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Why Audiovisual Content That’s Not On-Demand is Dead to Me

Byrichard

I’m online from 10-15hrs  a day on average and as a result I’m used to having everything available within a short amount of time. I also had access to a PVR with a hard disk upgrade for quite a long time. As a result of both these developments anything that is not available to me when I want to watch it goes unnoticed. That’s because “It’s an on-demand world” as was concluded in one edit I worked on for a client about the future of broadcasting.


From a young age I had quite a choice of channels. Some were French, some were Italian and others were German. That’s because it’s Geneva and you get the French tv channels as well as the Swiss national channels. That’s access to about 7 channels over the air in analog form. With Sky digital the number of channels increased from 10-30 and finally to several thousand. Recently Sky started to broadcast a greater range of international content.


The next move was the PVR. The ability to record up to three hundred hours of program content to disk from two receivers at once. If you allow for a backlog to develop then you’ve got a fake video on demand on service. That’s great. It means that when you know which programs you want to watch the machine will take care of it.


A cheap version of this is available online through platforms such as Itunes where it’s powered by RSS feeds. At the beginning you’ve got very little content as you learn more about the technology but over time you end up with over four hundred podcasts in the back catalog. That’s quite a bit of choice.


Youtube, Revver, Myspace, Dailymotion are true video-on-demand services in browser form. Each of these websites allows you to download and watch thousands of short video clips without a dedicated time. That’s great. A housemate wanted to watch some comedy so we went to youtube, downloaded, and watched a selection of programs on demand.


Of course, the next step is Joost like platforms. It’s like a television channel but you can select when it’s convenient to watch the program rather than setting your life around the program.


There are two reasons for this. The first is an increase in capacity. The second is progress in technology.  We went from having four channels to 10 times that number with Freeview and with satellite broadcasting we’ve gone from 20 channels to several thousand. We’ve also gone from one user interface, the television set with five channels to the computer, and unlimited choice. That’s why media content that is not on-demand is almost dead to me.

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Enjoy the stairs

Byrichard

Myspace was used to advertise a pyjama house party and I went for a number of hours. It’s amusing when you’re at a party in your pyjamas. It makes a change from all those fancy dress and I began wondering about the walk of shame and whether wearing pyjamas on the way home constitutes the walk of shame.

The party was good although it did not really begin till later on when everyone arrived. There were lots of people I’ve known for two to three years by now. The stories were good and the conversations too. Some were interesting whilst were some left you a little confused.

I went to central London with one friend and we stayed in a night club till the first tube in the morning. The club was quite full of people because the top musical act of the week had played there an hour or two before we arrived. I don’t know the group so I’m left indifferent.

This part of the night continued till the early hours of the morning. We caught the first tube home. I gathered my stuff from the friend’s place. Two people were sitting in the stairwell chatting, saying that they had not gone to sleep but that everyone else was trying to sleep. I encouraged them to enjoy their stairwell before continuing on my way.

Back to halls where I encountered some french-speaking friends. Conversations and random activities continued until around 7 in the morning.

It had been an 11hr night/party for me and I’m surprised at how quiet everything is today. It must be the calm after the chaos of a good night out.

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Why the bookshop survives whilst the record shop disappears

Byrichard

Whilst reading an article about the music and book industry I was surprised by what was written. They say that the music industry and the record shops were expected to survive the digital revolution whilst the bookshop was expected to die with the advent of sites like amazon.

There is one possible reason for this. The nature of the medium. A song is a work that takes five minutes to listen to in it’s entirety and can use other supports to be consumed on. The book on the other hand is a medium that requires for people to sit down and thumb through various pages to assess the writing style before deciding on whether to purchase it. As a result they’re far more likely to go into a library and check that product than a cd shop.

At the same time myspace, among other websites is the new music shop. Go there, browse the categories and find various obscure acts, discover them and purchase what you enjoy.

It’s not quite that easy with books.

I’ve bought quite a few books and dvd in the past few months but no music in physical form.

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Too much listening to podcasts.

Byrichard

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts over the past few days. i had to catch up with all those I haden’t taken the time to listen to over the last few months.

It’s amusing. in “96 I began working on my website, in 2007 I uploaded it and since then I’ve been following everything that’s happened. I’ve seen as some new things became old and old things became new again with time.

How many people remember Geocities, Angelfire and other projects? I remember them. I remember when I started trying to get people to contribute to my website because I didn’t have time to produce the content. It didn’t work. That was web 2.0 several years before the time.

I remember 6 degrees.com, a website that attempted to do something which is becoming more standard as new social networking websites come of age. Look at myspace, look at youtube and Flickr. Each one concentrates on your interest, whether music, video, or video. Everything the youth enjoy. Rupert Murdoch is attempting to join the fun.

It bothers me that people are putting so much content on myspace without attempting to put that content onto their own domain names and websites. Why should I create content only to have a billionaire make a little extra money when the content is mine.

The challenge for me is to find how to create content, host it myself, and then make money through other people showing interest. Over time it should improve.

A site I like at the moment is Facebook because of how much information is available. The user interface is good, the add ons are interesting. If I create a post in a blog on my own website it’ll automatically be synchronized with Facebook for people to come to and read.

It’s also where people I haven’t seen for over a decade re-appear and I can see how things have evolved since last time. We’ve grown up.

Third Day of Editing And More Relaxed

Byrichard

It’s the third day of editing and the pressure has been relieved. I’ve captured the footage and edited most of the multicamera show. It wasn’t as bad as I thought therefore there were only a few small things to change. As I’m under time pressure I’m glad there’s less to do although with more footage I may have tried to be more creative.

With the myspace documentary, things are going well. We’re up to about ten minutes and need another 2-5 therefore that’s relaxed as well. With that edit it’s a matter of getting the framework finished, finding a few more illustrative shots before finally working on the fine-cut for projection on Thursday or Friday.

For the globalisation project, I haven’t had time to speak to that many people so the progression has stalled. 45 credits vs. 15… Both are important but one requires a team to work at all times. The other, only two or three people.

That’s it for today.

Day One of Editing Done

Byrichard

Day one of editing has finished and I’ve spent the last two hours resting and relaxing. The editing is quite interesting. We’ve got an interview with someone who was considered as hottest single in the world two or three weeks ago.

The documentary is about myspace and it’s effect on the music industry. It’s interesting because we have at least ten interviews, that’s ten points of view, some musical, others more ITish and yet more from the ordinary public.

Three segments have been assembled and we have a few more to work on. The duration is only five minutes so far but will progress tomorrow.

The rough cut needs to be done by thursday to give an additional week for gathering extra shots and cleaning everything up.

I need to make time for the editing of the multicamera project.