The RIAA and MPAA have been complaining about piracy of music and movies for years. They've sued individual users for exorbitant amounts of money and were a huge part of the driving force of SOPA & PIPA (some would say they were the only driving force). Their profits have been cut into and that's stealing, and they're going to make sure that anyone caught pirating content will end up receiving as much punishment as possible. Unless, of course, the piracy culprit happens to be the record labels themselves.

Yesterday, TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid published a fantastic piece exposing the piracy police as the very pirates they rail against. You see, Kincaid had been at the Sundance Film Festival. While Sundance started out as an "indie" festival--and even the films shown are still "indie"--it seems to be a very corporate environment these days, with all sorts of brands hosting parties, setting up booths, or giving out goodie bags.

One such brand was VEVO--you know the top YouTube Partner channel that is a join collaboration between the major record labels and YouTube. In fact, VEVO was created, in part, to fight piracy in online video by creating an official home for music video content.

According to Kincaid, the VEVO booth at Sundance had some TV's set up... showing an illegal live stream of an NFL game. Yes, the company owned by the record labels was broadcasting pirated video content. Here's video of the event in question:

Click here to watch the video.

For their part, the company is blaming a guest at the Sundance booth:

A guest of our lounge asked for an NFL game to be aired. We said no. There was a laptop hooked up to VEVO.com that fed into the large TV screens around the bar. Unfortunately, the laptop was easily accessible to the public. That was our mistake for not making sure the laptop was more secure. While VEVO staff was in other areas of the venue, the game was put on – via a website transmitting ESPN's broadcast of the NFL game – without our permission or knowledge.

I like VEVO... I like what they're trying to do and the destination they're creating for music fans... but my general affection for their mission doesn't change the fact that it was pretty negligent to get caught pirating something. And whether it was a VEVO employee or a consumer seems like a pretty fine line to draw, if you ask me.

Video creators and marketers already know how murky the copyright waters can be... and this kind of thing won't make them any clearer.

Chronicle's high view count for its various trailers online did not translate into a super-huge hit, but the movie performed well above expectations, as did the view-deprived Woman in Black.  Those movies each made over $20 million last weekend and continued a winning streak for the Hollywood box office.  The movies could not have been more different in how they used online marketing and yet, they were neck-and-neck this past weekend.  This week, we see the return of Denzel Washington, George Lucas gives us a 3D Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, the Journey to the Center of the Earth is now just a Journey in its sequel, and Hollywood makes a Nicholas Sparks story without Nicholas Sparks.

Safe House Features The Commanding Denzel Washington We All Love

Safe House looks to be your typical double-cross, twisty thriller, with Denzel Washington as a rogue agent sent to a safe house and Ryan Reynolds as the CIA guy who sees his people using illegal methods to question him, leading to a daring escape.  Thus, who is the real bad guy? and explosions.

Click here to watch the video.

But still, it looks pretty darn good doesn't it?  The official trailer has over 8 million views, which is a great sign considering that's one of the top view counts I've seen this year.  With Chronicle the view count was probably high because of the "wow look at that" factor, but Safe House is your everyday thriller, so it will be interesting to see if this movie is huge this weekend.  Bare minimum we're looking at over $20 million this weekend, which is par for the course this year so far.

Universal Pictures has a huge blowout of content to watch online.  Here's a featurette with Washington and Reynolds talking about their characters and the story:

Click here to watch the video.

And like a million TV spots focusing on different aspects of the story.  They had two Super Bowl ads, one called Deception:

Click here to watch the video.

And another called Home:

Click here to watch the video.

The Vow Unites Past Nicholas Sparks Actors For Valentine's Day Drama

Every guy knows Nicholas Sparks.  He's the guy, consciously or unconsciously, men curse in the night for writing impossible romantic dramas that many women eat up and think that's how romance is supposed to be.  He's behind stuff like The Notebook, Dear John, and Message in a Bottle. Well, this weekend, Hollywood has made a Sparks-like tale called The Vow for Valentine's Day starring The Notebook's Rachel McAdams and Dear John's Channing Tatum.  It's about a married couple who get into an accident and McAdams gets amnesia and can't remember her husband.  And they aren't shy about using that Sparks connection in the trailer:

Click here to watch the video.

The various trailers for The Vow put the view count over 5 million.  Guys, you're screwed.  This should be a pretty big hit overall, especially since this is considered Valentine's weekend.

Here's a cute clip of Tatum feeding McAdams chocolates:

Click here to watch the video.

And a "wedding memories" clip:

Click here to watch the video.

Sony Pictures has given the movie a social media connection by giving fans a chance to be a part of a fan video:

Click here to watch the video.

Journey 2 Is A 3D Adventure That Looks Embarrassing For All Involved

Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, takes over for Brendan Fraser in the sequel of the adaptation of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth called Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.  What's strange about this sequel is that the original Verne material, The Mysterious Island, was a sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but the book itself did not share all that much in common with that story, either.  Ah, liberties.

The official trailer doesn't have many views, but that probably won't matter since this is directed at kids:

Click here to watch the video.

The trailer is actually good, but then you see a clip like this:

Click here to watch the video.

Poor Luis Guzman.

There is also a behind-the-scenes featurette:

Click here to watch the video.

I think this will actually do some pretty good business since kid movies have been few and far between for a couple of months.  The 2008 Journey actually became a surprise hit, and it was also one of the early 3D successes that led to 3D becoming more of a thing, better or worse.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Gets The 3D Treatment

I know very few people who enjoyed the Star Wars prequels.  Myself, I kind of liked Revenge of the Sith, but it wasn't nearly what it could have been had the other two movies not sucked so horribly.  Then we saw the evisceration of those movies by Red Letter Media, the extremely funny reviews of those movies that point out exactly why we hated them so much.  Still, I suppose there will be people who feel the need to watch this in 3D.  But I'm betting against this being a breakout re-release like The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast.

