Special Delivery: High-Def Video
I found the site peppered with videos that teach you what you think you know but really don’t. For example, most of us have carved turkeys or grilled fish, but do you really "know" how to do either? At MonkeySee, you can watch a chef from Morton’s Steakhouse describe how to grill a number of meats and vegetables and even pair the results with the right wine. Or watch a chef from the Oval Room (one block from the White House in Washington, D.C.) describe how to carve a turkey. Did you know you needed to wait 20 minutes to start carving to seal in the juices? Me neither. I can’t wait till next Thanksgiving!
Videos are viewed on the site’s Flash Player, with plans to make downloadable iPod versions available in the near future. The player has all the expected features, including zoom to full screen, with options to share videos by linking, embedding, or emailing a link to friends.
Letourneau commented that for most videos, this data rate produces the required quality, though with some particularly challenging clips, like fishing videos, higher data rates are necessary. Agility also produces the iPod compatible version. Once encoded, the Agility system hands the video off to CDN Limelight, which distributes all videos.
Letourneau’s short-term goal is to get launched and to start adding advertisers to generate revenues, so high-definition distribution is not on the immediate horizon. He did comment that the Anystream Agility system would let him publish in high-definition immediately—simply change the player, adjust encoding parameters in the Agility software, and resubmit the videos to the watch folder. Given that most of Letourneau’s content is evergreen (so it won’t get stale like news, sports, or other content), this makes a lot of sense.
Output and Distribution
Letourneau chose Flash because in his last job in strategic relations with Anystream, he met with senior executives from its media clients who all had Flash on their radar screen due to its quality, installed base, and player customizability. When choosing a codec for MonkeySee, he felt it didn’t make sense to buck this trend.
At the current configuration, Letourneau chose progressive download over streaming because it was less expensive and delivered the same end user experience. For his application, where he’s hoping for millions of viewers per month, distributing his own videos made little sense, so he planned on working with a CDN from the start.
Summary
What did I take away from these case studies? A number of interesting, but disparate, thoughts. First, except for Akamai’s technology demo, high-definition video is ancillary to each site’s SD offerings, which clearly still pay the bills.
Second, virtually all high-definition video is directed toward consumers at their PCs (and soon will be aimed at their living rooms). There were no B2B HD videos other than those from technology suppliers targeting video broadcasters.
Third, no one is really streaming high-definition video; it’s all progressive download. Though you’re probably catering to an early adopter market, you should still help your viewers understand how this is different from true streaming and why, using FAQs, blogs, and bandwidth detection routines.