Video Articles

Last month, I told you that Google is putting additional efforts into instructing publishers of the benefits of  Google’s video sitemaps.  It is nice to see that Google is also running some PPC ads to promote Video SEO.  Since the start of ReelSEO, I’ve been a proponent of video sitemaps and I have always felt [...]

It’s the weekend and so we here at ReelSEO want to wind down and take it easy. Something came across our desk late Friday that talked about 5min.com and Answers.com teaming up. The deal is that 1,000 questions on Answers.com have been done up as videos. So I thought, what better way to relax than [...]

Last week, we held our second ReelSEO webinar event titled, “Dive Into HTML5 Video – Learn From The Masters.” The webinar was a great success and we had more than 1100 attendees join us for the first hour with more than 500 remaining online past the hour as we extended the Q&A session an additional [...]

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another Viral Video Marketing Round Up. This week we saw some truly exceptional viral stories, and I’m looking forward to discussing them and breaking down what helped them get so popular. Without further ado, let’s begin: Viral Wedding Last year, around this time, we saw the JK [...]

I interview Justin Foster, host of the 2010 Video Commerce Summit held in Seattle this past week. Justin talks with me about the reasons for the growth of video in e-commerce, the challenges to overcome, some key issues of discussion and debate, and projections for where the technology and human behavior around video will lead [...]

Mark and I are still putting the finishing touches on a video interview we hope to share very soon, and he noticed something interesting when uploading a test version to YouTube:  The time limit has been increased.  He was able to easily upload a 13-minute edit without any problems.  A quick check of Google News [...]

Last week there were reports that the Old Spice viral marketing campaign was a failure because sales had dropped 7%.  I called shenanigans on that conclusion in a post you can read here. Now this week there’s a rash of stories about how the Old Spice campaign is a success because it has increased sales.  [...]

We tend to write about video marketing, news, and tips.  But every now and then it’s good to take a short break and just enjoy a fun video.  And last night I stumbled upon a video that I just had to share.  It had 8,000 views, having been uploaded on the 25th of this month.  [...]

I interview Dr. BJ Fogg, Director of Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab, on what insights he has to share on the opportunities and challenges with effective video in e-commerce.  Dr. Fogg also discusses (what I admittedly characterize) the problem mentality of basing success models for Internet video based on how “viral” they may go, rather [...]

comScore has released the monthly report on who does what, where on the web, commonly referred to as the comScore Media Metrix. The report, as usual, looks at top web properties, ad networks and the changes in the traffic on those properties.While the travel sector scored highly, online games rose and teens jumped online with [...]

This week GUADEC, the important meeting of the open source GNOME community, becomes the first event worldwide to be streamed live in WebM.

WebM is a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone. It replaces Theora as the preferred free format for HTML5 video. Flumotion, a leading company in online video streaming technology and services, is streaming the GUADEC conference from July 28—30th live in the new WebM video format.

Flumotion is on the cutting edge of open video streaming, and frequently demonstrates the agility of open source development. Within 20 hours of VP8’s release, Fluendo integrated the new codec into its streaming software. 28 hours later, Flumotion provided the first demo of a live stream in WebM.

OVA has partnered with Flumotion on the Filmmaker Summit at Slamdance and the Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig. We’re pleased to announce that we will be working with Flumotion to offer a WebM stream of the upcoming Open Video Conference, this October 1-2 in New York City.

Copyright infringement is still one of the biggest headaches that video hosting sites deal with on a regular basis–you might have heard about a long legal battle that YouTube spent millions to win.  Most video portals, like YouTube, have gone to great lengths to demonstrate a willingness and ability to help fight copyright infringement by [...]

It’s not quite Google Analytics, yet. But it is certainly a step in the right direction. While we originally had some implementation problems over at Gamers Daily News, TubeMogul was more than helpful in getting everything working properly with us. InPlay offers you a good set of analytics, not only for your content but also [...]

Not many people know this, but Zara is a very unique fashion company compared to other mega fashion brands. Instead of focusing on inventing the next clothing item people want to buy , Zara built an advanced technology that can bias or push their entire clothing line production in blazing speed to meet what  real [...]