Here's the re-release trailer:

Click here to watch the video.

And here's the first trailer for the movie when it was originally released:

Click here to watch the video.

And trailer #2:

Click here to watch the video.

"Wipe them out...all of them."  You see all that Darth Maul and all that action, and you shake your head.  How did this turn out so badly?

The Take For The Weekend

This should be Safe House's weekend, but I would not be surprised if The Vow gives it a close run, if not beat it.  But that sneaky Star Wars...no, it can't win.  It just can't.  Truly a big weekend of choice at the movies and it wouldn't be shocking to see any of these come out on top.  I'm picking Safe House.

I like analytics, analytics are cool. If they were a hat they'd be a fez, because fezzes are cool. If they were a piece of neck wear, they'd be a bow tie, because bow ties are cool, or at least that's what Doctor Who has to say about those clothing bits. What has all that got to do with what I'm writing about? Not much, I was just trying to stress how cool analytics are and more importantly how cool the new Vid.ly analytics are.

Encoding.com and Vid.ly are about to drop the word on some new analytics features for Vid.ly Pro customers. How did I get in the know? Because I'm cool, like the fez and the bow tie.

Seriously now, the new Vid.ly stats can be broken down over a date range, by mobile device and browser all per URL (that's the Vid.ly universal URL mind you). You can also group URLs into a report or get one for the whole account, as in, all of your videos.

“Video analytics has been the most highly-anticipated feature request since we launched Vid.ly Pro this past summer,” said Jeff Malkin, president at Encoding.com. “The new Vid.ly analytics package gives our customers powerful information about the viewing of their videos, providing specific insight into their customer base, which helps them make better decisions on content development.”

That is not really a surprise to me Jeff! I mean, who doesn't want to know the numbers of people viewing their video on specific platforms? Well, the cool thing about Vid.ly is that, really, it doesn't matter, because Vid.ly serves to everything with that one little URL (that's why Vid.ly is way cooler than a fez or a bow tie or the combination of those two. Perhaps even cooler than a Stetson).

The new Vid.ly analytics package provides an analysis of Vid.ly viewership data across 6,000 mobile devices and browsers.  The aggregate analytics on Vid.ly views has revealed interesting industry trends, such as a dramatic gain in mobile video viewing from Android OS-based devices versus Apple iOS devices.

Now, Vid.ly Pro users can tap into the power of the API call “GetStatistics” to access data on a customer’s single Vid.ly URL, a group of URLs, or all URLs, for any date interval. The API allows customers to customize the real-time data and easily integrate it into existing systems and media workflow.

Cool List of Stuff in GetStatistics API Call

• Vendor  (Desktop or Mobile)
• Model  (Mobile Device Manufacturer, Apple)
• Platform  (Mobile Brand, iPhone )
• OS (Operating System, Windows)
• Browser (Browser, Firefox)
• Browser Ver (Browse,  9.0.1)
• Hits (Number of video plays)

Oh wait, they snuck in one other cool feature:

...we have just also released a new API call UpdateMedia  This function allows users to update the source media for a vid.ly that has already been created.  This scenario occurs when a vid.ly is published or hardcoded and the preference is to reuse the same url as opposed to creating a new one.  This function also supports our new vanity URL feature which allows customers to reserve a vanity vid.ly, for example vid.ly/obama and continue to update it with new and relevant video content.

Just another reason that Vid.ly is one of the coolest bits of online video delivery tech around.

I always send various videos that I collect throughout the week for this column to friends and family, and it usually gives me a pretty good indication of whether or not the column has a good cross-section of different video types and tones. And this week, one video stood tall above all the others as a universal crowd pleaser--but you'll have to read on to find out which one it is.

Gifted & Talented

Everyone's special in their own way--at least that's what they taught me growing up. But some people are definitely more special than others. Like this Jeremy Lin kid, who is a pretty good basketball player, for someone that didn't get a scholarship and went undrafted:

Click here to watch the video.

There have been a great many online videos about our current president. This is probably my favorite Obama-related online video ever:

Click here to watch the video.

Here's the universal crowd-pleaser... I've yet to find one person who doesn't enjoy this video. And that makes sense after all, because when a video is titled, "Ping Pong Baby," you almost have a moral obligation to watch it, don't you?

Click here to watch the video.

A year or so ago I shared a video in this column of a trio of talented musician children, led by the meanest banjo player I've ever seen. The kids have continued growing in popularity--even appearing on Letterman--and had another viral hit this week with some more great finger pickin':

Click here to watch the video.

If I could sing well enough, I would definitely pursue a career as one of those guys that makes acapella recordings of famous songs... like this incredible Simpsons theme song:

Click here to watch the video.

Branded Video Goodness

Brands are growing increasingly interested in creating content, as opposed to traditional ads. They want their video to be the destination content, not just a promo tacked onto the destination content. And as ads begin to look more and more like entertainment, we're ending up with some pretty excellent online video to enjoy.

Like Collapsing Towers, which aims to spread the message about sustainable and renewable energy through a little destruction-combined-with-animation:

Click here to watch the video.

Kia Motors America doesn't have a ton of pride--they simply can't... otherwise how do you explain the video entitled "5 hours of Adriana Lima":

Click here to watch the video.

Big Cat Rescue should be given an award. We should call it the "does the most creative online video marketing work with the least amount of budget" award. They're just a nonprofit, trying to increase awareness about big game cats, with a video asking the simple question, "Do Big Cats Purr?"

Click here to watch the video.

We knew branded video could be entertaining... and humorous. But did you know it could be inspiring as well?

Click here to watch the video.

They may not have won the post-Super Bowl fan polls for best commercial, but they definitely got a viral hit out of it:

Click here to watch the video.

Old Spice skipped the big game, and will still get more traction out of their online video ads than most Super Bowl advertisers, so long as they keep putting out crowd-pleasing weirdness like this:

Click here to watch the video.

