Distribution Killed the Video Star
Not a video, but a very pertinent article:
Is YouTube kissing music videos (and especially music video directors) on the lips while it stabs them in the heart? Is this the death of an art form?
Welcome to the drought musicians have been dealing with for a decade.
.mp3s killed the album.
But blaming youtube is like blaming the weatherman for the rain. Technology is always king, which is why periods are reffered to as the "bronze age" the "steel age" etc.
We live in the data age. Data (particularly it's rapid transmission) is the dictator.
The good news for video makers is that the technology will advance very quickly in the next few years and this present lo-resoultion video sharing will be replaced by high quality, super hi bandwidth sharing.
The technology is still here. H.264 (and VP6, the proprietary codec used in Flash 9) allows for good/high quality videos using almost the same bitrate YouNoob is using right now.
I couldn't watch the new Format video on myspace this morning because it didn't support macs (much like vh1.com and mtv.com). I couldn't stream Jay-Z's new album on the clearchannel site this morning because it couldn't identify my media player. The preview of Fox's new OJ interview loaded too slowly and stalled out. Last night, when I downloaded the new Justin Timberlake video off of itunes, I was kinda disappointed in the resolution when I hooked it up to my tv. It's not just video - the internet is full of frustrating little quirks that can ruin your media experiences. For every groundbreaking new site like youtube, a hundred little tweaks and improvements need to be made before it's optimal. Huge advances have been made since the early 00's, when most videos on the internet were the size of a postage stamp and took forever to load. It's still frustrating in its current state, but it's only a matter of time before internet video is fully realized.
Are you out of your mind? Sure, youtube's quality sucks right now, but its potential is pretty amazing. I don't think we're that far away from a huge jump in quality.
It's not necessarily Youtube itself that's cool, but the idea of all videos being in one place is awesome. Videos are essentially commercials anyway, and if people will play your commercial without you having to pay for it? That's awesome.
Great post overall. The Rob Dickinson video actually speaks more about the quality of cellphone cameras than YouTube.
In rap terms, this moment in time would be called 'the jump off.' SRO can, and perhaps should, position itself as the arbiter for high-quality videos. I can easily see how, in the future, with more ppl wasting time on the Internet, a site like SRO can become the next Pitchfork. Only difference: Needs to host files legally (main problem being labels, but his post is a start) and criticism doesn't need to be as arsed as the 'fork.
Coady: Data is not the dictator. People very much need to realize this.
some videos compress well on youtube. others don't.
tv has the same issues. red looks like shit on ntsc. and you can't use any stripes, plaid, morray-inducing elements.
and that video he posted was LAAAAAAAME.
Here's the most important lesson from youtube:
the first 10 seconds of your video have to be fucking awesome. Otherwise no ones gonna sit thru the following 3 minutes and no one is gonna send that link to a friend.
This is not MTV, where you're flipping channels and probably stumble on the video halfway thru.
That surf video bored the shit out of me and so i didn't watch it. Could care less if it was shot on 35mm or a cellphone.
perhaps coady merely meant mcluhan's old adage...
cap'n's got a good point about the niceties of the new one we're dealing with here. (read a similar analysis th'other day picking up on ze frank's acuteness in this form/style respect vs many others' actually missing the boat completely.)
oh, and, cap? moray's the fish - moiré's your guy.
Sorry, but the McLuhan era is ending. I hate to break it to you.
era? he never struck me as a historian.
on another tack: i listened to a lecture by steve albini recently, in which he explains that his refusal to go digital has nothing to do with the digital vs analog quality diatribe, but rather it's because he takes it to heart that the current digital strategy is inadequate for providing the timelessness he believes audio creations deserve. he sees himself as producing records very much in the historical sense, as artefacts. so it's a small surprise, in a way, that so many of the ones he's done have made audio history.
i, for one, hate it when the medium (whatever it is) is underestimated.
Damn, this discussion jumped off fast. I thought i was getting a head start. Anyway, check out my thoughts - 30frames.blogspot.com
McLuhan was concerned with the methods of media and his analysis dealt with television and the like and how it effected culture BUT he is better known for elevating the study of media itself, which is what this board is about on its better days.
This critical view can and MUST be applied to the internet. The last ten years have been wildly turbulent and there's not enough analysis about what it means and will mean.
When I say data is the dictator I mean that the quality of videos on the web depends on a number of variables -- server speed, proprietary technology (like the amazing h264) and the average person's connection speed.
Well, perhaps to clarify, Kevathens' McLuhan era (wherein I ponder the meaning of this shit) is over.
Let us now pause to mourn the passing of Kevathen's McLuhan era. It was truly a golden age. ;)
lol I'll remember that. Thank you.
And so it came to pass... The dawn of Kevathen's Coady era.
Youtube culture is definitely going to be filled with pros and cons. The NY Times had a pretty interesting article this weekend about how youtube has affected distribution of selfmade content:
Also, youtube also just announced a deal today with the NHL to show 2-5min clips of hockey games. This being their first major sports deal.
In response to the SRO article I just want to repost this interview with Cathey Pellow. She talks alot about distribution of music videos or shall I say the lack of distro. And that said, its worth embracing the notion that media and technology will always be in flux. Youtube offers us something that simply might otherwise not exist. Agreed the quality suffering sucks!
When disposable cameras hit the market, did that kill photography as an art form?
Sorry about that ^, having a rough week. Don't think that's where a discussion about McLuhan, or mv dist, needed to go, that's for sure.
Not sure how this fits into this post, but it does somehow, and I didn't feel like starting a new thread. But how do you feel about this:
or this:
or the countless "remix your own version of the new ____ video" or "make a video for us for free contest" sites that are popping up.
Record labels seem to think they can take the videos they commission and turn them into some tacky contest (which yes, legally they can).
Is that more insulting than posting a video on you tube?
Fear not! gotuit.com and vmix.com are just two of the new youtube clones that offer superior video quality. I'm crossing my fingers for a quality arms race that ends with streaming HD and sites that work with 3d glasses.
