Here’s and interesting post from Robert X. Cringley about a rise in P2P use to handle the growth of video over IP.

All-in-all it’s a pretty good post, but it makes the same mistaken assumption media pundits always seem to make–they assume that the drive to watch Desperate Housewives, Brady Bunch re-runs and other commercialTV/Movie content on a computer/electronic device is what will blow video over IP wide open.

I don’t think so.

Back in the early 90’s these pundits were saying the same thing about commercial print content (newspapers/magazines/books) driving adoption of the worldwide web. But as we all know now, it’s the small time amatuer stuff that makes up the lion’s share of compelling, innovative and entertaining content.

The same will be true for video over IP. It’s not about watching That 70’s Show on Fox from your iPod; it’s about watching those 70 shows from foxy amatuers.

Just got an email from dadler pointing me to this article at BetaNews. Seems Microsoft is working on building streaming media capabilities into MS Media Center so you can stream your recordings from your media center to other devices.

Dadler asked me if we’re worried and I said “nope”.

Microsoft has some big media empire aspirations so I’m guessing that by the time they release this it’ll have all kinds of DRM on it to prevent you from unauthorized streaming of copyrighted recordings and make content producers happy. (Who knows, they may even introduce some ITunes-like video download feature that’ll let you buy a TV episode and stream it out to your laptop or something.)

Plus, I don’t think Microsoft is going to let people broadcast to multiple viewers from the Media Center (even if it’s your own video) since that kind of streaming ability would cut into their server-based biz.

We, of course, are all about letting you stream your media (as in media you own and have the right to broadcast) to as many people as you like from your PC. As such, I think Olivelink will do quite nicely next to Microsoft’s stuff on the Media Center (it does now).

If I were Sling, Orb, or one of the other 1-to-1 streaming services I might be worried though.

Om Malik had a post yesterday titled “Google, You Tube & Dark Side Of Online Video” in which he wondered if there was really any way to stop people from posting unauthorized copies of TV shows, movies and other content on sites like Google Video and You Tube.

My two cents: It’s a problem, but not a big problem.

Let’s face it, the video quality on these services isn’t all that great. Pictures are dinky, skippy and grainy– really no comparison to the show as it appeared on TV, in the theater or even as it would off a DVD or hard disc on a local computer.

So, why then are people posting this stuff? Because it’s new. There’s still a fair amount of novelty in being able to post video to Google, You Tube, et al and coming back a while later to watch it yourself or see how many others have watched it. Most people don’t know how or don’t want to take the time to make a decent video themselves, so they just grab something off the boobtube, DVD, etc., and post that instead.

Will it last? Will it become a big issue? No.

The novelty of posting video will wear off for the vast majority of amatuers and the professional content creators will clue in on how to make money offering their content cheap or free the same way they did with over-air broadcasting (ITunes anyone?). The result will be “real” content with much better quality, convenience and ease of use than is delivered through the amatuers grabbing it from their Tivo and sticking it on the web. And as the market has shown time and again, when the cost is (nearly) the same, people will choose quality and ease of use.

At that point content on You Tube et al will become almost entirely vapid home video, goofy machinema and lowbrow comedy bits — basically the sort of stuff everyone does the first time they get a camcorder. Amusing once, but that’s it.

Not much for professional content creators to worry about.

Question:
I’ve got plenty of upload bandwidth, but I don’t think my video is streaming at the highest quality possible. How do I improve it?

Answer:
If you’re behind a firewall or NAT Router and have administrative access, create a policy/rule (or enable port forwarding) that allows OliveProjector to run on any port between 55501 and 55509.

OliveProjector will work without any special ports open, but it has to work a little harder than if a port is dedicated to it. If you dedicate a port (or enable port forwarding) for Olivelink, you’ll find that the streaming quality of your video will be higher than without.

If you’re uncertain how to create a firewall rule or enable port forwarding on your router, please check your product documentation. (We’d list instructions here, but each manufacturer is a little different, so it would be a very, very long post.)

I don’t know if this is news, as I think many people intuitively understand this, but Jakob Neilsen’s Alertbox has a post on a study of what people do with their eyes while watching video online. And guess what? It turns out people watching video of talking heads online are easily distracted by text and other elements on a website.

