Streaming Videos... Someone else's reviews

The same day as I am working up my streaming video comparison post, Chris Pirillo runs his YouTube vs. Google Video vs. Revver review. It's a much better take on it than mine because he embeds three videos from all three services. In the videos he is arguing with himself over which service is better.

Sharing your own videos

So, the next common big thing on the web will be for the average user to share their own videos. Not really the next big thing, but the now big thing. I decided to shoot a video using the video recorder on my old point and shoot digital camera (a Canon A95), edit a video using free readily available software (Windows MovieMaker) and upload it to three of the most popular video sharing sites YouTube, Google Video and Revver.

Creating an account and uploading the video was fairly easy on all three sites:

• Google video recognized my google account already (because I was already logged into my gmail account) and then presented me with the opportunity to upload the video. It uploaded fairly quickly and only showed me the uploading/processing screen for about 3 minutes.
  
• YouTube seemed like it should be as straight forward as google. but I ran into some hiccups. After I created an account, it made me validate my email address before I could upload video. After I validated my email address it kept prompting me to validate my email address over and over again until I logged out and then logged back in. Uploading the video was fairly simple. After I uploaded the video, I added some meta tag information and waited while YouTube processed the video. I waited and waited and waited for about 30 minutes for it to process refreshing the my video page. Finally, I decided to sign out and sign back into to see if it worked. It was there, it had processed.
• Revver was just as easy as Google Video to upload the video. My account created quickly with no validation. Revver has a simple flash application for browsing and uploading the files. The files uploaded quickly and then I had an opportunity to add some meta information as the video processed. Revver makes you wait for your video to be approved by a human and it took about two hours to be approved.
  

After the video uploaded and processed, it was easy to share or embed in a website. The quality of the processing was all similar, but I think the Google Video file ended up with the highest quality video. You can check out the options yourself.

• Google Video
• YouTube
• Revver
  

My poll photos and the law

I went to vote first thing this morning and arrived at the polling place about 15 minutes after it had opened. I had decided to take some photos for my polling place to participate in AIGA's Polling Place Photo Project. You can see my set of photos I uploaded for polling place project online. They are not artistic or fancy, just documenting where and how I vote.

While I was snapping away with my camera taking pictures of Arkansas's new electronic voting machine, one poll worker came over and told me she wasn't sure I should be taking photographs. I assured her that it was o.k. and that Arkansas Election law did not mention taking photographs in a polling place. She continued saying she thought I should stop and I told her that it was ok and that you see pictures of politicians voting all the time.

After I got back to my office, I decided to look up the election laws in Arkansas on polling places. The Center for Citizen Media blog has a great post on most of the state laws on polling place photography. After reading there brief, I can assure that I violated no laws in obtaining these photographs. In fact, when the poll worker tried to stop me from voting she may have violated the law because she was interfering with a qualified elector casting his or her vote. The Citizen Media Blog's brief on Arkansas law on polling place photography states:

Interfering with voting is a felony, though there is no mention of photo/video activity. (A.C.A. § 7-1-104.) Election officials “shall not allow any person to pass to the part of the room where the machine is situated, except for the purpose of voting.” (A.C.A. § 7-5-521.) It is not clear whether this applies to photographing your own vote, or voters entering and exiting the polling place.

A.C.A. § 7-1-104 (2006): Miscellaneous felonies – Penalties. (a) The following offenses shall be deemed felonies punishable as provided in this section: (6) It shall be unlawful for any person to prevent or to interfere with any qualified elector from voting at any election or to attempt to prevent or interfere with any qualified elector from voting at any election, provided that this subdivision (a)(6) shall not prohibit good faith challenges of ballots or voters according to law by candidates, authorized representatives of candidates, political parties, or ballot issues;

A.C.A. § 7-5-521 (2006): Arrangement of polling place. [Effective until January 1, 2006.]. (a) The exterior of the voting machine and every part of the polling place shall be in plain view of the election officials. (b) The machine shall be placed so that no person can see or determine how the voter casts his vote and so that no person can see or determine from the outside of the room how the voter casts his vote. (c) After the opening of the polls, the election officials shall not allow any person to pass to the part of the room where the machine is situated, except for the purpose of voting.

Television in the newsroom

I've been focusing a lot on how convergence in the newsroom is affecting photographers as I worked on my lesson on displaying photographs on the screen for my Introduction to Photography class. As I've been surfing around looking at different newspaper websites, I've been amazed by the differences in quality and subject of the different papers multimedia and videography efforts. Some newspapers' photo staffs like the San Jose Mercury News are posting video and slide shows everyday. Other papers like the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette have hired a videographer to enhance the multimedia offerings on their website. The Star-Tribune in Minneapolis is also publishing some excellent feature video packages.

But, above them all sits the Naples Daily News. The Naples Daily News Studio 55 daily newscast /podcast and PrepZone Playbook go all out. In a market that is not locally served by a TV station, the Naples Daily News has filled the gap and gathered up their advertisers as they went. Just think how many local markets that are not served or under served by TV that could be filled in with online newscasts

Newsroom -> Information Center

In a memo sent out yesterday and posted on Romensko today, Craig Dubox, the CEO of Gannett, makes plans to turn all of Gannett's newsrooms into a platform agnostic information center that ensures that the right news and information will be delivered to the right media. After piloting the project in 11 locations over the past year, the information centers will be built around seven areas: digital; public service; community conversation; local; custom content; data; and multimedia.

Stills from video in the newspaper

In the issue of Digital Content Producer that I received yesterday there is a great article about newspaper newsroom convergence with many photographers producing multimedia slideshows and video. Of particular interest to me was Dallas Morning News Photographer David Leeson exclusively shooting high definition video and then pulling frames for the video for the newspaper. The newspaper is not just running small inside photos, but enlarging the frames to four or five column photos. Last June Photo District News addressed the topic of whether video frames grabs are fit to print and said that besides the Dallas Morning News, the San Jose Mercury News and the Detroit Free Press were also printing stills grabbed from high definition video.