MySpace Video
My understanding is that much of YouTube's growth has been driven by uptake of YouTube videos on MySpace. That could be incorrect and certainly YouTube is growing like a weed and not all of the growth can be attributed to MySpace.
But if you look at the second half of December, there was a two week period where the growth flattened out. That corresponded with MySpace temporarily shutting down YouTube and resulted in my post on the topic.
So when I got an email from MySpace last night announcing that they have launched MySpace video, I figured it would be worth checking out the details of what they have launched.
I uploaded a video to my MySpace account this morning. It's still not viewable. MySpace tells me almost eight hours later that the video status is "processing". I guess I need to call MySpace "lame" because that's what I called Google when they pulled that stunt on me last fall. When you upload content to the web, you want to see it instantly. That's how this stuff has to work.
Anyway, in need of some instant gratification, I decided to go look at some of the videos that have been uploaded by others on MySpace. I was told that I had to upgrade to Flash 8. I did that. Then went back to look at videos from others. The video player looks a lot like YouTube's but I can't find anything on the web or in blogs to indicate the MySpace licensed their video upload/player technology from someone else. So I assume its home grown. In any case, the play button in the middle of the player and the controls at the bottom look a lot like YouTube.
When I get my video "processed" and onto my MySpace page, I'll link to it and let you know how clean the integration is. Ideally, it should be much easier to post a video to your MySpace page with MySpace's own player than with YouTube.
But for now, I still see way more people (including my girls and their friends) using YouTube to post videos on MySpace.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I think that if MySpace gets its video service working well, it could be an issue for YouTube, at least it may slow the amazing ramp its on now. If MySpace can't get its video service working, then News Corp may come knocking on the YouTube door, assuming they haven't already.
I think there's a couple of Flash points worth making. I'm betting that both are using FlashComm on the backend. Integrating video into flash was one of Adobemedia's most significant achievements.
To that end, they produced tons of demonstrations and other code. Add to that the other developers that have also created players and, well, there's tons. It's almost trivial to put one together. That MIGHT explain the similarity in the players.
On the upload side, there's a couple of things that could easily happen to improve that experience. First, since you're now on Flash 8, you have the ability to handle file uploads inside of Flash. This is what makes bubbleshare so appealing to most everyone. I would expect a Flash-based upload mechanism soon if it's not there already.
Second, if they are using FlashComm, they are going to FLV. That also means that you can record it quite nicely straight from your browser for all you care.. using your webcam. It might not be the same sort of videos (I try and stay out of myspace whenever possible) but it's possible it could lead to a different form of video spreading throughout the system (thing video messaging). Userplane has been doing this for some time now.
Of course, this all is largely based on FlashComm being behind the scenes. I believe there are tools to convert regular video for use in FLV clients.
I'm not a Flash guy, I just wasted a lot of money on them this one time in band camp.
Posted by: Gregory Narain | January 24, 2006 at 04:32 PM
Fred, what do you think the business model of You Tube would be? Will advertisers pay to be in front of these types of videos?
Posted by: Scott | January 24, 2006 at 05:49 PM
Well I tink YouTube is the streaming company for myspace - you can read that from their blog: http://www.youtube.com/blog . And the problem with the procesing times is the fact, that compressing any file-format to FLV output is just a quite processor time taking thing. Amongst that they are serving aout 45 TB (!) per day. At that growing rate I just bet they are not fast enough putting new servers to their cluster.
Posted by: Ingmar | January 25, 2006 at 04:12 AM
there's a basic problem no one seems to care about, and for all i know, maybe business models don't matter, but here it is:
sure, bandwidth cost has come way down and will come down more, but the basic cost of hosting and serving an I.P. video stream is still so high, that to just cover that cost ad CPMs will have to be soooooo high its impossible to imagine it can ever happen. basically, I.P streamed video will have to command signficantly higher CPMs than say, Desperate Housewives...
Posted by: steve | January 25, 2006 at 12:36 PM
We've recently launched a USer Video section over at IFILM.com in hopes of leveraging our brand recognition and offering a slightly different take on user generated video content. We're in the early stages, but I think we're onto something pretty great.
Upload and processing is as quick as anything, no waiting around for the better half of a day to see your video on the site. Plus, the video has the chance of being published in the main IFILM site, which is among the most trafficked video resources online. We support all relevant formats from 3GP to AVI to FLV, and will soon have a US Short Code for easy uploads from your cell phnoe.