Jimmy Kimmel likes asking his audience to play pranks on people and then film it--he's already ruined Christmas for some kids by asking parents to pretend they got them lame gifts. Last week he asked football fans to pull the plug (literally) on their televisions at a crucial moment in the Super Bowl... and film it:

Click here to watch the video.

Trailers for Movies Nobody Asked For

Hollywood has been making some great superhero movies lately. So it's kind of a surprise to see them already remaking one of hte most successful superhero franchises in film history just ten years after the original. Here's the trailer for the totally unnecessary The Amazing Spiderman, which actually looks pretty good.

Click here to watch the video.

When word came down that Matt Damon wasn't going to do anymore Bourne movies, I was a little sad. I love the Bourne films. But then came notice that the studio was going to continue the franchise with a new actor playing a new character (then why still call it Bourne?). And just like the Spiderman trailer above it... this movie is completely unnecessary, and this trailer is pretty dang cool.

Click here to watch the video.

Marvel Comics fans will cry foul that I'm suggesting "The Avengers" is a movie no one asked for--many of them were asking for it for years. But hey... I needed a third trailer to keep this category from being too small:

Click here to watch the video.

Grab Bag

When all your friday videos can't fit neatly into pre-selected categories... you make up one called "Grab Bag" and throw the leftovers in there.

Like the Ghost Pepper Challenge, which looks rather excrutiating.

Click here to watch the video.

Ultimate Tazer Ball sounds like a terrible idea for a sport. And now that we have online video, we know that it looks every bit as terrible as it sounds.

Click here to watch the video.

In Alpena Michigan, a tiny town, there is a weather man that has long been famous to local residents. This week, he became known to the rest of the world as well when video of his weather reports went viral:

Click here to watch the video.

Speaking of weather... have you ever wondered what 14 years of weather radar data would look like? No? I could have sworn you did. Oh well, here you go anyway:

Click here to watch the video.

Why is Will Ferrell announcing the starting lineups at an NBA game? And why is it happening in New Orleans? Don't ask too many questions, just enjoy the zany hilarity:

Click here to watch the video.

If the creator of this video started out trying to make something that is both entertaining and creepy... he succeeded.

Click here to watch the video.

Psycho Siri is a short film that shows a darker side to the iPhone personal assistant:

Click here to watch the video.

On a recent trip to LA, I had a chance to talk to Sarah Penna, the co-founder of Big Frame. Big Frame is a YouTube management company, working with online video talent to grow their careers. They have over 30 channels, collectively bringing in an average of 87 million video views each month. We touched on several topics, but one of the common themes was advertising, particularly with big brands being excited to get involved with up and coming talent.

Big Frame Connects YouTube Artists With Advertisers

Here's a good quote from the conversation with Sarah illustrating what I'm talking about:

We’ve actually been very lucky that the advertisers that we work with are really excited to learn.  Even really big clients like Sony, McDonalds, Garnier, Coca Cola, they’ve really been willing to work with us on the creative side of things because they do understand that this is our world, this is the talent’s world, this is at the end of the day the audience is the most important thing.

The dollars that we are getting are marketing dollars so it’s really about brand awareness, it’s about aligning the brand with cool, hip, innovative media that is targeting whatever demographic that they want.

You can view the entire transcript by clicking below the video.

Click here to watch the video.

Old Milwaukee Beer and Funny Or Die put Will Ferrell in a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl, only to seen in the North Platte, Nebraska market.  No doubt, the move was made to buy a cheaper Super Bowl ad.  But the unusual nature of the ad and Will Ferrell's involvement easily turned it into a viral video, one that will be seen by millions before it's over, and isn't that why brands buy advertising space during the Super Bowl anyway?  Old Milwaukee turned their commercial into a story all its own, and it was picked up by Deadspin the very next day.

Will Ferrell & Old Milwaukee Create A Viral Super Bowl Sensation For Little Money

It is, of course, a strange ad:

Click here to watch the video.

It's Will Ferrell walking through a field in his boxers and opening a can of Old Milwaukee.  Just as he gets in the middle of the name, he's cut off.  This is the campaign Old Milwaukee has been running for a couple of months now, featuring Ferrell in different small towns.  The first one was in Davenport, Iowa:

Click here to watch the video.

Then he did one in Terre Haute, Indiana:

Click here to watch the video.

I'm not sure if the North Platte ad was shot in North Platte or not, but that would be clever.  The North Platte market is a little over 15,000 homes.  But it doesn't matter, Old Milwaukee had a Will Ferrell ad and the word would get out quickly, and they'd end up getting a huge amount of views without the record-breaking 111.3 million viewers who watched the Super Bowl.  They didn't spend the $3.5 million that everyone else who advertised nationally did, yet they have an ad that reached a significant audience.

Content wise, it's not a great commercial.  It's funny to see Ferrell get cut off mid-pitch, but overall it's got almost nothing.  Still, due to its unusual delivery and the fact that Ferrell is involved, the ad is extraordinarily effective, and that's what matters.

Previously, I wrote an article discussing the benefits of a green screen video production. However, once you have determined that green screen is the way to go - how do you plan for it? Well, do not underestimate the importance of Pre-Production when shooting green screen. It's easy in the chaos of planning a shoot to overlook these basic steps when heading in to a green screen shoot. Here are a few helpful hints that we thought we'd pass along… (of course, we've never made any of these mistakes ourselves).

11 Tips For Planning A Green Screen Video Production

1. Get everyone on board with the background BEFORE shooting - This can actually be quite tricky, but it's super… no… uber-important to get your client (and yourself) squared away with what the background will look like. And get feedback from ALL decision makers involved. This should limit a constantly changing background during post-production. Don't waste time rendering, file writing, and uploading… and downloading… and re-uploading…

2. Request branding guidelines early - Find out what you can and cannot do with an organizationʼs branding designs and logo. Determine what colors you can and cannot use, etc. Get those guidelines in front of your designers (or yourself) so you can give everyone enough time to work their design magic.

