Here’s the summary:

The latest version of Flash Media Sever, which will ship in January 2008, will be come in three versions, ranging from free to $4,500 — a price drop of 90%.

The Flash Media Interactive Server 3, the most expensive of the offerings, will provide more scalability and a robust new plugin architecture that its lower priced counterparts don’t offer. But for single server deployments, the $995 Flash Media Streaming Server, should be sufficient and could be attractive for smaller media publishers. Adobe will also offer a developer version for free that supports up to 10 concurrent users.

Since most publishers will only use the streaming features, the price drop is quite significant. Previously, multiple licenses ($4,500) were required just to stream to more than 200 users.

The bottom line: a huge step forward for web video. The Flash Player will incorporate what is arguably the most versatile and most widely adopted video codec around (it’s used for much more than just web video), and it’s an open standard at that with a huge eco system of encoders and tools to boot. Let it sink in and expect some big waves from this. You will be able to test this out via progressive download (I know I will) once Flash Player Beta Update 3 hits the streets later today on labs. Both Flash Media Server and Flash Media Encoder will support the codec in upcoming versions.

I think Adobe’s moving in the right direction at least in part because of the competitive pressure from Microsoft’s Silverlight.

Tags: Adobe, flash, FMS, H.264, microsoft, silverlight, streaming, video

Adobe, flash, FMS, H.264, microsoft, silverlight, streaming, video

It looks like the Flash player just got a boost in the video deparment. Here’s the feature list (from Fabio):

• Multi-threaded video decoding. The VP6 video decoding will now be performed in a separate thread if a multi-core system is detected while the main thread does rendering and post processing of the video. 1080p video decoding is now possible on dual core machines.
• Full screen video decoding will leverage hardware scaling. Wonderful! why to scale a 640×480 video to 1280×1024 using the main processor when all the computer video cards today have video scaling technology? I think this is really a must for the definitive consacration of Flash Video Technology. I’ll post as soon as possible a test of this feature.
• VBL in fullscreen. The player is now capable to syncronize the rendering in fullscreen to the “vertical blank” for a smooth playback of flash movies.
• Automatic Mipmap for scaled videos and picture. Optimal for video thumbs
• Faster Vp6 entropy decoding and improved deblocking filter.

I think some competitive pressure from Microsoft’s Silverlight is more then welcome!

Tags: Adobe, flash, FMS, microsoft, silverlight, streaming, video, WMV

Adobe, flash, FMS, microsoft, silverlight, streaming, video, WMV

Adobe claims Flash has a 97% penetration, with the latest version (v.9) climbing to 80%+.

This from the horse’s mouth:

Based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Silverlight enables developers and designers to use existing skills and tools: for designers, Microsoft Expression Studio, and for developers, Visual Studio.

Silverlight uses Windows Media Video (WMV) and Microsoft’s implementation of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) VC-1 video standard to deliver video files can that scale from mobile devices to full-screen high-definition displays.

Now, I’ve never seen ANYONE using Microsoft’s Expression studio for design. In addition, only a few sites are using exclusively WMV streaming despite the fact that the server is free as opposed to Flash Media Server. All in all, it’ll be a steep climb for Microsoft.

Tags: Adobe, flash, FMS, microsoft, silverlight, streaming, video, WMV

Adobe, flash, FMS, microsoft, silverlight, streaming, video, WMV

A lot of guys said Marc Cuban is crazy to say that.

His main point was that Google will turn into a GIANT target for all content companies who have their content pirated and put on display at Youtube.

It seems Marc is not so crazy after all as the first big claim has landed in Google’s lap. A cool billion dolllars in damages coming from Viacom.

A snippet from Viacom’s statement:

YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google. Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws. In fact, YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden – and high cost – of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.

In his latest post (aptly named You Go Viacom), Marc says:

…they should continue to sue the hell out of Google. Google blew it. They had no confidence in user generated content generating enough traffic to drive Youtube so they closed their eyes to the obvious. There is absolutely no value to a media company in letting users actually upload video.

Tags: copyright, google, Marc Cuban, streaming, UGC, viacom, video, youtube

copyright, google, Marc Cuban, streaming, UGC, viacom, video, youtube

The video has received more than 35 million views so far and continues to grow. Unlike LonelyGirl15, there’s no trick here. They guy’s is no Numa Numa.

Tags: CMG, directors, show, streaming, UGC, user generated content, youtube

CMG, directors, show, streaming, UGC, user generated content, youtube

I just saw this announcement from the creators, it provides a peek behind the scenes of a show like that.

It’s a relief to see that some of the so-called Youtube Directors are actually directors, who think in terms of pre-production, script, etc. The prevalent notion is that user-generated content is a phenomenon similar to entropy, only with a reversed electric charge.

Tags: CMG, directors, show, streaming, UFC, user generated content, youtube

CMG, directors, show, streaming, UFC, user generated content, youtube

Google bought Youtube for a figure pretty much in line with what the rumor said – $1.65B. The investors (Sequoia Capital) who covered their bandwith bill (about 11.5M) get out of the deal like thieves.

So despite Marc Cuban thinking that Google is crazy, some people just got richer.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all the copyright content will disappear from Youtube over night. If I were Google, however, I’d see it as a tough choice:

A) You face hundreds of copyright suits; or
B) you remove all offending content (someway) and you get a site like with mediocre content.

Tags: google, Marc Cuban, streaming, UGC, video, youtube

google, Marc Cuban, streaming, UGC, video, youtube

I recently came back and saw one of the new ones – Minjas. Actually, this show was kind of funny. There’s hope.

Since that episode, Ask a Ninja started putting ads in the episodes. And why shouldn’t they? According to Youtube, Minjas was seen a record 470,000 times!

Tags: CMG, directors, ninja, show, streaming, youtube

CMG, directors, ninja, show, streaming, youtube

1. free hosting for all; and
2. copyrighted content avalable for free.

I agree their business model is still not entirely clear, i.e. not clear how they gonna monetize all this traffic.

Some have raised the argument that MySpace was in a similar position and they got bought by Murdoch and recently struck a cool, billion-dollar deal with Google.

Here’s the bit about the economics of streaming that I found very interesting:

And one last time I will touch on the economics of streaming. Youtube streams to their user and allows the user to retain the file. But they are still streaming huge quantities of bandwidth. The thing about streamed media is that it doesnt get less expensive the more you stream. When you get into doing terabytes of streams per day, your cost per bit tends to go up as volume increases because of all the incremental overhead associated with delivery of that video. From servers to routers to people to software licenses to maintenance to backup and redundancy etc, etc. the costs ad up in a big way, Delivering video is a whole lot more expensive than delivery of text, but the CPMs for any advertising have to compete with people selling text based ads. Its going to be interesting to see how it all turns out.

I agree - lets see how it’s going to turn out.

Tags: google, Marc Cuban, streaming, UGC, video, youtube

google, Marc Cuban, streaming, UGC, video, youtube