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  • Guest Bloggers Wanted
  • How to Improve YouTube Video Quality
  • YouTube Updates - Contextual Help and Character Counter
  • The Vlog Era Has Arrived
  • YouTube Will Add Live Video in 2008
  • Quarterlife’s Creators Says the Show isn’t Big Enough for TV
  • Pakistan Breaks YouTube
  • Google Begins Pushing Adsense for Video Again
  • How To Vlogs Gaining in Popularity
  • DailyMotion High Definition Video
  • China Simultaneously Cracks Down and Lightens Up on Video Sharing Sites
  • Political Vlogs Go European
  • Video Tutorial for Revver Wordpress Plugin
  • The 10 Most Popular Videos on YouTube for 2007
  • Tips for Shooting Video in the Snow
  • YouTube Gives You a Slew of Upgrades
  • Video Advertising to Increase
  • YouTube Partner Program Now Open to the General Public
  • DailyMotion Unveils New Video Player
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Due to time constraints, this blog hasn’t been updated for a while. Therefore, I’d like to put out a call for guest bloggers.

Although a number of the posts here are geared towards “news,” I’d like to have more general type articles that address issues that aren’t quite so time-sensitive. And so if there are aspects of vlogging that you are interested in and would like to share your thoughts on, we’d like to see what you’re saying.

The articles/posts should be at least about 350 words. The more in-depth, the better. They should be clearly written and free of major errors. They should also be original (i.e. not posted anywhere else). Other than that, everything is pretty much open.

There is no pay, unfortunately. However, you will gain a little fame (and a link to your site/blog/vlog if you like). Although it has been a while since VlogBlog.com was updated, it still gets a steady stream of traffic. The site consistently ranks well for search terms related to vlogging (such as a #2 position in Google for the term “vlog” … #2 behind Wikipedia, although from time to time it also creeps up into the #1 spot). There are also a large number of RSS and email subscribers who are waiting for updates.

You can contact me to run an idea by me, but as I’m open to most any idea, I will probably just say, “OK, write it up, and let me see it.” The one main question to ask is, “What will the reader gain from reading this?” Insight? Information? Tips? A different perspective? Entertainment? … Just look to give the reader something to take away from it.

To send an article/post, you can use the contact form.

I came across a good vlog today about improving the quality of the videos you upload to YouTube from Cory Williams (aka “Mr. Safety” - SMP Films).

The video that explains the process is pretty clear itself, especially by YouTube standards, and so I guess you can say the proof is in the pudding.

The process he outlines uses Sony Vegas Editing Software, but you could probably get other editing programs to do the trick as well.

At the end of the video he gives a rundown of the points to hit. I’ll reprint them here for convenience.

- 1mbps (speed)
- 320 x 240 (image size)
- 128 kbps audio (higher quality MP3)
- sharpest possibel setting
- 10% more brightness
- 20% more contrast (which keeps the gray from pixelating color)

There are a few YouTube updates some may be interested in - a contextual help icon (and corresponding information, of course) and a character counter that lets you know how many characters you have left when writing a comment.

Check them out in the video above.

AOL News Presents… Where Are They Now? - video powered by Metacafe

Vlogging has arrived. Of course vlogging has arrived. But it struck me again how much it has arrived when I saw the video ad above from AOL News.

It occured to me that our popular culture reference points for this time in history will be vlogs as much as anything else. Surely they won’t be the types of things that reference other eras — American Bandstand outtakes, Saturday Night Live skits, or clips from MTV’s The Real World.

User-generated video. That’s our time. It is officially the Vlog Era.

Live video, or live vlogs, will be coming to YouTube in 2008. Straight from the horse’s mouth, in the video above, you can see Steve Chen of YouTube say that they are moving in that direction.

While there are already a number of places where you can vlog live, when YouTube jumps into the pool, you can be assured that the millions upon millions of vloggers they bring with them will change the live vlogging landscape.

Will we look back at 2008 as the year live vlogs went big? No doubt there’s a good chance.

See NewTeeVee for the original post of this video.

According to Quarterlife co-creator Marshall Herskovitz, the online web series about vloggers that recently went mainstream on NBC (with paltry ratings) never was ready for prime time. Says Herskovitz, “It never should have been a network show. It’s too specific. It will probably end up on cable.”

You can read more at the Hollywood Reporter.

You can check out the show itself at the Quarterlife website.

YouTube went down for nearly two hours recently due to the Pakistani government’s move to block the video sharing site from its citizens. But the outage extended far beyond Pakistan’s borders to the U.S., Germany, China, Russia, Australia, and the U.K.

Upon taking offense to content they deemed insulting to Islam, the Pakistani government ordered PCCW, the main ISP in the country, to block the whole site. PCCW went about this task by by hijacking a YouTube web server address.

Because they were able to hijack the server address and didn’t simply block the site, other countries were affected as well.

Upon discovering the source of the problem, YouTube was able to convince PCCW to cease the hijack.

Google has recently begun pushing adsense for video again.

Adsense is the popular advertising platform that allows web publishers to easily monetize their content.

