New Media, New Art Forms

There isn't much to say in this posting. It's more of a watch and wonder entry.

I've been poking around, looking at ways in which artists are re-interpreting video as an art form online.

The launch of 90 second video clips on the photo social networking site Flickr , together with the rise of YouTube and other video sharing outlets, have presented creatives with new opportunities.

Here are a few I like. I hope you do too. 

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Shooting in HD for student productions

As the cost of purchasing high definition camcorders continues to fall it's inevitable that schools will begin to migrate from digital video (DV) to its superior stablemate.

One of the issues however is the growing plethora of formats. HD itself is something of a minefield, with numerous variants. There's interlaced and progressive (an i or a P suffix) which determines whether the images are composites of each other during the 25 frames that are recorded each second, or whole images progressively recorded as the camera records. Progressive is seen to offer better motion effects and therefore is preferred by independent film makers. Interlaced is more data efficient, so tends to be the variant most camcorders use. Increasingly, camcorders around the £700 mark will now offer a combination of both. The progressive version often comes as 720P, while the interlaced is sold as 1080i. This refers to the pixel width of the image. 

On top of that, some camcorders use DV tapes but record an HDV signal, others record to a hard disc inside the camera, some record to memory cards, while others still record to small DVDs. 

All of this can be a confusing mixture of options.

Earlier this year I bought a couple of HDV camcorders by Sony. The HVR-A1E costs around £1000, but offers many professional features in a small unit. I opted for HDV because it offered compatibility with our existing tape stock and is seen by many as being a reliable format for now. 

The future will be disc based, and I have been able to test some of the Canon hard drive HD camcorders. They tend to use a new recording video format called AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition). This crushes the video and audio signal right down and early critics wondered if the output would be any good? I must say that I was impressed and could see this becoming part of the school arsenal within 18 months to two years. There's still scope for the price point to fall further.

Anyway, back to recording in HDV. The first crop of students are now finishing using the A1s and I've put a couple up on YouTube. Keeping in mind that the signal has been crushed by compression software to make it small enough for YouTube to handle, I'm impressed by the streaming quality. The end results when played via DVD look stunning. 

One video below is a version of the Fray's How to Save a Life. Th other, shot at night, is a rendition of Fightstar's Tannhauser Gate. It seems you need to have the YouTube window open in order to watch the HD version. Most annoying.

So, double click on one of the videos below to open the full YouTube page, then remember to click on the 'watch in HD' option, which appears to the bottom right of the video.

It's my party politics and I'll sing if I want to

A wonderful piece of journalistic sarcasm has swept across my path.

In the UK the Guardian newspaper represents the liberal left of the political spectrum (Labour Party), while the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, owned by Associated Newspapers, represent the right wing (Conservative Party).

An article on the Guardian website reveals, with some mirth, the fact that Associated are launching their own record label. 

As the article's author Paul MacInnes puts it, 'as if belonging to one industry with a death wish wasn't enough, now the Mail wants to get into another!'

It's true that newspapers face a challenging future, with an economic downturn, and increasing numbers of readers becoming online audiences for information, analysis and entertainment.

However, diversity isn't a bad idea, although it's a fair point to ask if a news publisher can cope with the challenges of the music industry - where most outfits with the exception of Apple have struggled to build a solid user base.

What made me smile though about the article were the many politically motivated comments that follow from readers; looking for song titles that the new record label could release.

A few examples: 

Nothing's Gonna Change My Dislike of the EU

It's the End of the World as we Know it (And I Feel Outraged)

Witty stuff to end a long Friday. Enjoy.

Facing up to production planning

So here I am, having bought a couple of cheap but rather useful Flip camcorders a few weeks ago. A quick reminder - they look like mobile phones, are cheap to buy, as close to idiot proof in terms of operation as a piece of techno-kit can get, and seemingly irresistible to staff and students alike.

Finally, I got one of my test models back yesterday and figured it was time I had a little play with them myself. One of my lower sixth classes was ready to give me and their peers quick pitches about the film ideas they're developing. Filming will begin in the new year, and with only a week to go before the Christmas break begins, it seemed like a perfect moment to put them on camera.

So, I popped the Flip on a tripod, let it record the presentations, including audience questions, then flipped out the USB stick that's inbuilt, connected the camera to my PC, went to YouTube, hit upload, and got on with something else.

As if by magic, when I came back there were the three videos online. Now, these aren't going to win any awards for cinematography, sound or anything else. In fact, with perfect timing, a workman started using a noisy drill half way through our recordings. But, it does mean we have a moving image record of what happened, which is a useful piece of research data to own.

Here are the three presentations. There'll be some more coming tomorrow, and I will also start, now that I've created a Berkhamsted Media channel on YouTube, to upload other student produced material.

The pipe's the limit for SKY

Rupert Murdoch's Sky has revolutionised TV watching in the UK, bringing multi channel TV to the masses, in ways that seem unimaginable for those of us who remember the heady days of growing up with two BBC channels (1+2) plus ITV. 

In those days, the term 'water-cooler TV' did mean millions watching the same event, because choice was so limited.

Now, we live in an age of increasingly niche audience viewing habits, where even the long-running soaps have seen their audience figures decline comparatively.

From its initial offerings Sky has grown to dominate the pay TV market, sucking up many sports rights along the way, and transforming the fortunes of players and the experiences of audiences. Today's sports coverage is far slicker and soccer players' fees far more lucrative than anyone could have envisioned.

Technologically, Sky has continued to innovate, offering a hard disc recorder (Sky+), high definition variants, and now it is making another push into a new frontier.

Since the BBC launched the iPlayer more than a year ago, TV pundits have wondered how long it will take for a full convergence between online usage and TV viewing to occur.

Late last week Sky announced that it was now launching the Sky Player. For a monthly subscription that will be less than the cost of a satellite feed, users can watch live channel packages online, as well as download movies and other entertainment shows, using a proprietary player, that uses Microsoft Silverlight as the backbone for its Digital Rights Management. 

Mac users are catered for, but without the downloading facility for movies and entertainment. The Sky website says this will be coming in due course. I'm not sure if Mac users get a discount for the reduced service, but I intend to find out this week and will report back.

Either way, it represents a fascinating acknowledgement that audience tastes are changing and that for some people online delivery works better. This might be because people want to take downloaded shows to work, users spend more time online so this might be a way of generating revenue from those deserting the traditional sit back approach of conventional TV, or it might represent a chance for those in love with the service to maintain viewing habits wherever they might be.

What is certain is that the combination of advancing broadband availability, falling subscription costs, and rising audience acceptance of media delivery via online channels, is likely to fuel a rise in the viewing of moving image content on computer screens.

Is there a spanner in the works? Well, possibly there is. British Telecom (BT) is complaining that the media regulator, OFCOM, has capped the rates it can lease its lines to third parties at too low a rate. It's claiming this will hamper investment in new broadband infrastructure. The government has seen fit to bail out our banks. It will be interesting to see if it's prepared to invest in the backbone of our country's technological improvement.