Wednesday, January 30, 2013

New Amazon Elastic Transcoder Cloud Video Conversion


Amazon Web Services just announced it is marketing a new cloud video conversion and delivery system—the Amazon Elastic Transcoder (AET) that can seamlessly convert original source video files to format correctly on every kind of gadget, but perhaps most importantly, on iPads and iPhones and Androids and various smart TVs. That is big news to content owners looking for easy ways to get their videos from one place to the other, without spending a bundle on equipment to do it.

The trouble with progress is that everybody has their own definition. Every device out there comes with its own transcoding challenges, and every new gizmo needs software—often expensive software—to do the job. But then software that needs to be tested, a long, painstaking process that takes content providers far away from the original task, which is to create and distribute good looking video. Amazon promises its Elastic Transcoder “makes it easy to transcode video for smartphones, tablets, Web browsers and other devices.” 

Not having to worry about how the end user is going to see it makes the idea of producing online video for a variety of sources seem like a much better gig. Customers get 20 minutes of standard definition conversion free per month. Prices then range from 0.015 to 0.030 a minute, depending on other factors, according to a story on AET on slashgear.com.  

Is that a good deal? Well, Zencoder, a competitor in this space (which actually uses Amazon’s cloud to do its transcoding) on Wednesday commented briefly on Amazon’s new service on a “hacker news” blog and opined, “Amazon has done a good job of making their pricing look simpler/cheaper than ours, and for some customers, it is.” But the commenter said, “Our larger customers don’t pay more than this already.”  Supposedly, Zencoder will a more nuanced critique available today.

Amazon says it can transcode a 10 minute video for an iPhone4 in five minutes, but it could take longer if there’s a lot of demands. The service operates regionally through pipelines that contains transcoding jobs. You can have up to four transcoding pipelines per AWS account, so you can transcode more than one job at a time. There’s a pretty comprehensive FAQ page that answers a lot of other questions.

It’s likely the Elastic Transcoder has the ability to be one of those vaunted “disruptive” developments that quickly change how business proceeds. Time, and competition will tell, though Amazon’s size is a daunting proposition for giant-slayers.

 “Video transcoding services like the ones being launched today are relevant both for professional producers but perhaps especially for more independent outfits that are looking for cost-effective solutions for small-scale projects. Amazon offers this service on an a la carte basis, making it particularly easy to use for the latter group, and startups in general,” writes Ingrid Lunden in techcrunch.com. Let the games begin.-MediaPost

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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Video ads reached 53% of US population in Dec. [Report]

comScore Releases December 2012 U.S. Online Video Rankings

The comScore Video Metrix service shows that 182 million U.S. Internet users watched 38.7 billion online content videos in December, while video ad views totaled 11.3 billion.

Top 10 Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers
Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in December with 153 million unique viewers, followed by Facebook.com with 58.8 million, VEVO with 51.6 million, NDN with 49.9 million and Yahoo! Sites with 47.5 million. Nearly 38.7 billion video content views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 13.2 billion, followed by AOL, Inc. with 692 million. Google Sites had the highest average engagement among the top ten properties.

Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties Ranked by Unique Video Viewers
December 2012
Total U.S. – Home and Work Locations
Content Videos Only (Ad Videos Not Included)
Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property Total Unique Viewers (000) Videos (000)* Minutes per Viewer
Total Internet : Total Audience  181,717 38,673,322 1,150.2
Google Sites 152,971 13,181,969 388.3
Facebook.com 58,776 419,959 16.4
VEVO 51,640 592,463 39.3
NDN 49,942 510,319 69.5
Yahoo! Sites 47,516 383,514 51.5
AOL, Inc. 42,425 692,467 55.0
Viacom Digital 42,334 431,833 39.4
Microsoft Sites 40,604 472,812 39.4
Amazon Sites 38,129 138,968 10.3
Grab Media, Inc. 34,911 203,512 28.8

*A video is defined as any streamed segment of audiovisual content, including both progressive downloads and live streams. For long-form, segmented content, (e.g. television episodes with ad pods in the middle) each segment of the content is counted as a distinct video stream.Video views are inclusive of both user-initiated and auto-played videos that are viewed for longer than 3 seconds.
Top 10 Video Ad Properties by Video Ads Viewed
Americans viewed 11.3 billion video ads in December, with Google Sites ranking first with nearly 2 billion ads. BrightRoll Video Network came in second with 1.8 billion, followed by Liverail.com with 1.8 billion, Adap.tv with 1.5 billion and Hulu with 1.5 billion. Time spent watching video ads totaled 4.1 billion minutes, with BrightRoll Video Network delivering the highest duration of video ads at 966 million minutes. Video ads reached 53 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 70 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 65, while Google Sites delivered an average of 20 ads per viewer.

Top US Online Video Ad Properties Ranked by Video Ads* Viewed Dec 2012
Total U.S. – Home and Work Locations
Ad Videos Only (Content Videos Not Included)
Property Video Ads (000) Total Ad Minutes (MM) Frequency (Ads per Viewer) % Reach Total U.S. Population
Total Internet : Total Audience  11,322,657 4,135 69.9 52.6
Google Sites 1,998,861 155 20.0 32.4
BrightRoll Video Network** 1,826,453 966 13.8 43.1
LiveRail.com† 1,797,940 813 18.2 32.1
Adap.TV† 1,541,695 741 11.7 42.9
Hulu 1,454,115 584 64.9 7.3
Specific Media** 988,399 419 7.7 41.6
TubeMogul Video Ad Platform† 783,934 297 8.4 30.3
Tremor Video** 743,969 361 8.6 28.0
Auditude, Inc.** 736,787 153 12.8 18.7
Videology** 632,977 337 7.5 27.3
*Video ads include streaming-video advertising only and do not include other types of video monetization, such as overlays, branded players, matching banner ads, etc.
**Indicates video ad network
†Indicates video ad exchange/DSP/SSP

Top 10 YouTube Partner Channels by Unique Viewers
The December 2012 YouTube partner data revealed that video music channel VEVO maintained the top position in the ranking with 50.5 million viewers. Fullscreen climbed into the #2 position for the first time with 31.1 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios Inc. with 30 million, Warner Music with 26 million and Machinima with 26 million. Among the top 10 YouTube partners, Machinima demonstrated the highest engagement (68 minutes per viewer) followed by Maker Studios (44 minutes per viewer). VEVO streamed the greatest number of videos (565 million), followed by Machinima (503 million).

Top YouTube Partner Channels* Ranked by Unique Video Viewers Dec 2012
Total US – Home and Work Locations
Content Videos Only (Ad Videos Not Included)
Property Total Unique Viewers (000) Videos (000) Minutes per Viewer
VEVO @ YouTube 50,485 564,531 37.9
Fullscreen @ YouTube 31,079 191,159 19.1
Maker Studios Inc. @ YouTube 30,013 362,971 43.6
Warner Music @ Youtube 26,025 141,622 18.1
Machinima @ YouTube 25,994 502,656 68.1
BroadbandTV @ YouTube 13,370 79,937 18.1
Collective Digital Studio @ YouTube 9,281 59,197 20.2
ygent @ YouTube 8,640 25,991 9.4
Alloy Digital @ YouTube 8,582 57,643 25.2
MOVIECLIPS @ YouTube 8,471 29,729 9.3
*YouTube Partner Reporting based on online video content viewing and does not include claimed user-generated content

Other notable findings from December 2012 include:
  • 84.9 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
  • The duration of the average online content video was 5.4 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
  • Video ads accounted for 22.6 percent of all videos viewed and 1.9 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.
-ComScore VideoMetrix

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