We believe that this ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed [...] We intend to seek to have these issues before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as soon as possible. [via NewTeeVee]

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vintage television by phrenzee

At YMM’s sister site FOSSwire, we offer a lot of video-based tutorial content. Up until this point, it’s been offered in Flash with OGG downloads available as a backup. With the <video> tag in HTML becoming a hot new standard, it seemed like a perfect time to jump aboard. But our old videos were encoded in FLV (pre-MP4 support in Flash) so we had to do some conversion. This tutorial will teach you how to turn your old FLVs into HTML5-friendly MP4 video files.

It’s important to mention that these MP4 files won’t work in every browser. Opera and (most) Gecko-based browsers won’t support MP4, preferring OGG Theora or Google’s WebM instead. Still, MP4 gets you Chrome, Safari (including the iPad), and the soon-to-be-released-if-we’re-lucky IE9 – a sizable chunk of browsers. You’ll certainly want a Theora backup though, and we’ll go over how to do that next week. FOSSwire has covered a bit of the codec madness, head there for more details.

Follow me past the jump to begin your journey toward HTML5 fun…

What you need

All you need is the free and popular HandBrake. Don’t be fooled by tutorials insisting you need a shareware product with a sleazy name like “Web Online Video Converter Pro X” – HandBrake is completely free, open source, and the real deal. It’s available for Mac OS X, Windows, Ubuntu, and Fedora, and other versions of Linux can use command line versions. This tutorial covers only the GUI releases.

How you convert

Easy: add your file as the source, pick your settings, and go!

Of course, there’s a bit more to it than that if you want your quality to be great. For FOSSwire, our source clips were screen captures, so when converted to MP4 the results with default settings were less than stellar. MP4, like all codecs in its family, is optimized for picture based content, rather than simple animation or broad swaths of color. It’s like JPG vs. GIF or PNG. Play with the settings on clip before you commit to anything.

Optimize MP4s for animation or screen capture

If you are like me and are trying to convert animation or screen capture-based content with higher quality results, take a peek in Handbrake’s advanced settings. For my screen capture content, I…

• encoded in two-pass mode. You have to be setting an average bit-rate or target file size for this to be an available option, but it gives you a drastic increase in results.
• increased Deblocking (anywhere from +1/+1 to +3/+3 can help)
• set the number of B-frames to anywhere between 5 and 9
• set Subpixel motion estimation to 9

Once you’ve got your settings to your liking, encode away.

If you’re still having trouble, look at your source FLV. The artifacts you’re seeing in the MP4 might just be carry-overs from the FLV (as I experienced more than once – oops!).

Optimize MP4s for traditional video

By default, the MP4 format is great at encoding traditional video. You can probably get away with default settings. If you’re having problems, look at the frames in question – do they have large areas of a single color? You might need to try some of the techniques listed above to see if you can increase your quality.

And as I mentioned above, if you’re still experiencing trouble, check your source vid. The artifacts might just be forgotten remnants of a bad first-gen encode.

Working in bulk

Although Handbrake doesn’t have a true bulk mode like other apps (such as the long missed and mourned VisualHub) it does have the ability to set a queue. Simply click the “Add to Queue” button located in the Handbrake toolbar. When all your files are ready, hit the “Show Queue” button and hit “Play” to get your encode on.

Convert away

I hope this tutorial helps you prep your content for the “next big thing” in web video. HTML5 will help lower the barriers to entry again in providing web video to a massive audience, and you’ll certainly want to be on the cusp of it.

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Money...What Money by flickr user stuartpilbrow

In a perfect world, artists and content creators could work without the constant worry of funding and money looming over our heads. Unfortunately it’s not a perfect world, and in an age where content creators are a dime-a-dozen and sponsors are a dying species, you’ve got to have business savvy to succeed in your pursuits.

The City of New York recognized that, and an article in Sunday’s New York Times explains how city government is aiming to teach artists about turning their work into business.

“Does everyone have Excel?,” Peter Cobb, a lawyer and administrator at the New York Foundation for the Arts, which runs the program, asked the class last Saturday. “For next week, your assignment is to make a list of all your expenses for 2009.”

The sighs and complaints that followed were proof of the challenging task Mr. Cobb and his colleagues have taken on: trying to teach people who like to color outside the lines about drawing up business plans, budgeting and making a sales pitch.

YouMakeMedia has talked in the past about various web services and how they help (or hinder) your money-making, but it’s exciting to see a program that delves even deeper, helping artists think more consciously about the business end of what they do. It’s easy to think that it’s as simple as throwing ads next to your content, or selling copies of your output, but having a deeper understanding of business will give you a more rewarding experience (and a more rewarding return) when it comes to doing the selling.

Do you have any tips on learning the business side of arts and content creation? Share them in the comments!

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Writer’s block, for most people, is merely a deficit of motivation and a surplus of good old fashioned laziness. But that’s not a “block.” That’s not an inability or an impairment. That’s procrastination.

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Search! by Jeffrey Beall

Hey there! In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been gone for awhile.

Sorry about that.

The fact is, life gets in the way, interests shift, and blogging becomes, well, a chore. Which is too bad, because (if you’re still paying attention to this sector) there’s a ton of awesome stuff happening in the world of digital media creation and consumption. Really if you think about it, “digital media creation and consumption” sums up the biggest emerging technologies, corporations, and markets of the decade.

And it’s going to keep growing.

We want to continue to be on the forefront covering it. But we need a dedicated blogging team to do it. And that means reaching out to you, our readers.

