales as much as the article implies. Gamers and live broadcasts are their primary drivers.
It’s clear that many writers over-hyped 3D after CES and NAB 2010, but it’s also far too soon to declare 3D is dying. The technology will get more affordable, the glasses might go away, and producers will hone what content works best in the medium.
