Not much to report on today. A bit of a slow day. I listened to today’s episode of Cinecastshow Cinecastshow concerning a review of the movie V for Vendetta and I had to disagree with Adam and Sam. I sent them some feedback and reminded them that V for Vendetta is essentially a popcorn flick. Sure, it’s filled with flaws, but it’s also entertaining. Worth checking out. And I’m not just saying that because Natalie Portman is in it.
In other news, I’ve been taking time out to watch the www.mobuzztv.com video blogs (or vlogs as they call them). I’ve been downloading the 2-3 minute episodes and have had a blast watching them. Short, to the point, and funny, the video podcasts are a great way to get a laugh and you learn about some really strange stuff. I rather like that aspect of it. With media news being so straightforward, it’s nice to hear and watch something that’s different. There’s a bit world out there and I don’t mind spending a few minutes every few days to learn something new or to get a laugh. How did I hear about www.mobuzztv.com? Cali from www.geekbrief.com mentioned in an interview that she had given recently that she watches the show and I thought I’d check it out. Cali, of the International Geek Intelligence Agency, didn’t steer me wrong!
With so many new video blogs (video podcasts, vlogs, whatever!) starting up, it’s hard to keep track of everything. I find that I enjoy watching the video blogs at home in front of the computer but listen to the audio podcasts on the way to and from work. While on the train, it’s nice to block out the sounds of the train with something educational.
Last night I spent a few hours performing unsuccessful experiments with The Magic Sock. I received some constructive criticism concerning the codec that I’m using for the 640 x 480 version of the show. A viewer (or potential viewer I should say) asked why I didn’t used a codec that was natively able to be used with Windows Media Player. Since I’m currently using the DivX codec and then the Apple H264 (I think that’s it) for the .m4v file, it would make sense to ditch the DivX version in favor of a more acceptable .avi version. However, my conversion experiments all failed. I’m hoping to do some more testing in the next two days to try and fix this problem. I’m hoping that it does work. The problem with all of this is fairly simple: Viewers want what’s easiest for them. They don’t care so much about file size, quality, etc. As long as the video and sound are somewhat decent, they’re happy. On my part, I gave up doing 3 versions of the show. After a while, the web hosting space started adding up. Each episode I was putting over 100MB of files up on my web hosting space. Since I’d like to have the old files up online for archival purposes, I’d quickly eat through my remaining file space so I dropped out one version of the file. I am hoping that I can solve this problem in the next few days. We shall see. Again, since this is pretty much virgin territory, there are so many examples out there that I don’t know what to format will become the standard. A good many people don’t subscribe to the show and just download the 640 x 480 version from www.mtgsalvation.com . This is great, but it also leads me with the problem that most people download the DivX version and not the .m4v. I guess people in the Magic community either don’t know (or care) to subscribe to the feed via RSS.
Since I’ve started subscribing to feeds, it’s made my life a heck of a lot easier for when I want to see what podcast or video cast has a new show. I simply click on the update button and then all my podcasts are checked (and then downloaded). It’s a lot easier to do that then to hunt and peck, visiting each website for all the podcasts I’m interested in. That would just take way too long.
I’m learning a lot about how to put the video podcast together and am slowly overcoming hurdles. It’s been challenging, but also extremely time consuming. I think Adam Curry put it pretty nicely in a recent podcast: He mentioned something about the waiting part of importing or converting video, admitting that he had forgotten how long it takes. And that’s the thing: It takes a while to do it. It’s not that simple. An episode for me could take anywhere between 3-5 hours whereas for www.geekbrief.com some episodes have taken as long as 12 hours of total work. That’s a lot of time to do. And they put a show out at least once a week. I’m only doing one show every two weeks. It’s not easy!
In other news, I’ve been taking time out to watch the www.mobuzztv.com video blogs (or vlogs as they call them). I’ve been downloading the 2-3 minute episodes and have had a blast watching them. Short, to the point, and funny, the video podcasts are a great way to get a laugh and you learn about some really strange stuff. I rather like that aspect of it. With media news being so straightforward, it’s nice to hear and watch something that’s different. There’s a bit world out there and I don’t mind spending a few minutes every few days to learn something new or to get a laugh. How did I hear about www.mobuzztv.com? Cali from www.geekbrief.com mentioned in an interview that she had given recently that she watches the show and I thought I’d check it out. Cali, of the International Geek Intelligence Agency, didn’t steer me wrong!
With so many new video blogs (video podcasts, vlogs, whatever!) starting up, it’s hard to keep track of everything. I find that I enjoy watching the video blogs at home in front of the computer but listen to the audio podcasts on the way to and from work. While on the train, it’s nice to block out the sounds of the train with something educational.
