Where Web video stands now, and how it will soon dominate digital content delivery.

By James Careless

Once a novelty, