Put simply, if a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a single minute of video — which typically packs 24 images every second – must be worth something far greater. Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research says that watching a minute of video is the equivalent of reading 1.8 million words. I think he’s close.

I promise not to extoll all the virtues of using video for your business; I think that’s a base well covered by the blogosphere. (A single search yields countless articles; this one is a favorite.)

Rather, I’d like to tackle some of the painful “problems” with video set forth by the article’s author. Before diving in, it’s important to note that the author is discussing the use of video in the context of a website’s audience monetization strategy, which — as most know, is a very specific use case. As such, I’ve pulled out the issues with broader applicability:

• People at work and in school cannot easily watch video without being caught.
  ‘Getting caught’ watching an informative, important video that helps people learn or perform better is hardly a problem for forward-thinking organizations. So, this is a content, not a video, issue.
• Editing video is 100 times harder than editing text.
  Yep, it sure is. As a medium, it is far more complex and far less linear, but thanks to Apple, Adobe and several start-ups, there are now many simple editing tools for the uninitiated. If my 12-year old son can cut together a school video that looks professional — yes, sixth graders actually have video assignments now — then I’m not sure I’d bet against this.
• Studios are very expensive, and you usually need multiple of them.
  Hmmm. Not exactly. Not only can you outfit a studio for under $5k, but there are also tons of ways to create a dynamic studio. Again, you don’t need to go much further than a google search to get answers here.
• Your existing employees will not cut it as on-screen talent.
  It’s all relative. The kind of talent you need relates to the type of video you are making. The higher the utility value, the less you need to rely on talent. Employees are great for best practices, training or even thought leadership video. They carry a lot of credibility.
• Search does not work for video content.
  Not really true in the sense that all video carries metadata and if your video sitemap is set up correctly, your video can be searched. For a quick tutorial on what this means, check out Cliff’s post, Learn More About Video Metadata in a Minute!
• You need innumerable expensive service providers to compress, host, play, ad-serve, and do everything else in the misery that is the video process.
  Warning: shameless self-promotion. This is where uStudio comes in. We’re a one-stop shop for businesses who need to move video fluidly through its lifecycle – from creative collaboration through distribution and tracking. Servers and CDNs are not a competitive advantage for you and we know that. It needs to be easy and just work.
• The presence of video will make every other department (engineering, editorial, product, finance, operations) hate their lives.
  Why? Sure it’s new and different and change is hard, but it’s the future. In most organizations, people get excited about the future, especially if it brings tangible benefits like better audience engagement or reducing time and money in training, educating, selling or sharing ideas. Most will embrace the change. Video is becoming a runaway train. Hard to ignore something that’s barrelling down at you.
• It should work seamlessly on all devices. But it never does.
  HTML5 solves this elegantly and simply. Work with a vendor and a platform that offers an extensible, well designed set of tools.
• Auto-play.
  If auto-play is what your audience wants or needs, then auto-play is a nice feature. If your audience is turned off by auto-play, then don’t use it. It’s that easy.

Don’t let others scare you into thinking that there’s nothing to be gained from video except pain. Accessible and available technology is making it easier to manage and distribute video–from automatic multi-platform encoding to keeping up with shifting video metadata specs and non-standard stats. It’s the model of sophisticated technology simplified and empowering the (non-tech) user.

The hard part of video is actually something technology can’t replace –strategic thinking. That’s a pain everyone should embrace. Focus on answering the eternal marketing questions:  What’s right for a given audience? How much should I spend? Which sites should I post to? Who do I need on my team? How can we use new tools to do more with less? Can I sell this to the rest of my team or my partners and customers?

The value of video is getting the right story to the right audience at the right time. That’s the value real Video leaders bring.  Remember a minute is worth 1.8 million words. Take advantage of that opportunity.

The post Online Video – No Pain, No Gain? appeared first on uStudio.

• Stop, Think, Tag: Your video is just a part of the process of driving attention and engagement online. If you don’t properly describe your video, search engines (Google and YouTube!) won’t know to tell people it’s there.
• Maximize: Put as much information into your descriptions as possible. As search engines are able to consume and reference more information, the description of the video becomes more and more important. Transcripts, links to associated and relative content all help get the video ranked higher in search results.
• Always use “video” as a tag. Seriously. It helps.
• Use links in descriptions – back to your website. This is very beneficial for search engine ranking. Place these links at the top of the description to ensure that it can be seen by your audience.
• In the title, be logical, not creative: People don’t search for flowery language, they think more literally. Spicing up your title with alliteration or something smart can make it harder for your audience to find you.
• Example: You name your cooking video “Succulent Scrumptious Steak” after reviewing some information from google you find out that “juicy steak” and “great steak” is searched much more frequently.

The post Learn More About Video Metadata in a Minute! appeared first on uStudio.