3. Send Storyboards - Make sure everyone knows what the background is going to look like. People do not enjoy surprises, so create storyboards to demonstrate how the subject will appear on the background. Include a variety of samples to give everyone an idea of what a person will look like in the frame.

4. Consider perspectives when designing a background - If you're using more than one camera, make sure that the background perspective changes to match the camera angle change. If the camera angle and/or framing on the person changes, but the background doesn't, your video's going to look like a cheap local cable spot. Think about each camera's focal length. Make sure the close-up shot is more out of focus than the wide and that the angle of the background matches the camera's angle change.

5. Light to your background- The main reason you want your background finalized before shooting is so you can incorporate your lighting to match the lighting motivation of your background. You want to sell to the viewer that this person belongs in this environment and they don't look out of place. If the light spills off to the right, make sure you place the key light on your subject appropriately. The background will also determine the placement of a hair light, or a scrape… or whether or not you even need them.

6. Scout your location - Whenever possible, scout the place you plan to shoot. If you have a choice, do not shoot a green screen interview in a room with 8' ceilings… with white ceiling tiles. You need to be careful with the spill light off the ceiling. That will cause plenty of issues in post production. And be sure to find a room that has depth. You want to keep your subject away from the backdrop so you avoid the spill there too.

7. Find a good Make-up Artist - (if your budget allows) Find a make-up artist that has done green screen before. They know what to look for. Let them worry about walking up to interviewees and patting their hair down. That's the last thing you want to keep doing as youʼre trying to get an interviewee to open up to you.

8. Get a monitor with waveform display - You want to get your background as evenly lit as possible. While you can develop an eye for that after a while, it's always good to have a monitor that has a waveform display so you can see your levels (we typically like to have our green screen at a level between 55 and 65 IRE). Get it so you have flat levels - you want to see a relatively straight line running across your screen.

9. Choose your camera wisely - This is a decision in pre-production that has a direct impact on post. Not all cameras shoot the same. Not all cameras collect the same color information. It is important to know what information your camera records, and get an understanding of the output signal. The more color information your camera collects, the more room you have to play with in post. Another good idea is to turn off your cameraʼs sharpening option if it has it (the sharpening feature adds a thin black line around your subject that can be difficult to deal with in post).

10. Get comfortable with your keying software - Make sure you know your softwareʼs limitations ahead of time. That way you know how crazy you have to go trying to keep everyone's hair in order. Generally speaking, the better the software, the easier the key (but that's a big generalization).

11. Remind your interviewees NOT to wear green - Yes. A very simple step. So simple, it's easy to forget.

Well, hopefully this provides you with a nice basic understanding of things to consider when shooting green screen. There are certainly many more things to consider... but Iʼll save those for another entry. Just remember green screen can provide you with a ton of creative options… and headaches. Just keep in mind that you can avoid most of them!

Last month I shared part of my conversation with Jim Louderback. We covered a great number of video-related topics that day, including the comparison of the online video marketplace to cow paths (trust me, it makes total sense once you hear it) and how we still haven't quite found the direct route to what new media is going to become.

Here's a pretty good quick-glance at Jim's "cow paths" theory, collected from quotes in the video below:

And so if you want to mess with cows, there’s a fun thing to do.  Move their feed.  So let’s say you move the feed from here over to here.  What happens is the cows they’re not smart enough to know that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.  They walk to where the old feed was and then they move over to the new feed... So when it comes to online video in many ways we’re still in that cow path model where we’re trying to do the stuff that we did on television and we’re trying to bring that to Internet video but it’s a new medium in lots of ways... And it’s – until we figure out that diagonal path and we figure out what this medium is going to be, I think a lot of those trips to where the feed used to be will end up being failures.

You can view the full video transcript of the conversation by clicking below the video.

Click here to watch the video.

Advertising is becoming increasingly interconnected this year and more marketers are pushing out innovative cross platform campaigns, but how does each medium perform? They’re not all created equally and mobile phones generate a much higher click through - or interaction rate - 4 and a half times -- that online video does. For more details on how new media outlets can help each other, check out this week's New Media Minute.

Click here to watch the video.

Advertising is becoming increasingly interconnected this year and more marketers are pushing out innovative cross platform campaigns. But how does each medium perform? They aren't all created equally. And mobile phones generally have much higher clickthroughs or interaction rate--about four and a half times that of online video, according to a new report from Videology.

Some reasons for this are:

• On mobile phones you can have more targeted messaging.
• Mobile can offer a stronger call to action.
• The intangible factor that consumers feel connected to their phones.

The interaction rate isn't the only measure of success, of course. Marketers also want viewers to watch video ads all the way to the end. And consumers are most likely to do that via connected TV's--which has double the completion rate of online video.

The upshot? It doesn't cost too much to add a mobile component, so if clickthrough is the objective of the marketer's campaign, do that. But what about social media? New research also shows that the average social video ad campaign generated a 30% increase in additional value above the media spend simply by being shared and passed around.

The ultimate takeaway is to analyze ruthlessly what works for your brand or your site, and marketers should also be looking for ways to layer in new media to increase the interaction and touch points with a potential customer.

One final stat: Videology also found that campaigns utilizing multiple screens--online video, mobile, and connected tv--had a 9x increase in brand recall. New media to the rescue!

One of the more frustrating aspects of our On Demand culture is that some of the best moments in sports history aren't available to watch on YouTube.  I understand that there's a buck to be made in making those highlights available on a DVD or something, but as we all know, having it available at our fingertips is way better than any alternative.  One sport that could use YouTube in a better way is Major League Baseball, long surpassed by the NFL as the country's most popular sport, they are extremely and curiously guarded about allowing their highlights on YouTube.  And this doesn't make any sense.

