Internet TV Blog

Over at Web Video Doctor there’s a list of 7 things you can do to promote you videos. He’s a summary of them.

#1: Submit your video to these social bookmarking sites
#2: Submit to these entertainment sites
#3: Promote within YouTube
#4: Submit to forums on the Internet
#5: Submit to the major network television shows
#6: Post to your blog, especially if you have a high traffic blog!
#7: Forward to family and friends

#5 on his was surprising to me…

Submit to the major network television shows: Get your video on one of these huge shows for a chance of big time publicity

He even lists the e-mail addresses to use.

Read the full list to get all the info.

Teleprompters have made it so that people giving a speeches, reading out the news, or talking to an audience no longer have to memorize their speeches or have to constantly look down to read the text off a page.

These can be a great tool when filming. And let’s the subject being filmed look at the camera while being able to read what they have to say.

So then, it’s great to know that you can make your own telepropmter

HowToDoVideo found an interesting video tutorial on how to make your own teleprompter.

Keeping the camera still so that your video doesn’t come out shaky can sometimes be a challenge. Especially for the inexperienced camera man.

Videomaker brings up another great video tutorial. Showing us tips on how to steady the camera so that we can shoot videos without the shakes.

David Hellyer tells us about his dejected view about the YouTube partner program. David says….

How do I know i won’t ever make any money out of the partner program? Simple really, I don’t receive anywhere near enough views. Top YouTubers like Nalts, LisaNova and Renetto can reasonably expect to get 10,000 - 20,000 views per video regardless of what it is, with some getting far more! Views is the key thing here. BusinessWeek reported this week that click-throughs on social networking sites are significantly lower than that recieved on other sites (4/10,000 rather than 20/10,000). This is significant because the partnership that YouTube offers is one that shares revenue with you from funds raised by GoogleAdwords. A friend of mine recently started a website and has advertised using GoogleAdwords as they are extremely effective. He pays something in the region of 15p per click-through. This means that even if i were to get Renetto’s views i would only ever recieve at most 60p per video (assuming YouTube passed on the whole 15p to me - which we both know they wouldn’t). Well we all like getting pocket money don’t we… any revenue sharing under the current partner program on offer would definately be pocket money. Except YouTube clearly state in their T&Cs that they will not pay out any money due to partners until it reaches $100.00 (£50.00)… that’s a whole lot of 60p videos!

Kent Nichols (of the Ask a Ninja fame) gave a follow up to this, with some advice for David Hellyer and other Internet TV makers… and even video sharing sites…

[David Hellyer is] a British fellow, so 60p translates to $1.17ish [USD] at today’s exchange rate.

I recently spoke to another partner with a high traffic track record and they said their best quarter in the [YouTube Partner] program has been $500. $500 for three months and a million views. Awesome. (gulp). [That’s sarcasm BTW.]

Now that YouTube is setting the floor for what sharing sites will pay to creators, this give other sites incentives to pay higher fees to creators of popular content.

[Other video sharing sites… you should] Exploit that.

Kent goes on to say….

Other video sites want to cut into YouTube’s marketshare, but how can they compete with YouTube? Cold, hard, cash. MetaCafe’s $5 CPM would’ve netted my friend $5000 for the same million views, not spectacular, but still a tenfold increase. LiveVideo is trying this tactic, we’ll see how that goes. Vuguru, 60Frames, and MySpace are doing it too, although on a much more selective basis.

As a creator you should be always striving to find the best deal for you and your content, and if you can’t get a great deal, stick with the site with street cred and keep looking for a better deal and get better at making content.

Kent’s advice for Internet TV creators is….

Remember to use these [video sharing] sites as much as they are using you. Establish an audience, make a little money, drive as much traffic to your site and use their free bandwidth.

And brand your content as cool and yourself as a creator of cool things.

But then as quickly as possible move on. One show is not a career. It is a stepping stone. Have a vision for yourself and your career and proceed with it. Have new ideas for new shows, and own, own, own as much IP as you possibly can.

And please don’t limit your thinking to just online video. Film, TV, and books all need new cool content and they are in the habit of paying people more than $1.17 for their work.

Good advice for those who are trying to make a living off of Video Blogging, Internet TV, Video Podcasting, Vodcasting, of whatever you want to call it.

YouTube isn’t the only “game in town”. And there’s no reason to be exclusive to just them.

Do what’s best for you, your career, and your business.

There’s a great new video tutorial showing you HOWTO install and use vPIP.

vPIP (which is part of Show in a Box) is a WordPress plugin that adds video support to WordPress.

vPIP was created by Enric Teller. The tutorial was created by Ryanne Hodson.

Blip.tv has long been known as been the most responsive video sharing on the Internet. The really listen to their users. They’re even right there on the Video Blogging mailing list chatting it up with us.

Now, blip.tv is coming to you, the Internet TV creator, asking you what you want to see in your blip.tv stats page.

For their post…

We’re planning our next major upgrade — to our stats system. Please let us know what you’d like to see!

If you’re a Blip.tv user, go over there and let them know what you want.

Irina (of the GETV fame) wrote in to the Video Blogging mailing list to say, that all of us Internet TV creators should enter this contest.