We launched the new uStudio VideoSites destination last year for people wanting to auto-create video web pages. To speed things up even more, we just added a new uStudio feature called “Send a Link.” It lets you quickly send a link to your video, via email, to anyone you want without having to leave the uStudio application.

Imagine if you need to get a video to your team for review today and they’re traveling – no laptops in sight. Now – in a matter of seconds – you can get them the video. They’ll receive a simple link that works on any tablet or smartphone so that your team can watch and give you immediate feedback.

Here’s how it works:
• Hover over a video in your uStudio Gallery, click “Send Link”.

• Enter the names and emails of the people you want to send to as well as a message.

• Select how long the link you want the link available, and whether recipients can download the original file.

• Click “Send Link” and you’re done – we’ll do the rest!

Try it out and let us know what you think!

The post Need to share videos fast? Now you can do it in seconds. appeared first on uStudio.

With over 20 episodes on Hulu, the show is already attracting a large audience.

The uStudio team had great fun working with spoonfilm to format, ingest and deliver the videos to Hulu for a quick and successful launch!

Check out this great episode, “Cute Creta”…

 
(Ed: I think my favorite is the crazy “Small Scuba” episode! -Maysoon)

The post Distributing Spoonfilm’s Little Big World to Hulu appeared first on uStudio.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop and drive our demand generation strategy in collaboration with our sales & marketing team and external agencies. Create and execute online marketing programs and campaigns designed to generate high-quality, inbound leads; maximize prospect response, and increase sales pipeline value. Work with product marketing to develop sales-enablement materials.
• Ensure high quality leads and maximize ROI from our paid advertising programs via a hands-on management of, and collaboration with our Search Marketing agency.
• Design, build, test, analyze and refine campaigns, landing pages, lead nurturing and lead scoring processes – integrating our marketing assets with salesforce.com and marketing automation systems.
• Provide feedback, analysis and suggestions to the business at large on how we can improve our products, processes or messaging in order to better address market needs and provide value to our customers.

Requirements:

Bachelor’s degree in marketing, communications, journalism, business administration, finance or economics and 5-7 years hands-on B2B demand generation and pipeline development experience, with the following qualifications:

• Enthusiasm for demand generation marketing and sales enablement
• Advanced knowledge of Google AdWords & Analytics
• Advanced experience using salesforce.com and hubspot
• Experience managing search engine marketing to include pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns
• Excellent listening, oral and written and communications skills, specifically copywriting targeted at B2B audiences
• Highly organized, with a great attention to detail, yet able to see the “big picture”
• Social media and mobile marketing experience is a major plus.

Who we are:
uStudio is an Austin-based technology start-up that simplifies the way businesses manage and distribute video. uStudio is a shared, online workplace that frees our customers from technical administration and lets them take full advantage of their video assets. Created by video and marketing experts – we’ve taken everything we know about video technology and how business people want to use it – and built this into an easy-to-use yet powerful, cloud-based platform. Companies all over the world use uStudio to manage their video libraries, share video privately, distribute content to the media, publish video to corporate sites and blogs, and syndicate video to online destinations and social sites.

The post We’re Hiring: Demand Generation Manager appeared first on uStudio.

uStu­dio Video Sites are a pow­er­ful and easy to use solu­tion for cre­at­ing and shar­ing — pri­vately or pub­licly — video port­fo­lios. Plus, the gallery view inte­grates seam­lessly into any exist­ing web­site with the click of a button!

Check out uStu­dio (and the Den­ver Nuggets) in action here on altitude.tv

The post Helping the Denver Nuggets After the Buzzer appeared first on uStudio.

This oppor­tu­nity is not for the timid. If your friends might describe you by using one or more of the fol­low­ing phrases — gen­uine, highly-motivated, fast-thinking, flex­i­ble and an artic­u­late problem-solver — then you sound like some­one we want to work with. This role includes both tar­geted research and prospect­ing, as well as lead nur­tur­ing from our tri­aler community.

We:

• Believe that peo­ple are our most valu­able asset
• Pro­vide a com­pet­i­tive salary, bonus and great benefits
• Cre­ate a fun work envi­ron­ment in beau­ti­ful down­town Austin
• Work hard because we believe in what we’re doing
• Embrace cre­ativ­ity and new ideas
• Keep a fast pace
• Will invest in your success

You:

• Have 2+ years of cold-calling and prospect­ing experience
• Are com­fort­able dis­cussing tech­nol­ogy (video tech a plus)
• Enjoy being on the phone
• Won’t stop until you’ve overachieved
• Take direc­tion well, yet aren’t afraid to share new ideas
• Have the abil­ity to over­come objec­tions while mak­ing a prospect feel supported
• Are a nat­ural con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist, but can get to the point

If you’re inter­ested in this oppor­tu­nity, please email your con­tact infor­ma­tion and resume to jobs@ustudio.com.

The post We’re hiring: Inside-sales/Market Development Associate appeared first on uStudio.