ReelSEO publisher Mark Robertson was a featured speaker this past week at the 2010 Video Commerce Summit held Seattle, Washington. We’ve included here Mark’s full presentation titled, Building on the Success of Video with New PPC and SEO Strategies, which is also available on Slideshare.

Everyone from book publishers to magazine concerns to TV networks have been trying to figure out their tablet and iPad strategies. And now the premium cable network Starz partnered with book publisher Penguin in a deal that helps Starz promote an original series and helps Penguin promote its author Ken Follet’s bestseller The Pillars of [...]

It’s time again for another round of Viral Video Nostradamus, where I act like I can predict which brand new viral offerings will actually get popular.  There are several sites now that are attempting to play the role of viral soothsayer, from Bitly.tv to the new PopScreen.  They have all kinds of metrics and tools [...]

Blip.tv have taken interactive pre-roll ads to a whole new level in their bid to help Wieden & Kennedy get NCAA Football 11 in the public gamer consciousness. They created a click-to-download pre-roll mechanism that set the demo to download on the Xbox 360 console.The Click-to-download mechanic takes some extra steps out of the process [...]

Every three years, the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress meets to determine exceptions to the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. What’s anti-circumvention? It’s the part of the US digital copyright law that prohibits breaking digital locks on content, such as DRM and content scrambling. Typically, breaking these locks is a federal offense—even if the locks are being broken in the service of a perfectly legal creative process, like video remix.

Yesterday morning, the Librarian of Congress issued its ruling to announce several important (and broad) exemptions to the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The Register of Copyrights and Librarian of Congress designated six particular exemptions, though the first has the most direct effect on video creators:

(1) Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances:

(i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students;
(ii) Documentary filmmaking;
(iii) Noncommercial videos

In other words, college professors, film and media studies students, documentarians, and noncommercial artists can now legally use technology like Handbrake to bypass DVD encryption systems and capture sample video clips.

Though this is a huge and welcome step in the right direction, the ruling limits the excerpts to “short portions”—a purposely undefined term that implies fairly short clips—and is a sort of last resort exception; users can rip DVDs if utilizing another method, such as filming a screen, is reasonably out of the question (MPAA argued against this ripping in its presentation to the copyright office last year, claiming that educators should instead record clips off a TV screen with a videocamera). The ruling also only covers “criticism or comment,” just two of the factors that tend to characterize fair use (news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research are a bit more attenuated). Though the noncommercial exemption tends to cover most instances related to online and educational video, many people were left out of this group of exempted users.

Other major exemptions announced this week permit the jailbreaking of smartphones (such as the iPhone) to allow for external applications and the connection to other wireless networks; bypassing video game DRM for security research; bypassing encryption on computer programs protected by obsolete dongles; and circumvention of ebook DRM for text-to-speech purposes when no other text-to-speech alternative is available.

Requests that were considered but not approved included bypassing DRM on streaming video, bypassing CSS on DVDs in order to play on Linux machines, and bypassing DRM on media and software that depends on an authentication server that has been disabled.

These changes are great news, though their limitations are evident. And Linux users are still treated as second-class consumers of media. Still, it will be interesting to see how these rules play out until the next DMCA review three years from now.

For further reading, this quick piece by Nick Bramble, fellow at the Yale ISP, brings up further questions and calls for explanations regarding many of the changes. Read EFF’s press release here.

Check out the official, longer description (pdf) for explanations behind the ruling.

Photo by 37Hz on flickr

Got two minutes? Want to help protect the net, and have a chance to meet face-to-face with lawmakers?

“America’s Got Net” is a nationwide YouTube-based competition asking a burning question—why do you love the Internet? How has it empowered you, helped you start a business, serve your community, find a job (or a spouse!), connect with others, participate in society and democracy? With net neutrality on the line, everything you love about the Internet is at risk. Make a video for America’s Got Net so Public Knowledge (and other net-neutrality defenders on the hill) can carry your message directly to lawmakers.

It’s easy to join in—just make a video that’s under 2 minutes explaining why you love the internet, upload it onto YouTube, and tag it “#AGN2010”. That’s it! Submissions will be accepted until midnight PST on July 31, 2010. Winners will be judged based on the power of their story as well as creativity, coherence of message, and potential impact of message. For further details about submission, please refer to AGN’s info page.

Videos that are 720p or higher will be automatically transcoded to WebM!