Highlight The Excitement Of Your Sport, And Gain Fans

Two sports do a pretty good job of allowing their highlights on YouTube, and actively provide footage themselves, but also allow amateurs to post their videos: the NBA and especially the NHL.  The NHL not only has their own site filled with highlights, they even allow a site/channel called Hockey Fights to highlight the best in the sport's fights every day.  These two sports do not suffer financial loss by allowing this, they gain from it.  Hitting on what makes your sport exciting is free advertising that your sport can financially gain from.  Allowing people, writers and bloggers, to share it in context with stories they tell enhances their content and drums up more excitement for the sport.

For instance, here's the tail end of the prime Jordan era, his 45-point performance in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals versus the Utah Jazz:

Click here to watch the video.

I can even find video of just the final shot.  That's awesome to me that I can either watch the video with some context or I can go straight to the highlight.

Hockey has two prongs of excitement: amazing goals and fights.  Here's just one of the fights that happened recently, between the Nashville Predators' Brian McGrattan and St. Louis Blues' Ryan Reaves:

Click here to watch the video.

You can get lost watching hockey fights all day and come out wanting to go to an NHL game afterward.  And if fighting doesn't do it for you, these guys are ridiculously skilled at scoring goals, too.  You can watch Alex Ovechkin all day and not get tired, and wonder how he does it, with these top 10 goals, including one of the best NHL highlights of all time:

Click here to watch the video.

Meanwhile, the MLB and NFL play a pick-and-choose game, with baseball pretty much sucking out all the life of those who would dare post a video of their sport.  They pull videos all the time.  The ones that are on there are not the quality you'd like, or they just haven't found them yet to complain about it.

One reason why I'm a huge baseball fan was that I grew up in the 80's and some of the best World Series were played then.  I bore witness to the blown Don Denkinger call in 1985, the Buckner play in 1986, the 7 game thriller in 1987 with the Twins and Cardinals, the improbable Kirk Gibson home run in 1988, and my beloved Braves playing in the Worst-to-First 7-game World Series of 1991.  But I can't really relive those moments in context, unless the MLB Network happens to play the whole game in a retrospective, or a part of a highlight package that usually takes the context out.

Type any keyword about Kirk Gibson's home run into YouTube and you get one of those shaky cam videos of a TV playing the highlight, or you'll get some other kind of unsatisfying version:

Click here to watch the video.

Eh, it kind of works.  But it's not what it should be, and I can't see all those balls Gibson fouled off and looking like he was going to die the whole at-bat.  The thing about baseball dramatics that are better than most other sports is that you can see the crowds in those highlights jumping up and down and going crazy.  I'd love to see the image of pitcher Kerry Wood hitting a home run in the 2003 National League Championship Series again.  Wrigley went mad.  I'd probably watch that highlight a million times.  And while you kind of get it here, plus Moises Alou's following home run, it's just not the same with all the editing:

Click here to watch the video.

The problem Major League Baseball has with many people is that they believe the sport is never exciting.  I think you can make fans just by making the most dramatic moments in the history of the sport available on YouTube, with the ability for those videos to be shared.  I've read Bill Simmons from ESPN talk about great moments in baseball and get frustrated that he can't give his readers visual confirmation of what he's talking about.

The reasons that we don't see great MLB and even NFL highlights always comes down to money.  They think that monetizing those events in another way is the best way to go, not thinking that by allowing them on YouTube they could easily make more profits and win new fans.  In the case of the NFL, it might be understandable to control your content since you're in an era where the sport practically sells itself.  But that's short-sighted.  And the MLB has no excuse whatsoever.  The sport may technically be more popular than it was 50 years ago by sheer volume of fans, but that's because there are more people on Earth now, and they appeal to a greater demographic because there are a number of people from different parts of the world playing the sport professionally.

It'd be nice if sports like the MLB and NFL would stop being so short-sighted and think that their product is in any way watered down, or that they would lose money, by allowing these highlights to be shown in their full glory.

According to new research commissioned by Unruly Media, viewers are far more likely to recall a brand name and engage with an ad’s message if a branded video has been recommended to them by a peer. The survey, conducted by Decipher Research to measure the effectiveness of social video advertising, found that social video recommendations had a direct impact on traditional brand metrics and ad enjoyment.

The new research found:

• Brand recall and brand association rose 7 percent among viewers who had peers recommend the videos versus viewers who found it by browsing;
• 73 percent of respondents who viewed a peer-recommended video recalled the brand when prompted versus 68 percent of viewers who had browsed to the video directly;
• There was a 14 percent increase in the number of people who enjoyed the video following a recommendation versus those who had discovered it by browsing;
• People who enjoyed a video were 97 percent more likely to purchase the product featured in the video.

The study, which surveyed online video viewers, aged 18-34, across four social video campaigns from top fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands Guinness, Coca-Cola, Unilever’s Cornetto and Energizer Batteries from July to November 2011, sought to determine the impact of peer recommendations.

“Social video is a powerful format for engaging consumers. If a brand creates great video content and makes it easy to share, it will see impressive results across the entire purchase funnel,” said Unruly COO Sarah Wood in a press release.

The survey, organized in conjunction with the brands’ agency partners Carat, Vizeum, Mindshare and MEC, was issued today in a free white paper entitled “Social Ad Effectiveness: An Unruly Whitepaper” and was part of a presentation at the iStrategy conference in San Francisco on Feb. 1, 2012, by Art Zeidman, Unruly’s President, Americas.

I dug into the survey methodology, because it knocked some of my assumptions into a cocked hat. Unruly commissioned Decipher, a leading research company, to determine a methodology and execute this study. Data was gathered from four FMCG brands, so perhaps results might differ for more considered purchases.

Viewers could opt in to the survey directly from an annotation within the Unruly video player or from the video’s YouTube page. The data gathered from viewers following a recommendation was compared with that of viewers who had arrived at the video by browsing, to determine the effects of recommendations on brand metrics and post viewing behavior. And 976 surveys were completed.