The job description:

You: an enthusiastic individual interested in digital media, preferably with a history in creating it (everyone consumes it, that’s the easy part). Strong writer, strong analytical skills, independent, and full of ideas.

Us: a humble blog looking to be on the forefront of covering the media revolution, with a bent toward video and its creation (we’re certainly flexible though).

The particulars: payment is a cut of ad revenues. You’ll be effectively functioning as Editor-in-chief, so you have full reign over the site, so you can grow out the site however you feel appropriate. Don’t expect instant returns – the more time you spend on this (consistently) the better your results will be. Chris becomes Founding Editor, Joel becomes Editor Emeritus.

If you’re interested, email me (Chris) directly at hello (at) chrisvanpatten (dot) com. I’ll answer any questions you have, and discuss how we can make this worth it! If you have a resumé and writing samples, send those along too.

Thanks all for your continued support of YouMakeMedia!

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One of the widely disseminated photos on the #IranElection hashtag

Here at YouMakeMedia we often focus on the digital video revolution, and how consumer media is being shaken up by the availability of cheap, easy tools (like Celtx) for creating video projects.

However something that also fits into the scope of user-generated content (and our mission) is user-generated news, and the recent events in Iran surrounding the apparently falsified election results have proven that the tides are turning – users have more ability than ever to change the focus of the news.

#IranElection – the power of a hashtag

Undoubtedly the star of this new media news spectacle was Twitter. It proved its utility to new and old users alike with its ability to enable those inside Iran to quickly and efficiently share what they knew about the events that were unfolding around them.

Throughout the past few nights and days, the Twitter users of Iran (who were spawning the tweets) made use of the hashtag #IranElection to effectively share what they knew about the situation. It became a central source for all news related to the event, and has become one of the top trending topics on Twitter for several days now. #IranElection became a news network unto itself (and in fact spawned some interesting mashups, including one particularly detailed one at Twazzup).

Just as #IranElection told stories of the event, #CNNFail told stories of the failure to tell stories of the event (figure that one out!). While Twitter spent its Saturday and Sunday discussing the event, disseminating information, and spreading photos and video about the event, CNN and other major American cable networks were showing repeats of other programs, and altogether missing out on crucial coverage of the event. In a story aptly titled “Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran“, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb stated:

One quip we’ve seen is that “Tienanmen + Twitter = Tehran.” Twenty years ago this month, CNN brought live news about the Tienanmen Square uprising to the world. It’s really strange that the network is absent from this story.

People Power

There was another important element that added to Twitter’s success too – what I’m dubbing “people power”. The ability of us to directly connect to people involved in the situation and experience empathy for their situation is unparalleled and offers a new dimension to newsgathering. I tweeted about this phenomenon, and Twitter user Steve Garufi replied:

I must say, it is really touching to be able to connect with people in Iran on Twitter – to encourage them.

He added after that…

This is the most touching personal benefit to this – that we can build relationships with Iranians.

Denice Szafran also tweeted…

I think you’re right – we are watching real people tweet from Iran. It makes a difference.

The connection to real people in Iran (in this case) is incredibly visceral and offers perspective on the situation. We can put ourselves in “their shoes” and get a small taste of the horrors of what this situation is like. I also experienced this firsthand back in February, when a plane crashed in Clarence, NY (near the University at Buffalo, where I attend school). My fellow Buffalo-area tweeters and I spent the night sending out news as we heard it, sharing our eyewitness reports, and connecting with people around the country. This same “people power” applied.

The Dangers

Of course, the standard problems apply – these are only citizen journalists who aren’t working with proper credentials and thus don’t verify stories. With the stakes raised last night, as citizen tweeters were providing other citizen tweeters information in a tense, life-or-death situation, accusations flew back and forth that one poster wasn’t reliable, or another was providing mis-information, and in one instance a protest that was being hyped on Twitter was declared a potential trap (the circumstances are still unclear).

The immediacy of Twitter in covering news is both a benefit and its downfall. As with any other citizen journalism system, the immediacy causes a lack of fact-checking and the potential for the spread of wrong information (although not necessarily with malicious intent). This is common in the mainstream professional news industry as well – the likelihood of mistakes increases as you get closer to the event itself (the more immediate the news). The difference is, the news tends to take more time to collect facts and information (as CNN apparently did).

Further, that same “person power” that attracts us to Twitter can cloud our judgement, and prevent us from seeing the whole picture of a situation. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of affiliating ourselves with one side and take up their cause, without pausing to try to understand what the other side is enduring or see their position. Further, we tend to more openly trust those who we empathize with, without verifying the facts they present (as addressed above).

Regardless, the world wants immediate information. They want to know what is happening as it’s happening, and Twitter was able to provide that last night. But that doesn’t mean we should count out the main stream news networks yet – they provide measured analysis and carefully fact-checked information that is crucial to understanding the broad aspects of the situation at hand. They lose the narrative, and give us the facts.

By combining these two resources, the cautious, careful mainstream news media, and the fast, immediate power of tools like Twitter, we have even more options at our disposal to understand our world in new and fascinating ways.

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Let us know if you have any problems accessing the mobile site, or if something comes through garbled. We’ll do our best to fix the problem, or work with the Mofuse team to make sure it gets sorted out.

Thanks for your continued support!

Edit (6-20): I’m testing out a new mobile platform today, optimized for more modern mobile platforms (Android, iOS, Blackberry, etc.). Give it a try, and let me know how it works for you, or if you have a particular preference for the MoFused version of the site. Thanks!

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