Online Video - The Beginning of A Series
We've been producing online video for more than a decade - and it's so nice that it's finally widely accessible. That wasn't the case before, when you had to be a techno sleuth and equipped with early adopter type of gear to either create it or view it.
Today, thanks to YouTube and iTunes and the plethora of online video services that have popped onto monitors large and small, wired and wireless, online video is on the way to ubiquity: Always there for you.
Want to make oline video? You'll need about digital video camera, a computer, and Internet access. You can get started for well under $1000- and that's with new gear.
Some training and talent would help, but aren't essential.
This is, as you would expect, creating considerable fragmentation and consternation in the video production and delivery business. I mean, if children can do it, what does the future hold for professional broadcasters?
You could have asked the same question about some of the disruption brought about by the Industrial Revolution, and the answer would have been about the same: The times the are a'changin'.
Some of the forces at play include the downward cost spiral of production equipment - hardware and software, more people then having access to production and distribution capabilities previously owned - for all intents and purposes and thanks almost entirely to the previously prohibitive cost structure - by the traditional broadcasters, and the incessant fractionalization of the distribution channels thanks to digital TV and the Internet.
In addition to the online video archives - which is what YouTube and iTunes are - there's also streaming video. Thousands of people are broadcasting live - right now - as you read this. Everything from personal lifecasts to puppy cams to high school sports to local ministries to municipal council meetings to TV broadcasts - and from all around the world.
This is the beginning of an exploration of that online video world - the one that we find ourselves spending more of our time in.
-G