There is one large catch to all of this, however. You have to be a big-time player in order to run these ads - at least for now.

In Google’s words:

AdSense for video is now available to publishers who, at a minimum, serve one million video streams each month and are based in the U.S. with English language sites. In the near future, we do plan to expand the program to more publishers of various sizes and locations.

The ads for video will take two forms - InVideo ads and text overlay ads.

InVideo Ads

With InVideo ads, a transparent bar pops up on the bottom of the video with a link. When you click the link, a video ad begins playing in the same player as the original video. InVideo ads are based on the cost per thousand impressions model (CPM). See below:

Text Overlay Ads

With text overlay ads, a tranparent bar also pops up from the bottom of the video; however, when you click on the link in an overlay ad, it will take you direclty to the advertiser’s website. Overlay text ads are based on the cost per click model (CPC). See below:

You can see examples of both types of ads in action at Google.

You can read more about the program here.

There are some interesting numbers about the increasing numbers of “how to” searches and “how to” videos in a recent article at TVWeek.

According to the article, which references the internet marketing research firm Hitwise, 2.6% of searches in the U.S. are related to the “how-to” genre.

Video is cropping up in search results more and more. As well, a video how-to would seem to be the perfect answer for many how-to queries. The result, naturally, is more traffic being driven to video results.

The TV Week article states:

Of the top 10 how-to search queries, about 5% of Internet traffic from those queries goes to video sites, almost exclusively to YouTube, Mr. Tancer said. “There is definitely a market,” he said. “There is a desire to find information on the Internet, and the video portion is nascent.”

According to Hitwise (via TVWeek), the top “how-to” searches for the four-week period ending 1/26/08 were the following:

1. How to tie a tie
2. How to …
3. How to have sex
4. How to get pregnant
5. How to write a resume
6. How to win the lottery
7. How to kiss
8. How to lose weight fast
9. How to lose weight
10. How to solve a Rubik’s Cube

The how to / instructional video market is now taking off like gang busters. We are seeing more players in the space every day.

Some of the more popular video how-to sites are the following:

YouTube’s How-To Section … of course. It is also labeled “Style” for some reason and seems to be filled with with porn, semi-porn, Filipino soap operas, and political tripe. Maybe one day, when YouTube realizes the value of instructional information, they will seperate out the how-to from the … um, style.

ExpertVillage

VideoJug

Some Newer Players Gaining Ground:

Howcast

MonkeySee

WonderHowTo

Other related links:

The TV Week article

Hitwise

At the very top of the post is a How-To Vlog about, well, how to vlog from YouTuber Blade376

DailyMotion has recently opened up their high-def capabilities to a wider audience.

At least that’s what it seems like.

Not having followed exactly what they were offering before and to whom, it’s a little difficult to figure out exactly what’s news.

Here’s what they say:

For more than a year-and-a-half we have offered High-Quality video encoding, but with the rise of HD digital video cameras we have seen more and more Creative Content submitted in High Definition. This is why, from today on out, all HD video uploaded by MotionMakers will be automatically re-encoded in 720p High Definition for playback on the site.

I guess I can’t decifer this because I don’t really know what a “MotionMaker” is. Is it anyone uploading video onto DailyMotion, or is it some special group with special privileges?

In any case, the time-lapsed video above is an HD video of the Paris skyline from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m.

I am assuming that the embedded video here will play in high definition as it does on the DailyMotion site.

LINKS:

The DailyMotion High Def Video Channel

News out of the Chinese vlogging world points to signs that seem to be both hopeful and discouraging. Recently-enacted laws meant to crack down on videos that would portray the country in a negative light would make it mandatory for video-sharing sites to be state-run. An exception has been made, however, for those companies that were already in business before the law came into effect.

The Chinese government, with the ever-important PR behemoth known as the Olympics on the horizon, went into overdrive recently in order to do something about negative videos coming out of the country’s exploding online video market.

While Chinese video-sharing sites generally censor themselves, unflattering videos do still make it through from time to time.

So the good news here is that some private ownership is still possible. The bad news is that a crackdown is still on the way. More good news, however, is that industry analysts believe that the government is reluctant to bring too heavy a boot down onto the vibrant video sector.

Gauging from China’s history in controlling the country’s online activity, I would not be so bullish on the idea of a lenient hand — not until the Olympics have come and gone, in any case.

According to the China Post, the country’s most popular video sharing sites claim as many as 100 million visitors a day, “a scale that rivals China’s state TV channels.”

As for revenus, also according to the Post, we have the following numbers:

The government-sanctioned Internet Society of China is forecasting total revenues this year of 160 million yuan (US$22 million; €15 million) this year - nearly double the 2007 level. It says revenues will increase to 290 million yuan (US$40 million; €27 million) in 2009.

The eight top companies in the field have taken in US$190 million from private investors since 2005, according to BDA China Ltd., a consulting firm.

LINKS:

Some of the more popular Chinese video-sharing site:

Tudou

56.com

Youku

Some articles on the topic:

From the Wall Street Journal

From the China Post

Political vlogs (a la YouTube’s “You Choose”) are going European. The You Choose ‘08 platform from YouTube will take on different accents and different languages when it moves its concept across the pond to the U.K. and Spain.