Cre­ated by Amy Poehler, Amy Miles, and Mered­ith Walker, the online chan­nel cel­e­brates girls, friend­ships and spon­ta­neous dance parties!

The chan­nel has a vari­ety of series that are all aimed at empow­er­ing girls through pos­i­tive image and humor. View­ers get to learn about dif­fer­ent careers, like glass­blow­ing, meet girls from around the globe through the pen pal series, as well as get to know what the boys think with their “Boy’s Minute.”

uStu­dio helps Smart Girls by giv­ing them a cen­tral place to store, review and pub­lish their videos. This gives the team a place to prep and review con­tent and get it to their audi­ence with a push of a button.

Look for new episodes every Mon­day, Wednes­day and Friday.

The post Smart Girls Have More Fun! appeared first on uStudio.

As a com­pany, our goal is straight­for­ward — to make video man­age­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion easy. As a devel­op­ment team, we sup­port this goal by pro­vid­ing a rich REST API. This API is the foun­da­tion used by our user inter­face, inter­nal tools, and even­tu­ally a third-party ecosys­tem of video work­flow prod­ucts.

We:

• Pro­vide com­pet­i­tive salaries with great ben­e­fits
• Work in small teams with con­tin­u­ous, agile releases
• Strive to pro­vide the best tools for our developers
• Pri­or­i­tize our API, so that our entire plat­form is exten­si­ble (our UI is built on top of our REST API, for exam­ple, so all appli­ca­tions are “equal citizens”)
• Are not fright­ened by bleeding-edge projects
• Uti­lize (and cre­ate) open source tools
• Value test-driven devel­op­ment and the abil­ity to bridge web and tra­di­tional soft­ware paradigms.

You:

• Desire to build main­tain­able, pow­er­ful, and scal­able soft­ware solutions.
• Learn new tech­nolo­gies quickly (and love doing so)
• Are an expert in one or more object ori­ented language(s). (Python is a plus.)
• Are com­fort­able build­ing clients for var­i­ous API stan­dards (REST, RPC, etc.)
• Have expe­ri­ence work­ing with dis­trib­uted sys­tems (or are eager to learn)
• Have a proven track record deliv­er­ing exten­si­ble and resilient software.

If you are inter­ested in this posi­tion, email con­tact infor­ma­tion and a resume to jobs[at]ustudio.com.

The post We’re hiring: Software Engineer/Web Developer appeared first on uStudio.

We believe online video is still in its early days, and that brands have only begun to take advantage of the opportunities that video presents. We couldn’t think of a better place than ad:tech to talk about our video curation solution for marketers – designed to help the world’s most beloved brands make the most of their video opportunities on any device, anywhere.

The post We’re Competing at ad:tech in New York! appeared first on uStudio.

If you’re in Austin and attending the conference, please stop by the Bloggers’ Lounge and say hello – I’ll be there between 3p and 5p.

The post Texas Conference for Women appeared first on uStudio.

Lisa Samford

So, whether you’re a film festival manager or if just interested in how uStudio and other technologies are powering the film industry – you should register for this webinar: Film Festivals: Making Sense of Cloud-Based Opportunities Thursday, October 18, 2012 at 1pm EST.

The post Cloud Technology for Film Festivals or Events? appeared first on uStudio.

In short, uStudio is helping Georgia Southern distribute their sports videos to the media and their fans in the fastest, but still high quality, way possible.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I was ecstatic to help as I’m a huge college football fan.

One of my dreams was to, in some way (ok, in any way), get to work with Coach Lou Holtz. I love the guy (and my wife loves to make fun of him.) He is one of my all-time favorite coaches, and I love his current work on ESPN. Never has back and forth been as fun as it is with Lou Holtz and Mark Mays. They’re always entertaining.

So, to finally get to my point…

When Georgia Southern decided to make a move to Division-1, they needed student support to continue.

What better way than have Coach Holtz provide an inspirational message to the students! Check it out:

Now, I can check-off something on my bucket list. GO EAGLES!

The post Now Powering Video For Football Legends appeared first on uStudio.

First, we’re thrilled to be nominated as a top online video platform, alongside names like Adobe and Brightcove, in the Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards.  As the name suggests, readers can vote for their favorite video solutions — so please visit this page, scroll down to “Online Video Platforms” and vote for uStudio!  Voting ends October 15.

Second, we’ve proposed a SXSWedu presentation outlining the video opportunity in education.  Video has the potential to revolutionize communications in just about every industry, and we think the implications for education are particularly exciting.  If you agree, give a thumbs up to our proposal on this SXSWedu page before October 5.

Thanks as always to our customer and partner community for your support!

The post Vote for uStudio! appeared first on uStudio.

Video Sites enable anyone to create their own video-powered website in minutes. Check out the video below for an overview, or see an example in action here.

