Live Video
The amount of activity around Live Internet Video makes me smile. It’s like we’ve come full circle. From 1999 – 2001 Stew Art Media produced over 150 webcasts. A webcast back then was defined as live audio or video over the net (just to be clear). Back then we learned pretty quickly that you got ten times as many views on the archived content as you did on a live event. Even the Gene Simmonds of KISS webcast we produced maxed out at 3500 simultaneous streams. I think if we had YouTube back then we would have upoaded the out takes. Especially the one of @camthecameraman telling Gene, that he sounded nothing like he did when he sang “I was made for lovin’ you” . To which Gene replied; “That was Paul Stanley” at that point the producer / interviewer’s head exploded. Or something like that. I am sure @undercover the producer, would confirm the story.
Or even the time Rik Mayall had his pants around his ankles whilst in a passionate embrace with our then soon to be wed CEO Andrea Cartwright. I doubt it would have constituted a worldwide rave though, as @dmscott so eloquently puts it. Unless someone records it, its life is short. How many people saw Susan boyle live vs those he saw it on YouTube? You could argue that it wasn’t streamed live but even if it was, I doubt its numbers would have topped the Gene Simmonds live webcast.
There were some extraordinary claims of a live Madonna concert webcast at the time but the numbers didn’t add up. With the networks available back then, they just couldn’t have carried the reported numbers of streams.
But I digress. When we were working with Ken Rutkowski (@kenradio), Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com, Chris Pirillo & others doing live audio shows, with live crosses to Australia, the numbers were as low. @chrispirillo may not remember this but when we were putting together his very first test shows, he hated the sound of his own voice. He seems to have gotten over that! The problem with live events is that you are always restricted by time zones. On demand puts the power back in the hands of the user. They get to view the content on their timetable not yours.
Live video – Events
Events are still the primary drivers for live webcasts. AGMs where the content has to go out live, Political debates, sports etc. Most live events these days are still archived & the archives still get more views but there is a fundamental reason
why the event had to be live in the first place. Private corporate events often fall into this category. Needing to get a message out to all staff at the same time etc.
Even auctions don’t fall into this category because of the technology shortcomings. Not only can the video be behind up to a minute in some cases, it will vary widely across the network. So each viewer could be at a different point in the video none of which coincide with the live action. The only way to currently mitigate this is with multicasting or controlled networks but don’t get me started on that or I’ll bore you with my 20,000 word use case scenario.
Live Video – Citizen Journalism
This is an area that is about to explode. With the advent of the iPhone 3GS live video capabilities we are about to see a lot more video. Whether you want to or not! Sure there will be a lot of rubbish but imagine if the 3GS or something like it was available during the Iran election. Multiple live video sources. This then raises the question of how will the networks handle all this extra data?
How many other sources will archive these live vids? Anyone with a mac, just uses something like Snap and voila it’s recorded. What about peer 2 peer video? Peer 2 Peer audio is already a reality. What if I do a live screen cap of your live stream and rebroadcast it to my tribe? This is exactly what my good mate Gary “brains in his poo” Wisniewski does in Second Life. If you’re a 2nd lifer you’ll know Second Life Cable Network. Gary is the man behind it (Wiz Norberg). SLCN basically takes screencaps of what is happening live in Second Life and re-streams it back in via a quicktime / Darwin solution for the more nerdy reading this (he does it all out of Melbourne too!). Live citizen journalism is only necessary if it is an event though. Doing a live opinion piece really isn’t interesting… I keep reminding myself.
Live Video – Interactivity
Quite often if an event has to go live there is also a need for interactivity. When we worked with @undercover this was usually the case. We would produce a live webchat with Yahoo! during the artist webcast interview. The interactivity these days though could be anything from education in a live environment to competitions & promotions.
Live Video – Community
Live video certainly has it’s place with community building but the applications I’ve seen are usually still one to many. There are a few “many to many” video apps I’ve participated in over the years but with the latency issues over a multitude of hops, for multiple sources it usually ends up in tears.
However getting feedback in a live environment using video could be very powerful. I still can’t see though, how it could warrant being used as “one to many”, without an event or interactivity being a component. It will be very interesting to watch Twitcam develop here. The basic issue with live video is that you are trying to force viewers into your schedule. For me, there has to be a compelling reason to change my schedule. I don’t know about you but their are a lot of things in my life demanding my attention. I’ll watch it on demand. I’d love to know if you watch live video online and if their is an application of it that works for that I haven’t listed here.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