Well duh. This is harldy limited to online video. I’ve always found text crawlers on CNN and other TV news casts distracting. Even talking to people face-to-face, you’re likely to have your eye drawn away by elements moving in the background. Let’s face it, unless you have some personal connection/attraction to the person you’re looking at, you’re probably going to look at something more visually interesting every so often.

The article makes some suggestions about how to make your video more interesting, which seems to boil down to two things: 1) avoid distracting elements, and 2) show interesting stuff. I don’t think this is particularly insightful, but it’s good to remember. Of course, Olivelink helps eliminate the distractions because it runs in its own Viewer window, generally at much larger sizes than web-based video. But as for making the video interesting, well, you’re on your own there.

Find via Slashdot.

Greetings Olivelink users!

Well, we just couldn’t wait anymore. I’m pleased to announce that Olivelink v .80 has been released into the wild!

So what’s new in Olivelink v .80?

1) Better port handling - no more messing with firewalls, port configuration, router admin, etc. Just click, and start broadcasting or watching video.

2) Better status monitoring - Now you can see whether your projector is broadcasting or not. No more guesswork!

3) Better performance - Olivelink is now better, faster, and stronger (okay, maybe it’s not bionic. But it is definitely better and faster).

4) Flag your Projector as Public or Private - Public projectors will be viewable by everyone with Olivelink Viewer. Private projectors are viewable by invitation only.

5) Add descriptions of your video - now you can add short descriptions of your media broadcast to help your viewers identify the type of content.

So what do you need to do to get v .80?

For Beta v.75 Users:
Do nothing. Olivelink will automatically update the next time you run Olivelink Viewer or Olivelink Projector.

For Alpha v.1 Users:
Uninstall the Alpha version from the Windows Control Panel. Download Olivelink Projector and/or Viewer from the Olivelink website. (You can use your existing nickname and password.)

That’s it! Happy broadcasting with Olivelink!

Users can now create an HREF and link to an OliveProjector video. Clicking on the link will launch OliveViewer on the User’s local system and automatically run the selected Projector.
The syntax for the Olivelink HREF is as follows:

<a href=”olivelink://ProjectorName=your projector name”>link text</a>

So, if your Projector name is “San Diego Zoo”, your link is formatted as follows:

<a href=”olivelink://ProjectorName=San Diego Zoo”>San Diego Zoo video</a>

and appears as follows in a web broswer:

San Diego Zoo video

The syntax is not case sensitive and space are allowed in the Projector name.

Notes, Caveats, etc.: At this point, there’s no error checking to make sure that the user actually has OliveViewer installed. So if someone without OliveViewer installed
clicks the link, they will get a system error. As a result you will want to make sure to note in your webpage, Blog, email, etc. that the video requires OliveViewer to be installed.
Feel free to link to the free OliveViewer download page on our site (http://www.olivelink.com/downloads/), or place OliveViewer directly on your own site for download.
Redistribution is okay, and the file is fairly small (840KB).

Problem:
When preparing my video to show with OliveProjector, I get the following message: “No codec is installed for this media type.”

By default the Windows Media encoder supports the following media formats:

Video Formats:

• Windows Media (.AVI or .WMV)
• Mpeg (.MPG or .MPEG)

Audio Formats:

• Windows Media(.WMA or .WAV)
• Mpeg (.MP3)

If you downloaded your movie to your computer using the software supplied with your camera, please ensure that the download format is one of the above. If you have created a video using a 3rd party software package, please make sure that your output or encoding format is one of the above.

You guys are sick.

It was no more than 10 minute after my last post, when my in box started getting filled with emails that said things like “I can watch porn with Olivelink? Where?!!!!!”

First of all, yes, some people do use Olivelink to broadcast adult-oriented video. Those I’ve seen (which I watched strictly for research purposes) are done by amatuers — usually in their homes (okay, and one public park). Since there’s no restrictions on how you use Olivelink (other than you can’t do anything illegal, like broadcast copyrighted content to which you don’t have the rights), it’s only natural that some people will use it for this.

