Trends that bring a new nature of format
Video formats and concepts are having a huge and unexpected blooming through new media; till now, creators and owners were just moving their videos from original environments to the Internet, but now the evolution of new media forced to re-invent this way of communication to the new nature of the network. Video now is not an adaptation of our old betacam tapes, but is being reborn in another context, format, place, language and nature in its own right.
Structure of actual trends of video chart
Technical format
While production companies were arguing about DV, HDV or HD standards during the past few years, at another level the fight is much fiercer because there are not standards in video through the Internet (even in the Internet itself). Every platform took its format and just broadcast it. Now, the huge amount of contents is forcing the companies to make an effort to decide for a standard format that allows an easier distribution and exchange of contents. Youtube finally decided to abandon the 4:3 format and took the panoramic format. The standard H.264 is becoming the in-fact standard due to image quality and low bandwidth. Even some platforms like Vimeo are allowing their users to upload their videos in real HD (1280×720). Due to the quantity of distribution platforms and devices like iPhone, Google 1G, cellphones, PSP , etc, experts think that there are too many formats and the future challenge is to decide on a standard for distribution if we really want to give the industry a push.
Source
The unexpected blooming of video in Internet come from their source: users are the main creators of everything. Particular users uploaded tens of millions of videos to Youtube or equivalents, and years later the production companies realized the opportunities and created their own online channels through those platforms. But this romantic ‘power to the people’ it is not so; at least 60% of the contents that private users upload are old TV productions, videoclips, and other stuff that they never produced by their own. Anyway, we can find three big sources of contents in networks:
- Video contents created by users
- Contents by production companies adapted to the network (Youtube channels, live TV)
- Productions oriented for Internet distribution
The real challenge in the future is the third source mentioned. There is a new generation of contents generated for internet distribution such as series, movies, etc, that are now walking slowly. However, the consolidation of mobile and internet users as costumers will give the financial push needed.
Distribution
The distribution of video had the main impulse through Youtube and equivalents. After those times, now the contents disposal is being multiplied by others:
- 3G mobile networks
- Social networks
- Blogs, personal pages and information sites of corporations
- Broadcasting channels
Users sharing video in Tokyo
Copyright Law
Due to the facility of free traffic of contents in both ways, uploading and downloading, users may upload any copyrighted content and it is becoming a big problem for the industry. If the shared-content age comes with the free internet exchange of contents, now there is an intense public debate about copyright, copyleft, intellectual property and Creative Commons licenses. No one knows the final result, but new technologies are changing the nature of contents distribution and it will revolutionize the way we understand it.
Copyright Management
As the contents owners are facing the new nature of contents distribution, some of them are trying to adapt to the new emerging context. Myspace signed a contract with Auditude for a service that allows owners to place advertising in their videos broadcast in Myspace TV when any user uploads it without their consent. This is done through an invisible ‘thumbprint’ placed in the video which is detected automatically.
Language
As audiovisual media made its own language seen on commercial spots, and the TV created its own version of cinema movies (TV serials), we can not expect that video on networks be a simple adaptation of old formats. Now we are experiencing a newborn change in storytelling formats, length and even subjects of contents.
Interactivity
One contribution of the interactive media is obviously interactivity itself. We can find a few examples just considered as experiments, but we’ll have to wait to check wether interactive videos could become a new solid format. At least, this is a huge field of exploration for creativity.
Real time
Nowadays TV channels are broadcasting their contents via internet, but it isn’t new. The next real contributions are both:
- Ability of users to live broadcasting through platforms like Ustream
- The incoming trend for companies, brands and advisers to create their own live contents to show relevant information to their audience.
Conclusions
We still don’t know the final format that the network will give to video, but we can certainly know that the formats will have a new nature. And we are sure that the fast and special way of distribution, authorship, and technical capabilities will bring us something really awesome for human beauty and knowledge.