I'd love to hear some initial impressions.
Posted by: jason | January 26, 2006 at 04:22 PM
Have you guys seen ifilm's user video channel? We launched it a couple of weeks ago and we are seeing some really nice growth, considering how young it is. As to the flash questions, we decided to go with Flash 8 because of the superior video codec along with the upload feature (which was already mentioned above).
Posted by: adrian | January 26, 2006 at 04:28 PM
The YouTube UI is easier on the eyes, compared to Ifilm
Posted by: theCreator | January 27, 2006 at 03:09 PM
i cant get the myspace vids to work. i downloaded flash 8 but it keeps telling me to download it. what do i do, can you help?
Posted by: noah | March 30, 2006 at 11:37 PM
AHHA! I uploaded the same exact music video to myspace and youtube. I uploaded it to each site seperately using the same source video. The video on youtube appears really blocky, blurry and pixilated..very very poor quality!!! The same video on myspace(mind you, I uploaded it to myspace from same exact video source) looks clean and VERY VERY CLEAR...friggin CRISP! I would suggest if youtube plans to stay in the game that they figure out a way to get the videos running at least as good as myspace, if not better. The difference is amazing..I refuse to put any of my new music videos on youtube because they just plain look like crap when I use youtube and they look good when I use myspace. Sorry, but you need to worry about QUALITY issues!!! Until you figure that out, I'm sorry to have to say this, but youtube sucks!
Posted by: Adam | May 16, 2006 at 07:32 AM
I've been trying to upload a video for over a week .mp4 96mb. Getting video processing errors. When contacting MySpace the keep giving me an outsourced form letter saying to use the UpLoad function, etc.
Nothing helps in their FAQ
Posted by: Jim Gilson | December 19, 2006 at 02:07 PM
Its fy
Posted by: Ronnie Register | January 08, 2007 at 08:33 PM
fraud
[url=http://adorigin.com]fraud[/url]
Posted by: Dillan | March 05, 2007 at 01:04 PM
I have same problems with myspace been trying to upload a 88MB mp4 file for like ever and just PROCESSING comes up on all videos but still nothing... while embeding a video from youtube works instantly however youtube has a 10min as well as a 100MB limiter so no luck with uploading my TV show either way... anyone have any ideas?
Cheers Damir
Posted by: Damir | March 17, 2007 at 04:36 AM
Mytubex.com allows you you to add youtube videos and create playlists with a single player to your myspace or any page. http://www.mytubex.com
Posted by: phelix | May 17, 2007 at 12:48 AM
I've been using stagegold.com . It has some interesting players that work with youtube and myspace. What I like is that their players are non-rectangular and include support for playlists.
Posted by: Rob | May 20, 2007 at 04:12 AM
wow...thanks for the tip on stagegold! It is great. I found a player that works great on my site. Very unique!
Posted by: suzie | May 21, 2007 at 09:19 PM
Stagegold is awesome! You guys should check it out. I found it very easy to use, and a lot of interesting skins! I also built a nice playlist.
Posted by: Natalie | May 21, 2007 at 09:21 PM
Stagegold rocks! I wish I'd known about this sooner. Mucho Thanks.
Posted by: Tom | May 22, 2007 at 08:56 PM
While it is true that quality can be poor on some video sharing sites due to various reasons, things can only get much better in the future, for example uploading a video to Motiono is a lot quicker than uploading a video on Google or on Myspace however the quality is not perfect, but it is still good.
Posted by: Motiono | July 09, 2007 at 11:10 AM
hi
Posted by: sa | July 17, 2007 at 10:32 PM
Hi Friends,
I want to get .FLV format output during webcam capture. I don't want to use codec to convert any other file format to .FLV
Any Idea ?
Posted by: Nirav Dolia | July 18, 2007 at 06:17 AM
Uploading Photos and Videos to MySpace
Uploading photos to your MySpace account is fairly simple. First you must log into your account and then click on the links that says, "Add/edit photos." You then receive a warning stating that photos which include nudity, violent or offensive materials or copyrighted images are not permitted. You can then browse through your hard drive to find the desired photo. Photos uploaded to MySpace must be .gif or .jpg format and must be smaller than 600k. Once you find an appropriate photo, click upload and the photo will be added to your account. Once a photo is added you can create a caption for this photo.
http://articlecillin.com/uploading-photos-and-videos-a192.html
Posted by: zhafran | January 20, 2008 at 09:53 AM