The data clearly shows that viewers enjoy recommended videos more than non-recommended videos: there was a 14 percent increase in the number of people who enjoyed the video following a recommendation versus those who had discovered it by browsing. Moreover, a recommendation reduced the number of people who did not enjoy the video by 41 percent.

Viewer enjoyment of branded video is important because it has a direct impact on key brand metrics. Viewers who enjoyed the video they watched demonstrated 139 percent higher brand association, 97 percent higher purchase intent, 35 percent higher brand favorability, and 14 percent higher brand recall than their counterparts who did not enjoy the video.

In addition, 68 percent of viewers who had browsed to the video correctly recalled the brand when prompted, compared to 73 percent of viewers who had arrived at the video following a recommendation. This 7 percent uplift suggests that video viewers are in a more receptive and attentive frame of mind following a recommendation, allowing brands that produce and distribute social content to benefit from closer communication with their audiences.

Recommendations caused a 7 percent increase in brand association: agreement with key brand statements increased from 41 percent among viewers who had browsed to the video to 44 percent among viewers who seen the video following a recommendation. This result reinforces the above suggestion that recommendations make viewers more receptive to brand messaging.

There was also a drop of more than one fifth in the number of respondents that disagreed with key brand statements. Recommendations have a large role to play for brands in changing off-message perceptions amongst their audiences as well as in actively cultivating on-message perceptions.

Brand favorability and purchase intent remained unchanged with recommendation. This is likely to be because all four of the tested brands were well established, high profile brands with a high favorability index. Seasonality could have skewed purchase intent, as both soft drinks and ice creams are highly consumed during the summer, when the campaigns took place. Also, the products advertised on the test campaigns were FMCGs, where purchase intent is higher than average vs. other sectors and unlikely to show much change. Running the survey against new product launch campaigns would be likely to demonstrate measurable effects for these two metrics.

Viewers of the social videos tested went on to perform a multitude of brand or video related actions, notably 49 percent of viewers purchased the advertised product within three days of the view. And 38 percent of viewers spoke to someone in person about the video, showing a social video view to stimulate real life conversation: what starts online becomes interchangeable with real life in the minds of today’s consumers. Interestingly, online sharing and emailing of the link are immediate reactions, highlighting the need for sharing functionality within a video player - users do not come back and share a video later, it is a spontaneous exercise. And 9 percent of users searched for the brand, and 4 percent of users searched for products of that type: so, social video viewing is having an effect across all aspects of the purchase funnel.

This research demonstrates that social video significantly increases brand attention.
The power of social video lies in the recommendation to view content. This recommendation comes not only from peers in social media environments, but also from authoritative blogs and news sources covering advertiser content editorially.

The impact of the recommendation on consumers is considerable:

• Viewers are more likely to enjoy a video when it has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (14 percent higher enjoyment)
• Viewers are more likely to recall a brand name when the social video has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (7 percent higher recall)
• Viewers are more likely to engage with an ad’s messages when the social has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (10 percent higher brand association)

Ultimately enjoyment of the video correlated positively with all tested brand metrics in the sales funnel, including brand favorability and final purchase intent.

Hey, you can’t make this stuff up.

Today we answer several of the questions you asked us during last week's Creator's Tip video, including suggestions for good background music for your videos, how to schedule your videos to automatically publish to YouTube at a certain date and time even if you're not a YouTube Partner, suggestions for setting up a home video studio, and more!

Scheduled Publishing To YouTube & Other Viewer Questions

Click here to watch the video.

QUESTION: What suggestions do you have for these questions?

LINKS FROM THIS WEEK"S EPISODE:

• HOW TO MAINTAIN A CONSISTENT POSTING SCHEDULE
• LISTING OF ALL REEL WEB AND CREATOR'S TIP VIDEOS
• CREATOR'S TIP PLAYLIST ON YOUTUBE
• REEL WEB PLAYLIST ON YOUTUBE

BACKGROUND MUSIC OPTIONS:

• Incompetech 
• Garage Band

SCHEDULED POSTING OPTIONS:

• Blip.tv Pro 
• TubeMogul 

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE RSS FEED

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR EMAIL LIST!

Creator's Tip is a weekly show that helps online video producers with tips, tricks, advice, secrets, and suggestions for how to make their videos stand out on the web.

Vimeo announced their judging lineup today for the upcoming 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards. The awards will be handed out across 13 different categories, with each category having a panel of three judges. And there are some pretty big names among the judges, including actor James Franco, actor Aziz Ansari, 2012 Oscar Nominee Lucy Walker, Colin Greenwood of Radiohead, director Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), and many more.

Vimeo Festival + Awards Judges Announced

According to Jeremy Boxer, Director of the Vimeo Festival + Awards:

"The aim of the Vimeo Festival + Awards is to become the gold standard for creative online video. We designed the program to focus on discovering the best new talent and to give that talent a platform that will catapult their careers to the next level. We are proud to reveal our new panel of esteemed judges."

Here's the full list of all the categories and most of the judges (the lineup is almost complete, but there are still a couple judging slots yet to be announced):

Action Sports

• Stacy Peralta
• Travis Rice

Advertising

• Benjamin Palmer
• David Droga
• Traktor

Animation

• Amid Amidi
• Eran Hilleli
• Shelley Page

Captured

• Charlie Bucket
• Steve Lazarides
• Barbara London

Documentary

• Eliot Rausch
• Steve James
• Lucy Walker

Experimental

• Chris Beckman

Fashion

• Nick Knight
• Nicola Formichetti
• Humberto Leon, Opening Ceremony+Kenzo

Lyrical

• Blake Whitman
• Philip Bloom
• Maria Popova

Motion Graphics

• Geoff McFetridge
• Kyle Cooper
• Onur Senturk

Music Video

• Andy Bruntel
• Chris Milk
• Colin Greenwood, Radiohead

Narrative

• Gabriel Bisset-Smith
• James Franco

Original Series

• Aziz Ansari
• Edgar Wright
• Ted Tremper

Remix

• Beardyman
• David Dewaele, 2manydjs + Soulwax
• Kasumi

Vimeo Festival + Awards Still Open To Submissions

You can still enter the Vimeo Festival + Awards, since the deadline is February 20th. Any video that premiered online between July 31, 2010 and February 20, 2012 is eligible. The Grand Prize winner will get a $25,000 grant, while each category winner gets a grant worth $5,000. There aren't many video marketers and creators I know who couldn't use that kind of boost.