There are dozens of things you can do with Video Sites, including:

• Set up a video review page for colleagues and clients
• Establish a portfolio page for marketing your video production services
• Create an online brochure for your independent film or web series
• Share videos with colleagues

Because we believe usability is key to great products, we designed Video Sites with simplicity, ease-of-use and speed at the core.  Other great features of Video Sites include:

Styling - The appearance of Video Sites can be customized to fit the look and feel of your brand.

Statistics - Video Sites provide data on visits, audience reach and engagement.

Sharing - Video Sites are optimized for social publishing and sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, and are embeddable on other sites across the web.

Anyone can create a uStudio Video Site in minutes. They’re FREE to try for 14 days as part of the uStudio video management and distribution platform.

The post Create Your Own Video Website in Minutes with uStudio appeared first on uStudio.

Most of our customers invest in making video that’s important to them and their businesses, and they depend on uStudio to give them a single place to host, manage and distribute those videos to as wide an audience as possible. But when the folks at Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival contacted us, they had something different in mind. They contemplated a more contemporary film festival where submissions for their new Science Media Awards were no longer limited to DVDs, hard drives and USB thumb drives. They wanted submissions to be securely uploaded in digital file formats, organized into appropriate categories, and privately judged through a virtual studio model that required no technical training. And in line with the values of their festival and audience, they wanted it all to be eco-friendly: no more ripping and copying files onto DVDs that would ultimately end up in the trash!

Through a creative process that leveraged both the uStudio application and API, we were able to offer them a model for collaboration and private screening that filmmakers, judges and JHWFF staff could all embrace. With uStudio, filmmakers from around the world can inexpensively, securely and easily submit to their festival, judges have more flexibility to view and vote on their favorites from any device, and festival staff save precious time and money in managing the process – no more ripping and shipping DVDs.

We are thrilled to be working with the team at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and we look forward to helping them launch their first Science Media Awards!

The post Customer Case Study: Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival appeared first on uStudio.

Today online video is everywhere. We stream video to our televisions, browsers, and mobile devices. Commercials, shows, and even feature films are shot, edited, distributed, and viewed through an entirely digital workflow. The tools for producing high definition video (and beyond) are a fraction of the cost they were just a few years ago, and producing quality video is more accessible every day. Every year, new technology augments or even revolutionizes aspects of our industry.

Unfortunately for video producers, the requirements for delivering video are more complicated than ever. Making sure that the right video is in the right place, seen by the right people at the right time requires an understanding of digital video codecs, metadata requirements, and device limitations for a multitude of video destinations. This process requires attention and time, ultimately distracting from the primary focus of telling a compelling story through video. The complexity is compounded simply because the technology never stops changing.

 Our Philosophy

The uStudio engineering team focuses on abstracting away this complexity throughout our platform. From the end-user experience down to our internal software architecture, we recognize that the technology used to solve video problems today will be different tomorrow, and the requirements of any given destination can (and will) change any day of the week. We invest heavily in a layered system, ensuring that we can add new video platforms with minimal cost while easily extending existing platforms.

In the user interface this is accomplished by throwing away concepts like transcoding and packaging. A user of our platform shouldn’t be concerned whether one destination needs an XML manifest or another needs MPEG2 video delivered in a transport stream. Publishing to dozens of platforms should be as simple as publishing to one — by dragging a video onto a destination.

This convention is followed throughout our technology stack. Our API exposes simple resources that can be combined through normal HTTP methods. Transcoding, publishing, and other operations are routed through a task management system to the appropriate work nodes, and only at that point are jobs prepared for individual utilities. Even our internal configuration uses a custom taxonomy for managing authentication, feeds, transcoding profiles, and other facets of video delivery across our supported destinations.

We invest in these areas because we are motivated by the future of video. We believe that designing a system around a single endpoint (like an embeddable player or third-party distribution channel) is short-sighted and ultimately pessimistic. Great content — and the people that create it — should be enabled by the possibilities of technology, not limited by them. We are taking on that challenge.

It’s an exciting time to be working in video.

The post Designing for Change appeared first on uStudio.

However, rushing to make a video can be a huge mistake. You need to think through the purpose and message of the video and decide to dedicate the appropriate budget to the project.

The funny thing is that while the tools to make video have become cheaper and more accessible, it still doesn’t change the fact that the actual process of making a video is a craft that must be learned by experience.

If you  want a message from someone in your office then using an iPhone or a cheap camera can work, but it can easily come out poorly produced. A bad video is worse than having no video at all.

The point? Seeking professional help can never hurt.

The post So your business needs a video… appeared first on uStudio.

Time is money

Speed is a critical part of all internet solutions and at uStudio we’re very proud of how fast our system is. However, we’re the kind of people that are always looking for ways to improve. With that in mind we’ve recently made a number of improvements.

