Will it Blend?

We originally heard about this site from the Rocky Mountain Voices blog – check them out to get a better review of “Will it Blend”.

The brainchild of Blendtec, “Will it Blend” is a simple and fun video series that takes everyday items such as pens, marbles, a rake handle, a coke can, credit cards etc… and try’s to blend them using their own Blendtech Home and Commercial blenders.

The video production is simple edits, but spot on for the style of their chief blender – Tom Dickson.  The video player embedded into their site is the free player from Jeroen Wijering, and does the trick.  The clips are also seeded to YouTube, where their rake handle blend has over 250 thousand views.

click to watch 

How to Fry a Turkey

Here is a video we made this past weekend while attending a Penn State football game. Greg does a fine job going through the process, in one take! We uploaded to Revver in the hopes of massive views and shared revenue from the post-roll ad and our Google juice along the bottom of the page.

click to watch

Google Search – “Video Blog”

Rocketboom is the top Google search for “video blog” They continue to forge ahead with innovation, creativity, and advertising!!! I checked out today’s daily – Thursday October 26th, and noticed a cool McDonald’s ad at the end of the show – must be seen! Beet.tv is covering all of the ads, which can be found here.

A couple of things to point out – Rocketboom makes their content extremely accessible – formats for all i.e. QuickTime, Windows Media, mp4, .mov, fireant, iTunes, democracy, mobile etc… They are also spread across the Tivo and Akimbo set tops. Anyone wanting to start a video blog needs to take a few pointers from the masters…

A belated congrats on their 500th episode.

ScobleShow

The ScobleShow is coming!! The ScobleShow is coming!!

Robert announced his new trailer for The ScobleShow, which will be hosted as a Blip.TV channel.

I’m a fan of Blip.tv for a number of reasons, mainly for the FTP capability, and future advertising plan of attack. I wonder if Robert will be using the advertising engine that Blip.tv is making available, or if these shows will be ad free, or have a hard coded ad in the video somewhere…I guess we will see shortly.

It’s good to see there is some crafty editing involved, thanks to Ryanne and Jay.  Hopefully we will see more of this style.

I’m also interested in how they will package the show on the Podtech website, and how many formats will be available – this show will certainly have a presence in iTunes…but where else?!?
click to watch the scobleshow trailer

Why Blip.tv is better than YouTube

I created an account on Blip.tv this afternoon and think that this service is really good. I have had a YouTube account for almost a year now, with 91 videos and counting. The reason for my YouTube account is more of an ongoing experiment than a video portal showcasing my work. I typically have custom sites showcasing the material in higher quality, or the video is on a client’s website.

I uploaded the four current episodes of Active Cities Magazine monthly video series to Blip.tv this afternoon. Again, I like to sign up and check out features that these services offer. When I finished the 4th upload I noticed an FTP upload link in my dashboard. WOW! I immediately opened my FTP client, loaded 10 videos (averaging 25MB) and clicked upload. I walked away and got a cold beer from the fridge, and started this post on another computer in the house.

The fact that I can FTP is the most valuable feature of any video sharing site I have found. This allows me to get content uploaded in quantity, without wasting time.

I’ll edit this post later, because this is not the only reason Blip.tv is better than YouTube. I’m just starting to read the Advertising information on my dashboard…

It’s Jerry Time!

It’s Jerry Time! is a video podcast about the true tales from the life of Jerry.  The video is a combination of animation using Adobe After Effects, digital stills and clip art.  Sound effects are added and Jerry does the score.  The final product is entertaining and professionally produced.

As for video delivery, the viewer has the option to choose QuickTime or Windows Media, and a choice of connection speed.  I suppose they deliver multiple formats and bitrates depending on viewer choice.  The video is 16:9 and looks to be 480×270. The WMV bitrate was 576Kbps (under the cable modem connection speed setting).  All in all QT & WMV look great!

Subscription via RSS & iTunes are available as well as an interesting blog with video outakes, an interesting tipping system, a store with DVD’s posters & t-shirts and a few other fun parts to the site (check out the shoebox).

Highly recommended.

click to watch 

Cycling.TV Tour of Britain

Cycling.tv is broadcasting the Tour of Britain for free. I checked the site and watched a few clips. The content is also being broadcast via the Tour of Britain website, although the player and experience is a little different.

Narrwostep is the video provider and Windows Media Video 9 is the format. The video size is 384×288, but can be expanded to fit ~480×360. The bitrate is 400Kbps.

There are user preferences that allow this feature to be activated / deactivated, as well as choosing your own broadband speed from 56K to 1800K.

There is a nice menu page to the right of the video window with all of the programming options.

I’ll be tuning in for some of the live coverage…

The Hunt is On!

I just finished listening to an episode of the chris pirillo show featuring Tara Hunt. She was talking about the complexities of buying consumer electronincs, specifically video cameras. Apparently, Tara is involved with Citizen Agency (co-founded with Chris Messina).

My interest here is the video blogging portion of the new company. The podcast metioned that they are starting a video program…i.e. video blog. I checked out their new diggs and found an informative blog, but no video yet…Maybe they need a little help…

We will keep an eye on the company and provide a review of their effort in the video space… don’t worry, this is not a critical evaluation…just a report…

Ze Frank

I first learned of Ze Frank from Robert Scobles blog.  I checked out his iTunes video podcast and thought it was neat.  I am noticing a similar style among vloggers (mobuzz, rocketboom etc…) to jumpcut and reframe during a sentence or paragraph. In my opinion this is less stylistic and more about editing multiple takes together. This saves the vlogger from having to “know their lines” for more than a sentance or two.

The show itself is fun and takes up popular news topics (at least from the episode that I watched).  A cult following is sure to form, if there is not one already.
As of this post Ze Frank is using Revver as the video distribution and player.  I can see why this would work for his iTunes feed, but I’m not too gung ho about the presentation on the website.  I guess I’m a Flash junkie, but I imagine Ze is looking to score a little dough off the post-roll ads from Revver.

The website includes forums, merchandise for sale (cool t-shirts), games and a whole host of other videos to watch.  Certainly worth a look if you have not visited zefrank…

click to watch 

The Ultimate Tailgate Chef

I checked out a “New & Notable” podcasts inside Apple iTunes Podcast diectory, and found The Ultimate Tailgate Chef. Since football season is just about upon us, this podcast was perfect.

I was immediately impressed with the simple yet professional style of production complete with clean audio and good camera work including b-roll cut aways showing the action.

The Beer Butt Chicken episode is great and I may even try that one out on my own grill.

Their website offers the episodes in flash format – viewable right on the page, or an option to download the m4v file. Subscription via rss is also easily found on the page.

It’s nice to see care taken with production. A little effort can go a long way. Great job!

click to watch