So, youʼve been awarded a contract to shoot a company video. Awesome. But now you need to find a location to film your video. Not so awesome. If your client is like most clients, their office or corporate boardroom probably provides a wide range of less-than-desirable options - shooting into the A/V corner; towards a malnourished ficus; or into a flat white wall. If youʼre looking for a way to add clean, professional look to your interviews, then using a green screen is a good way to go.

Benefits of Using A Green Screen

Shooting against a green screen has several benefits and provides a lot of good creative options for use in post-production. Here are a few reasons to film a subject in front of a green screen:

Flexibility

Green screen provides flexibility in dealing with multiple locations. Rather than developing a set in different office locations, you can use a green screen environment. It adds a level of consistency in case one office looks a lot better than another.

Portability

On that note, the portability of green screen is very helpful. Once you get the hang of lighting the green screen (and the subject), itʼs a pretty quick and easy set up. You can take it anywhere... providing the client has a big enough room. If not, try renting a conference room at a nearby hotel.

Save Time

A production crew can set up and tear down a set in about an hour. By using a green screen, you avoid having to wander around an office looking for props or other colorful elements to add to the background. This is especially helpful if you have a full day of interviews planned.

Consistency

If youʼre shooting green screen, then youʼve blocked out the ambient light... which means you donʼt have to spend all day adjusting for the change in the sunlight. Aside from flopping the key, youʼre pretty much good to go as far as the lighting is concerned (unless youʼre swapping out backgrounds for different people).

Branding

Green screen interviews also provide a great opportunity to brand the piece with a company's identity. You can add textures, colors and other branding elements to the background in order to make the video standout. The green screen also allows you to modify the video if an organization changes branding. So, you wonʼt have to throw away any good material...you can just swap out the background and youʼll be in line with the new brand.

Extended Usability

Shooting all your interviews against a green screen makes it easier to revisit projects in the future, and update any changes that might have taken place with company branding. In addition, you can shoot extra interviews in the future and easily incorporate them in the existing video.

With these elements in mind, shooting a day full of interviews against a green screen is a great way to go. Now, all you have to do is prep for it!

This year, NBC made history by allowing the Super Bowl, one of the biggest events on TV in most years, available online.  There has always been a fear that allowing the game online would water down the TV audience, something we've seen time and again disproved by big sporting events of this type.  We saw the regular-season clash between LSU and Alabama set records for college football for CBS, and despite their impressive online numbers, did not eat into a record-setting audience on TV.  So it was no surprise to see that NBC saw a record amount of online viewers for any sport, while setting the record for most watched program in TV history.

The Super Bowl Online Stream Attracted 2.1 Million Viewers

The Super Bowl hit 2.1 million viewers online, which destroyed the previous record for a live sporting event on the web, which was the BYU-Florida first round NCAA tournament clash on CBS that attracted 1.1 million viewers back in 2010.  Of course, this was a goldmine Super Bowl for NBC in that they got two huge market teams playing in a rematch of a game that is recognized as one of the best Super Bowls ever played.

The good news for NBC is that the 2.1 million viewers just added to the already record-breaking 111.3 million viewers that the game attracted on TV.  So, once again, the myth that online viewing will significantly hurt the TV audience has been debunked.  As should be readily apparent, people are either watching their online feed while watching the game on TV or people who don't have access to the game are watching it on their mobile devices.

Obviously, we'll get some different data over the next few years.  I'm just waiting for that lackluster matchup to be shown online and all those "Online Viewers Eat Into National TV Audience" articles that are going to follow.  I'd like to preempt that discussion by saying that won't be true, but that won't stop some networks from making that claim.

Anyway, great numbers for NBC on this Super Bowl and fantastic news for future events being available online.

Our founder, Mark Roberston, had a chance to serve as moderater at the Streaming Media West conference on a panel discussion entitled Driving Video Views and Engagement With SEO & Social Media. With Josh Warner of Feed Company, Gregg LaRoche of Brightcove, and Patrick Starzan of Funny or Die, there was plenty of great insight and wisdom in the discussion.

And now that we have the whole thing on video, you can experience the panel as though you were there:

Driving Video Views and Engagement with SEO & Social Media

Click here to watch the video.

Full Panel Details

"Driving Video Views & Engagement With SEO & Social Media"

Thanks to social media platforms and search engine optimization, a tremendous opportunity exists in building new audiences and driving views via outside channels. In this session, speakers present and discuss the case for social video and video SEO. Additionally, panelists showcase real-life examples and case studies as well as provide expert guidance in terms of both planning for and implementing successful strategies and tactics to boost exposure and discover-ability.

Moderator: Mark Robertson, Founder, ReelSEO.com

Speaker: Josh Warner, Founder, CEO, Feed Company

Speaker: Patrick Starzan, VP, Marketing and Distribution, Funny or Die

Speaker: Gregg LaRoche, Director, Product Marketing, Brightcove

In my recent Hulu AdZone article I talked about how ads online needed to step back from the "here's the brand - now here's the call to action" format and make their ads more entertaining, like companies do during the Super Bowl. For a long time I've also been saying that TV advertisers need to take a more interactive approach to their ads, and Shazam helped do just that this year.