The first change notably reduces the time it takes to load pages in the application. Customers with lots of Destinations and Collections will notice that things are snappier. It’s the type of small change that makes a big difference.

We also greatly improved our publishing speed. Videos published to Players and to Video Sites will now be available much faster, allowing you to get onto the next task.

Peace of mind

uStudio’s advanced file storage makes it a safe and dependable solution for managing and hosting your video. Now we’ve taken that a step further by providing the ability to retrieve any file that you’ve uploaded to your Studio. To download a video simply view the Video Details and click the download button on the right side of the screen. We’re sure that you’ll sleep better knowing that the hard drive in your desk drawer isn’t the only life preserver.

Everyone wants security

You may have read about our new Video Site feature. In case you didn’t, Video Sites allow you to quickly and easily share your videos. In the spirit of continuous improvement we just added a new capability.

You can now control access to Video Sites by password protecting them. Video Sites already addressed a number of your video sharing needs, but now that security has been added they can do so much more. We already have customers using this new feature to create private viewing rooms for clients and securely share internal videos with co-workers. How will you use private Video Sites?

Please contact us at support@ustudio.com if you have any questions about how to take advantage of these new features. We look forward to hearing from you!

The post Continuous Improvement appeared first on uStudio.

We thought we could definitely help.

Then we got to see the video.

While it was extremely well produced, its focus was on selling the viewer on a product. Actually, it was a hard sale for the product.

The video wasn’t the problem though. Content like that can be necessary and effective to close gaps in information for a potential buyer and lead them to a purchase.

The problem was what the client initially wanted, a distribution game plan.

This video was so focused on the last stage of the sales cycle that its only natural home was on the product’s purchase page. Putting it “in the wild” on video portals (like YouTube) felt very forced and the message was flat, if not abrasive to the viewer.

What was needed was a video that spoke to the pains that the product solved, thus creating a dialog with a potential buyer. From there, the viewer of the video could opt into the next step: visiting a site with a more focused message on how product X could solve the problem.

Somewhere on that site is where this video belonged. When we did distribute it outside of their site, the view counts were low and the conversion to a a sale was non-existent.

The two take-aways here:

1) Think about who you want to talk to and what part of the sales cycle they are at. Then tailor your video (if not multiple videos) to them.

2) Think about where that message lives and how your potential customers will react to it.

It’s easy to come up with a great pitch, and getting superb production value at an affordable cost is readily available, but those two things won’t add up to a sale unless you’re putting the right message in the right place.

The post Putting the right message in the right place appeared first on uStudio.

Video can be amazingly efficient in communication. When properly done, it is decisively the best way to convey a message today.

However, there are times when you should NOT make a video.

Ask yourself the following questions. If you don’t have clear and fairly decisive answers, hold off on writing that script or hiring a videographer.

-Do you have a story? What are you trying  to convey to your audience and what’s the angle or framework you are starting from? (I.e. If you’re hungry, go to my restaurant. If you want to laugh, watch my show, etc.)

-Do you have an audience in mind? Even if you end up being wrong, having an audience in mind for you message will help you craft and hone it

-Do you know where you’ll put the video when you’re done? If you say “just my website” you should have a really good reason as wh you would limit the exposure to just one distribution point. Having a larger distribution plan that you can monitor and gauge success with will help you reach your goals and learn more about where your target audience lives and consumes content

The post When not to make a video appeared first on uStudio.

However, what they don’t do is “everything.” They have a niche, a focus, a strength.

What’s fascinating to me is understanding, even in simple concepts, what they do. Even more interesting is then trying to explain that to the next person who doesn’t get it at all (teaching is learning after all, right?.)

Often, they don’t want to get it. Why? Because, they’re great at what they do and they just want to get better at that thing… and that is totally OK.

To me, it is fascinating to learn new things. I feel I can say that for myself and everyone here at uStudio.

When I realized that, I realized that is uStudio’s niche, our focus and our strength. In all things video, we want to learn and strive to understand. Next, we’ll build awesome tools to turn knowledge into action.

Finally, we want to teach it to you – as much or as little as you’d like to know.

The post De-mystifying the mystical appeared first on uStudio.

As far as video consumption goes there are two very interesting tidbits in the report. First, that 9% of those surveyed had canceled their cable bills and cut the cord. More interesting is that an additional 11% are considering it. Through a variety of new content platforms and new devices to consume them on, more and more people are realizing they can do without that hefty monthly bill.

Industry site ReelSEO, has a great point – sports programming is the lynchpin that keeps people on cable. If more sports programming was available online, you would see a substantial increase in those both cutting the cord and thinking about it as well.

At the same time, Cable services are highly valued. To make sense of these seemingly opposing trends, you have to overlay the data and get a picture of the “new media” consumer. Just because these consumers are cutting cable or thinking about it doesn’t mean that they don’t value cable. Simply put, most people are keeping their cable bills, but the amount of time spent watching media from streaming media is surging. It’s not a simple either-or proposition anymore. One Monday night, a “new media” consumer might watch football on their cable service, Tuesday a movie on Netflix, Wednesday a sit-com during its initial broadcast, but Thursday is catching up on an old series on Hulu.

