UNIT 62 Criteria 1
Understanding Principles of Digital Video Technology in Interactive Media
Growing up during the technology boom of the internet it’s hard to imagine a time without digital media not being in my life in one way or another, from television adverts to online advertising, even people becoming overnight celebrities due to video sharing sites like YouTube that give everyone who has something to say a platform to make a name for themselves. This essay will look at some of these applications of video technology and in particular will focus on the news and how interactive video has enhanced this medium.
Digital video has led to new and inventive ways of presenting news, and information. Looking back to the days when one could only hear about the day’s events was to tune into BBC news at 10, or reading the Daily Telegraph, it’s amazing to see how far it’s come, back then there was not much competition and the public was fed the news that the TV stations or newspaper editors had picked to be shown. Nowadays one can simply open up internet explorer, and read the news from a well known news outlets site or read a blog someone’s posted about current events. This has led to more competition over who gives the best news, making news more interactive, either by using more creative ways to deliver it other than the traditional text and pictures is one way they’ve done this and also by directly giving you the news that you are most interested in by looking at search history and the likes to give you a decent service. Through the use of short videos on their websites, they have been able to give news in a more interactive way, adding scenes from the zones the news has come from to give you insight into what is happening, it can really make you feel for a story a lot more than if you were just reading what was happening, by bringing the words to life. This was seen in 2008, after the Sichuan earthquake, where over 65,000 lost their lives, (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7402612.stm) the Chinese government shut all media to the outside world and we could only speculate as to the damage caused, however what China did not anticipate was the Chinese population taking to the streets and taking pictures of the after effects of the earthquake themselves, and writing their own blogs, Western news channels used this content to show first hand, what was going on, this really was one of the most prominent examples of citizen journalism.
In a way it really shows the ease of making news content nowadays, literally anyone can do it, and has the power to go against governments who are trying to hide information, one of the noblest examples of how one person used this as a force of good was that of Ai Weiwei, it is mentioned in the bbc documentary The Virtual Revolution, that he wrote a blog documenting all the children that died in a school collapse as a result of the earthquake, his actions inspired thousands of volunteers to travel to Sichuan and help search for survivors.
Though the benefits of this freedom that allows anyone to post news is extremely powerful and can be used to help people hear about the news, it still has its problems, the biggest being that you cannot believe everything that is said to be true, it could just as easily be a hoax, or an important piece of information could be missed and this could be fuelled to give the wrong news to people, this is a problem that occurs on Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that is written by everyone, anyone can add or edit information on any subject on it, and this leads to problems where you cannot take the information you read legitimately. A common joke people play on Wikipedia is celebrity “Death hoax”, where someone will edit a celebrities Wikipedia page to say that they died the previous day, in 2009, after the death of Michael Jackson, it was cited that actor Jeff Goldblum had died in a tragic fall while filming a movie in New Zealand, though after thousands of phone calls to New Zealand police, this piece of fictitious news was found to be fake.
Videos that are uploaded to the internet are usually formatted as MPEGs, specifically MPEG-4 which is the most common format for videos distributed over the internet. MPEG-4 compresses the file losslessly, meaning that the file is broken down into smaller bits for storage or transmission and is then “rebuilt” on the other end so that it can be used again, as the lossless term would suggest, it loses none of the data in the process when it does this so is a great way of keeping a file a small size, making it faster to upload onto the internet. lossy compression works different in the fact that it actively eliminates “unnecessary” bits of information tailoring the file so that it is smaller, this is most commonly used a lot for large bitmap images which are very bulky, for example, the image could have several different tones of blue for the sky, the compression would make them all the same blue, if the compression scheme works well, you won't notice the change, but the file size will be significantly reduced.
When videos are put onto the net there are two ways you can watch them, one is to download the file directly onto your computer and save it, once it’s saved you’ll be able to watch it anytime, with no buffering, however this is a very clunky method in today’s world where people just want to be able to click a link, watch the video (instantly I might add, not having to wait to download it) and get on with something else, this is where the next method comes in, streaming videos is a way of watching videos over the internet in real time, the content is sent to your computer in a compressed state and then displayed for you on your monitor. With streaming you do not have to wait for the video to download to play it, instead it is sent as a continuous “stream” of data and plays it as it arrives. You need a player, which is a special program that uncompresses the data and sends video data to the display and audio data to the speakers.
According to techtarget.com, “major media streaming technologies include RealSystem G2 from RealNetwork, Microsoft Windows Media Technologies (including its NetShow Services and Theater Server), and VDO.” Streaming video is mostly done from prerecorded video files, but can be broadcast as a livefeed, this is done by the video signal from a live broadcast being converted into a compressed digital signal and is transmitted from a special web server that can perform a multicast, sending the same file to multiple users at the same time.
The biggest site for sharing video clips over the internet is YouTube, with number two, according to the website http://www.readwriteweb.com, being Facebook. It’s not just for news clips though, or your favorite TV shows, it enables everybody who has access to a computer and the internet the ability to upload their own generated content onto the web for anyone to see. YouTube is a free service and it makes its money through lots of advertising, it’s quite genius, based on what you type into YouTube, adverts around the sides of the screen will be directed at that subject, say you search “Grand theft auto” the video game, all the adverts you are shown are all about other video games, it’s this direct advertising that companies are trying to grasp now.
Luckily, YouTube make it simple to upload your videos onto its site, probably one of the reasons it is so popular, Google information says that it accepts the following formats of video;
· WebM files
· .MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files
· .AVI
· .MPEGPS
· .WMV
· .FLV
Once you have a video that is ready to be uploaded you simply click on the link at the top of the website called “Upload”, you are moved to a webpage where you have the option to either upload an existing video or record one on a web cam. If you click “Upload Video” you will be directed to your files and can select the video you want uploading, the selected video will then take some time to upload onto the website; you are then able to give it a title and description before hitting save, the only restriction on videos is that they are under 2GB in size and under 15 minutes in duration.
Videos on YouTube can be removed if they violate copyright laws; this applies for both video and audio clips, some labels allow their music to be on YouTube on the count that advertisements around the video are related to the product.
Finally I’d just like to bring this full circle by mentioning how much technology has progressed from the days before digital video for news, Jeremy Clarkson sums it up perfectly in the documentary Inventions That Changed The World, before the internet if he was reporting on a story he would have to right his article, dictate it to a copy typist, who sent it to an editor, which was then laid out on the paper by the layout editor, before finally being set up to print, it sounds like a lot of effort, now however he can write his article on a laptop wherever he is, he could be in the middle of Helmand Province, reporting on the Iraq war and email his work to an editor who can layout everything on his own via his own computer before sending it to be printed in the news paper. Or with a video camera film what is happening there and be able to mail the video back to his news offices back in England.
hough some would argue news is something only well credible sources and news organisations should be allowed to report on, there is no denying that giving citizens access to post videos and blogs on real life issues through YouTube and other sites has an importance, and we will see more of the likes of citizen journalism like in Sichuan in the future.
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