HI-TRANSFER

Today we welcome Paul Kontonis of the International Academy of Web Television and Digitas to get us ready for Social Media Week, with a look at video on the web.

2012 is being touted as being THE year for web video. Between YouTube’s investment in original channels, Netflix’s original content deals, and Tom Hanks partnering with Yahoo on original programming, there is confidence that these investments help make this a game-changing year.

At the center of online video’s success is social. In fact the futures of both social and content are highly intertwined. Content needs social and social needs content. Social allows for the discovery and sharing of content and video gives people something to share and discover through their social graphs.

Social Media Week reflects the global impact of social media on all aspects of business, society, and culture, and content is no different. From the importance of quality and engaging content, to the distribution and measurement, content’s role is highlighted in a series of events listed below.

• BigScreen LittleScreen: Web Video Content Screenings and Discussion
• Social TV: Opportunities for Broadcasters & Advertisers
• My Social TV app thinks I'm my dad: Privacy Issues in the Age of Convergence
• The Mobile-Social Living Room: How Emerging Media Is Reviving the Live TV Experience
• Making Video Rock
• AktionX: We Produce our own music- Video with dogs of shame!
• How to get more views for your YouTube Videos

Guest to the YouTube Blog Paul Kontonis, International Academy of Web Television Chairman of the Board of Directors, and VP/Group Director at Digitas, recently watched “Working with Brands and Content Creators - 2012 IAWTV Awards Panel.”

We’re proud to be a part of the vibrant culture of the web, and are pleased to welcome today’s guest blogger Tim Hwang and the rest of the team from ROFLCon, an organization celebrating all the wonderful memes out there.

On October 1 in Portland, Oregon the first-ever ROFLCon Summit will address the incredible potential of the Internet, memes, funny cats, and beyond.

ROFLCon Summit is a spin-off of the wildly awesome biennial ROFLCon. It brings together the leading generators, preservers and advancers of online culture so they can talk about where it’s all headed and what it means to everyone else. Speakers will include Chris Poole from Canv.as/4Chan, Eric Fensler (the GI Joe PSA guy), Bennett Foddy (the creator of QWOP), Jason Scott, and Brewster Kahle. Here’s a useful informational video that we made to help you get a sense of what we’re all about.



Helpful, no? By this point, it’s a cliche to note that internet culture has become a major engine for pop culture. But perhaps less noted is the background role of web platforms in providing the critical infrastructure for setting these cultural engines into motion. YouTube irrevocably changed the social dynamics of the internet precisely because of its ease of share-ability, the scale of its user base, and its endless catalogue of content. Let’s take one now-famous example.

“Friday.” Released March 14, 2011.



Weeks later, Conan O’Brien had a choreographed performance “Thursday.”



Less than two months later, Glee (one of the most popular shows on TV) performed a rendition of it on FOX. (Skip to 1:25).



And there are countless examples of this, happening every day on scales large and small.

Because they contribute so much to the endless churning of internet culture, what better way to promote ROFLCon Summit than with a video?

We’re huge nerds. ROFLCon is at once a celebration of the present and future of web culture, and an homage to glorious proto-internet days gone by. It’s deeply enmeshed in a childhood forged in late nights of programming in BASIC, River City Ransom, floppy disks, and the glorious days of VHS.

Needless to say, we wanted the conference (and our videos) to reflect that. The audio drops, hiccups and poor quality of the video actually helped show how far we’ve come. And once we’ve seen where things began, we’re much more able to foresee what might happen in the future.



Join us on the internets! We will be hosting a live stream of the ROFLCon Summit event on October 1 on our website, with live updates on Twitter as well.

Tim Hwang and the ROFLCon crew recently watched, “ROFLCon Summit Promotional Video.”

This week in Howcast’s ‘Modern 101 for emerging digital filmmakers’ we’re pleased to welcome guest lecturer, Professor Compressor. Professor Compressor is one of the most revered thinkers in web video and is renowned for his ability to compress and upload videos using the proper codecs, in the correct aspect ratios, and at the precise data rate, so that they look, as he would say, ‘wunderful!’ Professor Compressor comes to us through the magic of video all the way from an Indian archipelago via Eastern Russia to share his expertise on uploading great-looking web video.



Thank you for watching Professor Compressor’s compression video! Here you can find all the pertinent notes from today’s lecture:

What is a codec?
A codec is the format in which you compress your video. It could be a variety of different formats, but the most modern, powerful, and commonly used codecs are H.264 and MPEG-4.

Why H.264 and MP4 (MPEG-4)?
H.264 and MP4 are wunderful codecs! They allow you to have a tremendous quality video at a fraction of the file size. Lets look at a theoretical example:

You’ve finished editing and have made a beautiful 1920x1080 master file. But it is in the Apple Pro Res format, and is over 2GB. This file won’t work for the web. The video codec is too large and the file size is too big. Inevitably you will end up with a low quality video, because the master file is not designed and optimized for the web.

Take that file and transcode it into an H.264. Since web players are designed to work seamlessly with H.264, you won’t have to worry about choppy or corrupted playback. And H.264 encodes your video in such a way that you won’t see a noticeable drop in image quality. What you will see is your 2GB master file shrink to less than 500MB -- perfect for the web!

Help, my footage looks stretched or squished and there are black bars bordering the footage!
This is a common problem that results from uploading an incorrect frame size. When uploading, you need to make sure the video is in the correct frame size for the player. This could be a variety of different frame sizes, varying from SD to HD, so check your website’s FAQ on uploading for instructions. The most common frame sizes are: 640x360, 640x480, 720x480, 1280x720, and 1920x1080.

This problem could also result from an incorrect Pixel Aspect Ratio. Pixel Aspect Ratio (or PAR) can be a little confusing, but the simple way to think of it is that this setting tells your program what aspect ratio to encode your video, at the pixel level. It determines how the digital information is presented and viewed onscreen. I recommend square pixels for HD, PAL for PAL, and NTSC for NTSC, though this can vary.. The best option is to play around with this setting when exporting until you get your video looking pristine.

Help, my video looks muddy and detail is lost. My text looks almost pixelated and the video is generally very low quality.
Low image quality is usually due to a low data rate when exporting your video. When exporting your video, you’re given many options; one of these is data rate. Setting the data rate to automatic will usually result in the best image. It is also highly recommended to do a multi-pass encode. It will take longer than a single-pass encode, but it will result in a much smoother video with higher image quality.

Well, that was a lot of information! Digest it, experiment, and start uploading those WUNDERFUL videos!

Nardeep Khurmi, Howcast’s Post Production Specialist (a.k.a Professor Compressor) recently watched "Pygmy Jerboa".