One last piece of data, that is food for thought if you haven’t begun thinking about how to get your content into the appropriate digital streaming platforms, in 2009 only 28% of people streamed movies. In 2011, that number jumbed to 42%. Don’t be surprised if that number doubles again over the next two years. If that percentage is streaming movies, think of the substantial audience available for streaming all kinds of content there is.

Now is the time to start getting your content digitized and available through as many appropriate content platforms as possible. Those who don’t may face the painful reality of playing catch-up in an incredible diverse and complex environment.

The post Cord Cutting Getting Real appeared first on uStudio.

Boy, did I hate the end of the month. I’d visit each site, whip out a calculator, add up all the views across all the videos on each site manually, write that number down on paper (gross!) and then repeat the process until I had accounted for each place any video I was in charge of was.

After that exercise was done I was exhausted. I didn’t care about much else other than the fact I had the numbers I was seeking in the first place.

When I first started using uStudio to manage and publish I knew that the pain of wrangling all that data would go away. Lo, it did, but there was an unexpected consequence.

Instead of just being relieved that I didn’t have to do this exhaustive manual thing, I found I had the time and energy to ask questions. Questions like, “Why did this video perform better on this site and not on the next?” and “Why does this keyword attract views, but this one doesn’t?”

It allowed me to evolve from simply managing videos to creating a feedback loop that improved how I was producing, describing and where I was publishing my videos.

Making a process efficient makes everyone feel like they’ve saved time. The true benefit is that it allows you to do a better job at what you intended to do in the first place.

The post Wrangling video stats appeared first on uStudio.

While Steve Jobs finally figured out television (presumably with a voice activated TV guide), Sony CEO Howard Stringer also had his “A-ha” moment and has quietly built a content eco-system over four screens (laptops, tablets, phones, television.)

Shame on me for not including Sony in my blog-post a few weeks ago. With over 18,000,000 Playstations sold in the U.S., there is a nice opportunity here for them if they can get the content deals done.

The post Say hello to our new contestant.. appeared first on uStudio.

There are some bare minimum things you need to do, like understanding your target audience and where they consume media the most.

Then there are the table stakes, which is posting a video on your site and also to YouTube (partially for views, but primarily for SEO benefits.)

But there is no turn-key answer regarding where you should place your content. Take some time, think through your goals, make baseline distribution plan and then add new destinations as needed.

In software, many people use agile development to build their products. This means they do little pieces of the work every week rather than saying, “This is all going to be done on day X.”

That same approach applies to video distribution. Create a basic distribution strategy based on informed decisions, then add new destinations as they become viable.

Most importantly, don’t be afraid to make changes to that plan. Keywords, titles, and even the places you are distributing to can all be altered and modified.

Don’t try to do everything at once!

The post The Perfect Video Distribution Strategy… appeared first on uStudio.

Let’s look at each of them.

Apple: Has a great closed environment and solid content deals with most providers for their iTunes store. Will that carry over with the release of their TV set? Will this foray sound off alarm bells at cable companies if Apple starts gobbling up content deals for a TV set with broadcasters like Disney, Fox, Scripps, etc.? They should be going off now, in my opinion. Food Network? There’ll be an app for that.

Amazon: How well the Kindle Fire tablet sells and performs will be telling of how well Amazon can penetrate the streaming video market and compete with both Apple and Netflix. They have the deep pockets to sustain competitive pricing on the Fire and with an ever-growing library of streaming content available pretty much anywhere, I think Amazon is poised to really heat this space up after years of dominance by Apple.

Facebook: I know it seems odd to add Facebook here, but they are very relevant to this conversation. Video is a social medium. People like to watch videos that their friend like and share. That recommendation is inherently more valuable than a search engine result which has zero taste. As online video consumption grows, Facebook is poised to play an integral role and may even become more relevant as time goes on. Their pay per view experiment seems to have been lackluster (based on the fact no one has really talked about it for a long time), but after opening up and allowng video embeds into the site, Facebook cemented itself as part of the discovery and consumption eco-system of online video.

Google: With the launch of Google TV 2.0, it looks like Google has improved the product substantially. However, with Logitech getting burnt to a crisp over the first Google TV launch, I feel that it will be difficult to find a hardware company that will as gladly work under Google’s fairly stringent standards (you MUST have a QWERTY keyboard, for example.) Where Google really intends to disrupt the industry is with YouTube, who just announced a slate of professionally made programs for the site. Think of it as an online cable provider with content spanning any desired genre and most demographics. If they can continue to get the engagement out of their current audience with these new shows (many of which will be longer format) then, again, alarm bells should be going off at cable companies.