Second, no, I can’t give you the Projector names of people broadcasting adult content — even if I wanted to. Projector broadcasts are encrypted and private unless the Projector owner specifically flags them as “public” or publishes the name of their Projector on a website, blog, bulletin board, etc. Sorry.

The best I can recommend is that you surf the web and look for people who are using Olivelink Projector to broadcast adult content. (I have no doubt that those of you who asked have a good idea where to start looking.)

Now if you have some personal adult content that you’d like to share, by all means, let me know. I’ll be happy to share your Projector name with anyone who asks (purely for philanthropic and research purposes, of course).

Cruising through my Slashdot feeds, I caught this post by Cmdr Taco talking about using Skype and Yahoo Messenger to re-broadcast video from other sources over the Internet.

The post actually references this one (Editor’s note: This post appears to have been removed) where the author theorizes that the ability to stream video over Skype could be to Hollywood what Kazaa or Limewire are to the music biz.

I doubt it.

Here at Olivelink we’ve been giving people the ability to stream media from their PCs at far higher quality and to far more people than you can with Skype, IM video, or any number of other tools that are out there. I’ve personally had conversations with several thousand people about it, and I’ve come to the conclusion that personal media streaming isn’t much of a threat to Hollywood for several reasons:

1. Quality - Video isn’t Music. By comparison, video files are huge. It’s easy to stream high quality sound. High quality video is a different story. Most people - even with a really fast broadband connection - just don’t have that much upstream bandwidth. In order to stream (as opposed to download like Bittorrent does), your video has to be downsampled to a bitrate that your broadband connection can handle. Here in the U.S. for DSL that’s around 150-200kbps and cable around 500kbps. In many parts of Europe an Asia it’s closer to 100kbps. That translates to a dinky, fuzzy, and often choppy picture. Not much of a way to experience a good TV show or movie.
2. Reliability - Smooth video streaming is difficult even with low traffic volumes, clean lines and a dedicated media server. If you’ve watched any amount of video online you know this. The video starts streaming suddenly stops, chops or jumps ahead. From desktop PCs it’s even harder. Not only do you have variable line quality, but you’ve also got firewalls, NAT routers, filters, ISP-based proxies and so on. Sometimes it can be handled elegantly (Olivelink engineers do an admirable job of this), but a lot of times it can’t. Nobody wants to be watching “the big game”, suddenly have their video stop, only to sputter and resume a few seconds(minutes) later after you’ve missed a big play.
3. Convenience - Let’s face it, the computer isn’t the best way to watch video. Especially extended video. Most people don’t have a couch in front of their PC. It’s uncomfortable, all the other things running (email, web browser, games, etc. etc.) are distracting, and the sound just isn’t all that good. Most PCs come standard with a DVD ROM these days, but how many people are sitting down with their laptop and a bowl of popcorn ready to watch a newly released DVD? I’ll be the number is in the low single digit percentile.
4. Scalability - As I mentioned before, audio is a heck of a lot smaller than video. If you’ve ever been on a group call on Skype and suddenly heard people sound like they were talking from the bottom of a barrel, you know that streaming audio to multiple locations and keeping it clear can be difficult. Now try it with something 10 or 20 times larger. One person streaming a small video to another might be ok, but it falls apart in no time when a second or third viewer is added to the mix. Our Olivelink software does a pretty good job even with 100 or so viewers, but it’s taken more than a year and thousands and thousands of man hours from mathematicians and engineers to develop the monster algorithms and code to do it. And all Olivelink does is stream media. We’re not trying handle voice calls, IM chat, emoticons and all the other things Skype, IM, etc do. These are just not good systems for mass broadcasting of video.

So if these personal streaming media tools aren’t good for distributing Hollywood blockbusters, live sporting events, or other commercial content, what are they good for? Well, it’s our experience that most people use these tools to show off personal video - birthday parties, vacations, video or audio podcasts, and yes, even a fair amount of amatuer “adult content”. Basically, shorter broadcasts that are of personal interest to the viewer.

Sure, when we all have 10 gigbit connections to the Internet and my Hi Def TV is plugged into it, then Hollywood might have something to worry about. But right now - and even 5 years from now - Skype video, Olivelink, or any other personal streaming media is not a threat.