(See the video above for a message from U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown.)

The major political parties will get an official YouTube channel where they can put out videos and where everyday YouTubians can “interact” with the politicos.

“Interact” comes with quotation marks because, well, LOL and “you suck,” while technically interjections of interaction, don’t really advance the conversation much. But then again, long-winded, self-righteous drivel doesn’t much either. C’est la vie.

Political vlogs and the introduction of user-generated video questions via YouTube for the coming U.S. presidential election were some of the more major movements in the video blogging world last year. No doubt this year will see a major explosion in the form.

LINKS:

The UK Political Channel

The Spanish Political Channel

So, we wrote a while ago about the Revver / Wordpress plugin for video bloggers.

I came across this nice video tutorial from Tubetorial.com recently about the plugin. While there’s no substitute for actually playing around with a plugin that you’ve installed, when it’s something that is a little involved on the frontend, and you aren’t sure whether you want to use it or not, a vlog on the topic is an excellent way to check it out.

LINKS:

You can get the plugin at Revver.

You can check out Tubetorial here.

According to YouTube, the 10 Most Popular videos of 2007 were the the following below. The only problem with the YouTube Top 10 is that they have only listed 9 videos. …. Umm, but maybe that’s appropo for YouTube: not quite what it should be or could be.

All right, that’s not exactly fair. YouTube has changed a large corner of the internet and certainly many people’s lives. We’ll give them a break.

These videos seem not to be limited to the “most views.” As YouTube says, the list is ” based on view counts, most shared, most discussed, top rated and general popularity.”

So here’s the list:

1. Battle at Kruger

2. “Chocolate Rain” Original Song by Tay Zonday

3. Chris Crocker - LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

4. me (Esmee Denters) singing “what goes around“ Justin Timberlake

5. “NORA: Practice Makes Purr-fect”

6. “I Got a Crush…On Obama” By Obama Girl

7. Otters holding hands

8. PARIS IN JAIL: The Music Video

9. Soulja Boy Tellem - How to Crank That - INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO!

And Number 10? Well, You Decide

I came across this video recently from Videomaker magazine about shooting video in the snow. Seems like a timely piece. In addition to some technical advice about white balance and the like, there are some useful tips about the kinds of shots you might want to capture when vlogging in the winter.

To see more tips from Videomaker, visit their tips section.

YouTube has come out recently with a slew of improvements. You can see some in the video above.

By the way, it’s good to see that they have included screencasts in the video to illustrate things (as, ahem, someone suggested).

The improvements come in the following areas:

• NEW VIDEOS TAB
• MOST ACTIVE & PREVIOUSLY POPULAR
• CHANNEL RESULTS IN SEARCH
• MUSIC SUBCATEGORIES
• RSS LINKS ON VIDEO BROWSE PAGES
• PROFILE PICTURE
• SUBSCRIPTIONS UPDATE
• COMMENTS VOTING OPTIONAL

You can check out a text update of what they’ve done on the YouTube blog.

According to a new projection report by eMarketer, video advertising will account for 13.1 % of all money spent on internet advertising by 2011. It currently represents 8.2 %.

What the report doesn’t clearly define is the meaning of “rich media/video” advertising. As we have seen this past year, overlay ads have emerged as a strong player in the monetization of video. While many of the overlay ads themselves are not “video,” do they count as “rich media?” Surely some of the more sophisitacated ones would — those that are essentially little videos or are animated in some way.

But it takes some doing to produce those more sophisticated ads. No doubt that in the future the majority of advertising that will get embedded into or slapped onto user-generated videos will be little more than text links. Does a simple text link made with flash count as “rich media” in this report?

In any case, for those who make videos, the important element is not what the ads themselves are made of, but rather, what type of content people are interacting with when they become exposed to the ads. Is it video? Or is it something else, such as text or audio?

In other words, what’s drawing the viewers in the first place? Unfortunately, that question is beyond the scope of this report.

LINKS:

See the eMarketer report here.

YouTube recently announced that they were opening their advertising “Partner Program” up to the general public. The program is currently open to those from the U.S. and Canada with international implementation coming “soon.”

YouTube says the following about what a “partner” is:

These partners decide which of their videos they would like to generate revenue on YouTube, and in turn, they receive a portion of the revenue generated from ads that run next to those videos.

I notice that they say “from ads that run next to those videos.” I assume this means that the ads that actually show up on top of the videos are not included.

According to YouTube, to become a partner, you should meet the following criteria:

• You create original videos suitable for online streaming.
• You own the copyrights and distribution rights for all audio and video content that you upload — no exceptions.
• You regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.
• You live in the United States or Canada.

LINKS:

YouTube Partner Program Sign Up Page

YouTube Terms of Use Page

DailyMotion unveiled a new video player recently. You can see it in action above.

Metacafe Message Center - video powered by Metacafe

MetaCafe has recently added the ability to send and receive messages, including videos. There are some other updates as well. Check out the video above, or check out the MetaCafe blog.

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