It's not complete interactivity, but it will have to do until everyone has a connected TV. According to a press release today from Shazam, engagement saw a huge boost thanks to their hooking up with Super Bowl advertisers and the game itself including the half-time show. Now they didn't put out any numbers of course but they had this to day:

“The Super Bowl was our first major live network television event where we enabled people to interact with all aspects of the game, including the ads and the spectacular halftime show,” said Andrew Fisher, CEO. “Knowing the size of the Super Bowl audience, we had high expectations for how many people would be engaged during the event and with the numbers in the millions we were blown away.”

With the advent of connected TVs I think that Shazam probably won't be able to manage this level of success because advertisers will start working interactivity right into their ads. But this is a good first step, an evolutionary one you might say.

The proliferation of second screens will continue and so Shazam will still be able to do these sorts of things, for example those who watch these live events at a friend's place or perhaps some local watering hole. They wont have the ability to interact with the ads via the TV and so will still need that second screen to do so and that's where Shazam will continue to fit in and remain relevant.

The fact that advertisers and the NFL had the presence of mind or perhaps the foresight to team up with Shazam on many different ways to further engage with their brands shows that they're starting to see the true power of cross-platform advertising I think. Showing an ad on TV rarely does more than disrupt the viewing experience or offer a chance to run to the kitchen or bathroom. Now, things are starting to change and if the ads can be as engaging as they are entertaining, it could mean a great revitalization for the TV ad industry. In my mind, everyone at a TV network should be pushing for connected TV adoption because it's what is going to keep those ads relevant and that means advertisers will continue to spend money on them. Shazam is just one avenue to interaction right now, there are others as well.

With Super Bowl ads, people used Shazam to access sweepstakes opportunities such as winning two Camrys from Toyota, unlocking exclusive content from Pepsi and donating to charity thanks to a program by Cars.com. With the game itself, they could see real-time statistics about the plays and players as well as participate in polls and even vote for their favorite ads. During the halftime show, in addition to the million-track giveaway, people could also get the setlist, buy music and download mobile apps from the artists.

Shazam will continue their moment and their marrying of TV content with online content as viewers can expect to see a number of exciting events, new ads and other shows that incorporate Shazam, including the 54^thGRAMMY Awards on CBS on Sunday, February 12^th.

Screen convergence, welcome to 2012.

PandoDaily--the tech news website started by former TechCrunch employee, Sarah Lacy, and staffed with several former TechCrunch writers--got a pretty big scoop yesterday, assuming it turns out to be accurate. According to "two sources familiar with the situation," IAC is considering an attempt to sell off their video property, Vimeo.

The plan is to try and raise a $50 Million funding round, while spinning off Vimeo as part of the move. The sources for the story put the asking price at nearly $300, which is likely to be seen as too high by most of the companies that would be interested in buying Vimeo. The PandoDaily article points out that while Vimeo has revenues, they aren't very substantial.

It'll be interesting to see if this pans out, and if so... if they can get it sold. Vimeo could be different things to different people, depending on their backgrounds and outlook on the future. It could be a hipster YouTube alternative for artist types, and attempt to grow that market. Or... it could be a money pit that will never come close to challenging the big boys or turning out revenue.

Whether or not Vimeo holds any beauty as an investment will be in the eyes of its beholders. I definitely think there's plenty of room in the market for sites like Vimeo to serve the non-YouTube users.

According to TechCrunch, RedBox and Verizon are likely teaming up on a new streaming video service that is aiming to hit OTT boxes and game consoles as well as iOS and Android. This could be big news, or it could be too little too late.

Their main goal seems to compete with the likes of Hulu and Netflix. The thing they're trying to do differently it seems is offer users more choice. If you don't want yet another monthly subscription you can go a more a la carte route which is expected to give access to movies and TV in both rental and downloadable purchasing models as well as a subscription model. Local storage of the content looks to be an option only for small mobile (phones mostly) and tablets.

It's going to be a credit-based system says TechCrunch with 6 credits being $5.95 or just over 99 cents each. These credits will be used for rentals of TV and films, however the exact number of credits per rental has not been released. The thing is, they're going to have to compete with other highly-competitively-priced services that are already available because who would ever pay more for something when they could get it for less and get the same quality?

Since it's RedBox they're teaming up with it looks like the subscriptions will probably include physical disc rentals as well. The service isn't looking to disrupt anything in regards to scheduled release of content, in fact they seem to have told Tech Crunch that they service, "is still in talks with content providers and will be following their lead on blackouts and release timing; this won’t be a quick-release channel for new movies or live TV."

Here's a look at what the service is expecting to offer by platform and payment format (from TechCrunch, as noted by the TC in the lower left corner):

The only major advantage I see over a service like Amazon, Apple, etc. is their inclusion of physical rentals. So long as they don't price it anywhere near Netflix, they could not only retain their existing users (who pay $1.20 to rent discs from local vending machines) but could also scoop them into the streaming fold as well. Since RedBox is mostly movies (and games) they'll have to work at getting together TV content for the launch which is set for May 28th with a beta period earlier in April. No word yet on the monthly subscription pricing.

The venture is to be 65 percent owned by Verizon and 35 percent by Redbox says the Chicago Tribune.

ReelSEO's own Mark Robertson spoke last October at the Streaming Media Europe conference in London. He was on a panel with some great folks like Vanessa Vigar & Thomas Dvorak--all moderated by Streaming Media's editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen--called Search, Recommendation, & Discovery. And now we have the video of the entire session, panel discussion and all, so we wanted to make sure we shared it for those of you who weren't able to make it to Streaming Media Europe.

Search, Recommendation, & Discovery

Click here to watch the video.

PANEL INFORMATION

Search, Recommendation, and Discovery
Moderator: Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Editor, Streaming Media
Thomas Dvorak, Chief Marketing Officer, APRICO Solutions
Mark Robertson, Founder, ReelSEO.com
Tom Weiss, CEO, TV Genius
Vanessa Vigar, Solution Marketing Manager - Broadband, Irdeto