From her message…

ALICE’S 3-MINUTE INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL
Alice’s 3-Minute Independent Film Festival announces its CALL FOR ENTRIES Deadline for submissions is March 24, 2008 5PM. Entry is FREE The 3-Minute Film Festival and Awards ceremony will be held April 11th at Bimbo’s 365 Club, San Francisco. With $16,000 in cash and prizes, radio exposure and more, Alice’s film festival offers filmmakers a unique opportunity to showcase their short cinematic masterpieces in front of a live audience. This year, Alice’s 3-Minutes film festival is honored to have judges from Pixar Animation Studios, Dreamworks, Lucasfilm, and the SF Film Society. Accepting 2–5 minute films in four categories: Drama/Documentary, Comedy, Animation and Original Music Video. Submission must be sent in DVD format to Alice Radio 865 Battery Street, San Francisco, CA 94111. Official entry forms and film festival details at www.radioalice.com.

Recently there have been a few announcements of Internet TV sites doing HD Video.

Some of the recent High Definition Video announcements came from: Dailymotion and Vimeo. There’s even ways to do HD quality video on YouTube.

Chris Albrecht is arguing that no one wants HD video on the Internet yet. Chris’ article points out that….

AOL pulled the plug on its HD-like offering last year after low user adoption and CBS was hesitant to jump into HD content, believing that audiences don’t care so much about video quality.

Chris’ article also says…

And in an odd way, Dailymotion’s HD offering may prove the naysayers’ points. The Dailymotion blog concedes:

Word to the wise, however: HD is both bandwidth and processor intensive, so a 1.6 Mbps connection is advised (and dual-cores don’t hurt ;).

In an initial test, I had trouble with one video stopping almost every three seconds. A subsequent video worked fine, though there was still some stuttering.

I think that it’s not that users don’t care about video quality, as CBS states. I think it’s that viewesr want their video to start playing instantly and to play smoothly.

But currently, with HD video, the video takes a long time to download and is jittery when it plays. That’s the real reason HD if failing on these video sharing sites.

Let’s face it… HD Video looks better. If viewers could get HD right now without all the slowness and jittery playing, they’d watch it. (Especially those people who are already watching Internet TV on their big screen TV’s.)

The problem is, with these video sharing sites, you can’t really do that yet. The video takes a long time to download and it’s often jittery when it plays. (Which drives viewers crazy.)

If this situation keeps up, we could see a return to Broadcatching!

Not too long ago, before everyone and his pet cat created their own video sharing site… before YouTube, Blip.tv, Revver, Dailymotion, Veoh, and all the rest… people were getting Online Video using a technique called Broadcatching. (Basically… broadcatching involved pre-fetching the video before you want to watch it. So that when you want to watch it, the video was already on your computer’s hard drive, and playing is instant and smooth.)

Broadcatching may see a new surge of popularity because of HD video.

HD video may push people to primarily get their video using Broadcatching software, like: Miro or iTunes.

Vlog Razor linked to an article written by a person from the Cable TV companies titled: “What Happens When Nobody Needs a TV?“.

It should have probably been named: What Happens When Nobody Needs Cable TV Companies and Just Watches Internet TV.

Seems at least one person from the Cable TV companies is starting to become aware of Internet TV… and he is starting to get scared. Scared that Internet TV may, in the not too distant future, become the dominant form of television.

With younger generations — tweens, teens, and 20-somethings — this is already happening. And like with news, where young people are going to the Interenet as their source for news, and not newpapers; young people are going to the Internet as their source for TV, and not Cable TV. (Just wait until it becomes common for people to play Internet TV on their big screens.)

From the article….

Nearly everyone told me that their household currently has a high-speed Internet connection, but no household connection to cable or satellite TV. I suppose I assumed the high-speed Internet connection went hand-in-hand with a cable/satellite subscription, but apparently I was wrong. The general consensus among the group was: “I don’t need cable. Anything I want to watch on TV, I can get on the Internet.”

(Emphasis mine.) The article goes on to say….

But what happens when the Web starts to replace the [Cable] television? Where is there a place in this environment for local television, local news or local television advertisers? Going to ABC.com to watch the most recent episodes of Ugly Betty or Grey’s Anatomy is all well and good for the ABC Network, but what about the local ABC affiliate, whose revenue depends on viewers tuning in to their favorite ABC programs on local television? Is there a place in this new Internet-driven, consumer-focused media world for the local television affiliate?

… I did a quick check with Scarborough Research, and I estimate the total number of homes falling into this category to be about 7.5% of the total Tampa market. While 7.5% is not a huge figure, if you look at the adults 18-34 demo, 11.4% of these homes are Internet-only.

[The Cable TV] market ignored the impact of homes with only cellphones (no home phones), thinking that the number of homes was too small to worry about. When the percent of cellphone-only homes reached 18%, and Nielsen changed its methodology to include these homes, the resulting ratings drop caused TV general managers across the market to sit up and pay attention.

I think the author is right in starting to sound off doom and gloom for the Cable TV companies. The article ends with a “wake up call” for the Cable TV companies… but will they adapt? Time will tell.

Ever wanted to create your own video sharing site?! Ever wanted to make your own YouTube-clone?!

This slideshow gives you all the information you need to get started creating your own video sharing site using Free and Open Source software.

| View | Upload your own

Some links from the slide show…

• FFmpeg
• Using Lighttpd, Mplayer/Mencoder and Flvtool2 to Implement Flash Video Streaming
• ffmpeg-php
• Flash Video | Optimizations and Tools
• Live Flash Stream via FFMPEG (via Archive.org)
• OSFlash Page on FFmpeg
• Sönke Rohde’s Tutorial on Transcoding Video with FFmpeg
• Video and Audio Streaming with Flash and Open Source Tools
• Publishing Flash videos with free, open source tools