Why can I see black bars on my web video?

If you watch some of the clips on youtube.com you will see black bars on either side of the video.

In my opinion it’s not a great look to see these massive black bars on the sides. I prefer to see the video content in full across the whole screen. Unless your trying to go for that epic film look, you will want the black bars going across the top and bottom of the video. Like this:-

So what can we do about? and why is this happening to me?

OK so, in standard video we have 5 common aspect ratios. 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 1:85:1 and 2.39:1. The TV standard is broadcasted in 4:3 which gives this look in the first video. The other popular standard is 16:9. Which gives a much wider screen and to me it’s much more pleasing on the eye!

The problem arises when a camera shoots footage in 4:3 and then the footage is imported into a 16:9 timeline. A video timeline, allows your video clips to play in a sequence editing application like Final Cut Pro or Premier. Once it’s encoded into a web format like quicktimes .mov or Adobe’s flash you get that lovely black bars look in your video.

To stop it, either film in 16:9 and make sure your timeline is in 16:9 or film 4:3 and again the timeline in 4:3.

I hope this helps!

Signing off.

Realitypod.tv

Transcoding Services

It’s not a new technology by any means, but I was looking for a service that can deliver the Youtube.com type service (transcoding) for one of my clients on their site. By this I mean upload videos, in any format. quicktimes .mov, MPEG4, AVi, flv (flash), windows media, wmv or Real media and transcode them into Adobes flash .ftv format. They wanted a browser based solution so they could see the ingest of videos and managed what files go onto the network for delivery. This works with a CDN or content Delivery Services. I came across a company called Origin Digital. They are calling themselves a video Application Services Provider. It’s fairly well priced and if your a high traffic site, I highly recommend them!

Sorry to get so techie on you guys, but it’s quite an important part of the whole social network aspect of a video publishing websites. It makes your website much more interactive if the user can upload content to your site and then share that video within the networks.

There are quite a few transcoding services on the market, like rip code. Ripcode have produced a serious video introducing the service. I’m actually a little scared of him, Still he talks about the market in great detail and it really helps you to get a good understanding of this growth market. Check it out below.

Have fun!

Video on the internet – A broadcast medium

Film and TV broadcasters have enjoyed a lot of control over the last century in the way we watch our content… There was no way anybody could produce content and then submit it to the B.B.C. and have it aired within minutes or even years for this matter. Actually, now I think about it, your submission in most cases would have been looked at, at once, if you were lucky! and then screwed up and chucked in the trash can!

Now with the rise of the broadband, this has opened up the channels for content producers to have a platform for one global audience. We love the ease of which you can create, encode and upload content on to the internet for everybody to see. This is great for the bedroom producer or maybe semi pro.. who wants to create an audience.. But we want to see the good stuff!

Here is where a major problem pops up and smacks the industry in the face. This is affecting our audiences and we are having to suffer billions of very poor quality content as a result…. Yep you guessed it “Rights issues”.. This means Hollywood and other major players around the world who produce the quality stuff, are only giving access to programs and films to internet companies that can pay for it and protect it. Most companies can’t protect the content yet, there are very few solutions which are good enough for Hollywood to let get of their content. Hulu.com is a major force and one that has done really well in the US, and we are about to see it come to the UK very shortly. The Kangoroo project that the UK broadcasters have been struggling to get off the ground, failed for these reason, rights! I believe anyway and not competitive clauses that the press fed us! (maybe I’m wrong, but it stands up)

How does a company solve these issues?, if they want their content to be seen over the web in particular territories, for example, Hollywood want French broadcasters to have the rights to show the content in France and not in Germany. So far the major players in the market are Flash & Microsoft. Lets face it, the flash player wins hands down, although Microsoft has a brilliant solution, but it does not look as pretty as flash. The problem with flash so far is that there has been no DRM standard for Flash and trust me Adobe is pushing for a DRM solution. Check out this article Adobe pushes DRM

This is a massive subject and there are two different sides to DRM, 1, which is protecting your video delivery over the internet via streaming or HTTP download. 2, Stopping people use your content without a license. We hear about Warner Brothers and other majors deleting videos off youtube.com. I hope to go into more detail in another blog..

I’m more concerned with the content and the production of it, but in this changing market you can’t help but get swallowed up in Digital delivery of video…

ROCK ON ADOBE FLASH!