I’ve left out myriad players that have some part of the market, like Sony, Microsoft, Netflix, Roku and more, but these four players seem to have emerged as the leaders in new media/internet video.

Will we look up in five years and have one of these four be dominant, will they all be on relatively equal ground (but with different pockets of consumers) or will someone else rise up that no one suspected?

That I can’t answer, but I sure am interested to find out!

Postscript: Interestingly enough, I wrote this on Wednesday this week and Thursday NPR released this story.

Also, here’s another interesting and relevant article on the subject.

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I’m talking about OTT TV, which is an acronym for “Over The Top” television.

OTT is market-jargon for devices that deliver content to a television via an internet connection.

Xbox, Roku, Boxee, web-connected televisions, tablets, are all example of OTT devices.

Large and growing audiences are using these devices (especially tablets) daily to consume more and more of their content.

Does your video distribution strategy include ways to make sure your content can be seen where your audience wants to watch it?

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In media distribution when you implement a 360 degree strategy, you’re attempting to draw a perfect circle and make sure that anyone can watch your content anywhere, anytime, on the device of their choosing.

There are two components of executing on this strategy: understanding your audience and having the right technology to deliver your content.

When you try to implement a 360 degree distribution strategy with only the former, you’ll end up pulling your hair out. All the uploading to various services, repeating work time and again changing metadata, adding new content, compiling statistics by hand, along with other headaches will leave you and your team exhausted and frustrated.

When you have the technology at hand, but no understanding of your audience, you’ll do a lot of repetitious work (costly work mind you) and have your content everywhere. However, everywhere may not be where your audience is.

Take the time to find out where your audience consumes content the most and focus on making that a great experience for them. Then add more destinations to see if the content will do well there. If not, don’t be afraid to pull the plug.

Trying to run a 360 play without the right tools or without understanding your audience is like trying to free-hand draw a perfect circle – it’ll never happen.

If you want help with either part of a 360-strategy, or both, give us a call. It’s what we love to do!

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In the past, that metadata has often been written in stone. Today, however, you can edit your video’s information on most platforms.

So, when you notice a decline in audience for one of your videos take some time to think about how your intended audience is finding it, and experiment with the description and keywords. You may be very surprised with the results!

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Video is primarily a visual medium, so why don’t I start by talking about the type of camera to get, lighting, or how to act in front of the camera?

The answer is simple, bad audio makes a bad video. Period. A really hollow room, a microphone that is rustling against a tie, overblown sound, they all pull your audience out of a ‘passive watching’ mode into a ‘where’s the &$*#@ pause button’ mode faster than anything else.

Turn that around. Give me very clean audio and a crappy picture. If the content is compelling, you’ll watch it. Even if it’s over-exposed, or black and white, shot on a really old video camera, what have you, people will continue to watch.

So, why is that? First, we blink. Our mind is always patching together discontinuous visual information. Whether we’re driving, looking at a painting or cooking a meal, our brain is so used to compiling visual information we are subconsciously more forgiving if there’s a quality issue.

Do you stop watching your kid playing at a park because it’s too bright outside? Nope, you blink more and squeeze your eyes until the image is tolerable. If, in that same example, loud construction was going on right next to you at that park, you would probably leave. You can’t blink your ears, folks.

A recent study that varied sound and audio quality found that, “…for the cases we examined, better quality sound improves the perceived similarity of a lower-quality visual approximation to the reference.” (click here to see the study)

That’s a fancy way of saying, “Get a decent mic if you want me to watch this.”

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What you do with it after you have one is really what matters.

Just posting links or text updates isn’t likely to build up your ‘fan’ base on encourage people to share, or click on a link to go to your site. That’s where media comes in.

A picture or video on your company’s profile or twitter posts is much more likely to be shared than a regular post. If you’re company has video, don’t just post it on your site and link to it on social platforms. Take the extra step and post videos and pictures directly!

You’re going to be much happier with the results in the long run.

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Back then, most “online” video was viewed on a desktop. That’s right, the big box with a monitor hooked up to it. Add the fact that most people were watching online video while they were at work and it is pretty easy to understand why videos had to be short to be engaging and successful… you never knew when your boss was going to walk by!

Fast forward a few years – laptops are becoming the predominant choice for a new computer. Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets make online content accessible anytime from anywhere. Now, videos don’t have to be under a few minutes and… you never know when your boss is going to send you the next OK GO! music video.

So, how long is too long for your video? It’s not an easy answer anymore. You have to think about what the purpose of the content is, who you want to watch it, what platforms they may watch it on and how they might share that content with their friends.

YouTube recently started allowing their content partners to upload longer format videos, Netflix and Hulu put feature length movies and seasons of TV at your fingertips.

Today, length doesn’t matter as much as context.

Don’t be afraid to make a 20 minute video. Do be afraid if you haven’t thought about who it’s for or where it’s going before you make it!