Last night I spent a few hours performing unsuccessful experiments with The Magic Sock. I received some constructive criticism concerning the codec that I’m using for the 640 x 480 version of the show. A viewer (or potential viewer I should say) asked why I didn’t used a codec that was natively able to be used with Windows Media Player. Since I’m currently using the DivX codec and then the Apple H264 (I think that’s it) for the .m4v file, it would make sense to ditch the DivX version in favor of a more acceptable .avi version. However, my conversion experiments all failed. I’m hoping to do some more testing in the next two days to try and fix this problem. I’m hoping that it does work. The problem with all of this is fairly simple: Viewers want what’s easiest for them. They don’t care so much about file size, quality, etc. As long as the video and sound are somewhat decent, they’re happy. On my part, I gave up doing 3 versions of the show. After a while, the web hosting space started adding up. Each episode I was putting over 100MB of files up on my web hosting space. Since I’d like to have the old files up online for archival purposes, I’d quickly eat through my remaining file space so I dropped out one version of the file. I am hoping that I can solve this problem in the next few days. We shall see. Again, since this is pretty much virgin territory, there are so many examples out there that I don’t know what to format will become the standard. A good many people don’t subscribe to the show and just download the 640 x 480 version from www.mtgsalvation.com . This is great, but it also leads me with the problem that most people download the DivX version and not the .m4v. I guess people in the Magic community either don’t know (or care) to subscribe to the feed via RSS.
Since I’ve started subscribing to feeds, it’s made my life a heck of a lot easier for when I want to see what podcast or video cast has a new show. I simply click on the update button and then all my podcasts are checked (and then downloaded). It’s a lot easier to do that then to hunt and peck, visiting each website for all the podcasts I’m interested in. That would just take way too long.
I’m learning a lot about how to put the video podcast together and am slowly overcoming hurdles. It’s been challenging, but also extremely time consuming. I think Adam Curry put it pretty nicely in a recent podcast: He mentioned something about the waiting part of importing or converting video, admitting that he had forgotten how long it takes. And that’s the thing: It takes a while to do it. It’s not that simple. An episode for me could take anywhere between 3-5 hours whereas for www.geekbrief.com some episodes have taken as long as 12 hours of total work. That’s a lot of time to do. And they put a show out at least once a week. I’m only doing one show every two weeks. It’s not easy!
RSS
My experiments with converting an episode of The Magic Sock into .wmv format went well. I’m hoping to do another test tonight and then see if I could obtain some comments from the person who had sent me the feedback. I haven’t had much time to work on the next show. I have some ideas, but I’ve been focusing my energy on solving the accessibility problem. What would be nice is for me to have a show ready by sometime late next week, but that’s probably not going to happen. Too much is going on for me to get that amount of work done. However, miracles have been known to happen. It’s possible that I might have some time on Sunday to work on an episode. We shall see.
Speaking of podcasts and such, I’ve been interested to learn that the iPod 60GB has been put on an "at risk" list. Typically, this is one of the first signs that Apple is going to phase out the product and then replace it with a new and improved one (maybe the 4” video iPod that everyone has been waiting for?). It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this rumor.
I do find it interesting that we’re on the cusp of a digital revolution, but I think that the mainstream aren’t quite aware of the power that’s right at their fingertips. Of course, people have been using RSS for years now and I’ve only really signed onto this about year ago. It took about 6 months or so for me to really understand why RSS is so good. But it took even longer than that for me to realize that you can using RSS not only for text but also for podcasts and videopodcasts. That’s the beauty of RSS. Simply find shows that you like, subscribe, and then click a button to get all the content you want to your PC and then transfer that to your iPod. This morning I had some time after buying some juice to sit down and watch an episode of Mobuzztv.com. Very cool to be able to switch from listening to a podcast to watching a short episode of TV quality like news.
What I find so cool about the video content is that I’m getting access to news from around the world that’s extremely interesting. I don’t have to waste time watching my local news, seeing such exciting things as what houses caught on fire last night. In fact, I can’t sit down and watching the local news any longer. I just can’t do it. It’s so filled with uninteresting content that I realize that I could be getting much more elsewhere (for free).
The jump between your PC and your TV is hopefully coming soon. The difficult thing is that the whole RSS craze is very complicated for your average user. Trying to convince someone (or teach a friend) how to get a RSS feed and then subscribe to a show is not easy at all. Of course Internet Explorer 7.0 is rumored to have seamless RSS built in, but since Windows Vista is being pushed back, it’ll be 2007 before people can use that. Right now, I think iTunes has the simplest way of using a RSS-like feed. Unfortunately, with iTunes, you need to submit your show to their store and then use the feed they give you. Basically, I have my RSS feed for The Magic Sock and then I have this really long and crazy url for the apple iTunes store for people to subscribe in iTunes. It’s a bit nuts. Yet on www.themagicsock.com, there’s a simple button to click on to subscribe to the show in iTunes or through any aggregator. But if your audience doesn’t know (or care) to use the subscribe button, you’re out of luck. Most people tend to visit a website and download the file that way—or worse yet—they click on the link and wait for the episode to load on their screen. It’s much more effective to subscribe and obtain the feed that way, but when users want the 640 x 480 version over the 320 x 240, what can you do? Not much.
Again, we’re in the early stages of all of this video revolution launching out across the web. I’m hoping that within 3-5 years that we’ll be singing a different tune. Maybe by then we’ll have a PC or a device that easily connects to your TV and allows you to download content. I’d also like to see more IPTV here in the United States. But I guess I’m getting ahead of myself. I know that this post isn’t very exciting, but I do believe that this use of technology will change the way we watch our entertainment and news. It’s coming.
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