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If we accept the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, then every second of video is worth 24,000.

That’s how engaging video is. It brings together all forms of media: text, pictures and sound, in a way that is much more compelling than any of its individual components.

If you don’t have a video strategy for your company, you’ll need one sooner rather than later. Even if that strategy is to do nothing, the tools available to create and distribute videos are too accessible to not at least consider what your strategy is.

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If you’re thinking about video strategically, you can’t answer the question. You need to know more first.

If 10 of the ‘right’ people see your video and buy your product or service you’re much better off than getting 1,000,000 views from people who aren’t going to.

Knowing clearly the purpose of the video before producing it, understanding clearly who you are making it for and where those people consume content will let you answer that question quickly and confidently.

The post Would you rather have 10 views or 1,000,000 views on your video? appeared first on uStudio.

We are all, by human nature, both creative and logical. It’s rare that someone is truly one or the other. What’s important is where and why you apply logic and where and why you apply creativity.

Sometimes, when you’re too focused on the logical end of things, you might miss an out of the box solution. The opposite can be true as well; being too creative about a problem can often lead you away from a very logical, and very obvious, solution.

When it comes to creating and publishing a video you need both sides of your brain, but there are two places where it’s advantageous to tell the other half of your head to keep its trap shut.

When you’re creating the content for a video – whether your brainstorming with a team, or working on a story board, put the logical side away. Think of creative ways to convey information to your audience. If you think too logically, you might miss on a compelling way to tell your story. Good storytelling is at the heart of any video – whether it’s a 1:00 product demo or a feature length classic.

Take “Will It Blend?” for example. It’s a great and creative way to showcase a simple product. Every episode Blendtec wants to see if their blender can annihilate another goody, like a CD, iPod, etc. Someone was clearly using the right side of their brain when they came up with that concept. They’ve sold a lot of blenders because of it.

But a great idea is worth nil if your audience can’t find your video. That’s where the left side of your brain should kick in. DO NOT BE CREATIVE HERE. Seriously. No really, I’m not joking. Can you tell I’m serious? Good, please continue.

Let’s look at my above example. If someone at Blendtec was being creative, they would have named the show something like “Blendtec’s Chopper-Rama” or “We Turn It To Dust!” Horrible, terrible examples, I know, but the folks who came up with “Will It Blend?” took an awesome idea and said, “Let’s makes sure people can find it, remember the name and share it with friends.” The title of the show says it all. If you told 100 people there’s a web-show called “Will It Blend?” and asked them to guess what the show is about, I’d wager at least 95 of them would nail it.

So, quick recap. When you’re thinking about making content, be creative, be bold, be right-brained. Try new things to tell your story in new ways.

When it comes to titling a video, writing a description, or coming up with keywords, be boring, be conventional, be left-brained. Try using words and descriptions that many people would use to search for the topic you’re covering.

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I have a background in radio, so I can tell you there is A LOT of effort that goes into producing just one minute of that program. As a fan, I can tell you that if you were to go back and listen to some of the first episodes (when it was called “Your American Playhouse”) you’ll hear the show in a rawer form. It doesn’t sound so effortless. Some of the early episodes can be a little hit or miss.

But, Ira Glass, and the talented crew of folks that he works with, stuck with it and the show got better and better and better until it became what is today.

A few years ago, Ira Glass talked about “The Gap” creative people face. Creative people have great taste, which is one of the things that pushes them to create, but when you start creating you’re often (really always) disappointed with the results. That’s where most people quit. They’re frustrated that the results don’t meet their high expectations. The only remedy is to not stop – keep creating. Give yourself deadlines and goals and your work will meet your ambition eventually. For some people that gap is very brief, for others much longer.

The Beatles’ gap was two years. That’s how long they lived and played in Hamburg, Germany. They slept in a theater in an unheated room behind the movie screen. They played for hours and hours every day. They were poor and the end goal didn’t seem obvious, but they stuck with it and they became what we know as The Beatles today.

This is a lot of talk about creativity, but the same exact principle applies to pretty much anything. The best surgeons in the world become the best by experience. The same is true of pilots, engineers, teachers, etc.

When it comes to working with the new world of online video, we’re all, in some way, in “The Gap.” Whether you’re a marketer, a video professional, a filmmaker or just starting your first web series, you’ll face “The Gap.” Whether you’re trying to make a video look or sound better, figuring out where to distribute a video, trying to understand what all the data you get back about your videos mean, or trying to organize your videos all into one place, you will experience “The Gap.”

Throw in the fact that this space is constantly shifting and changing you can sometimes cross the gap and look up only to find yourself back on the other side again!

The best way to get better at mastering this space is the same as Ira Glass describes. Set goals and deadlines, keep doing and you will become better.

There really aren’t a lot of shortcuts, but there is a way to accelerate and move through the gap more quickly: By having great tools and mentors around you.

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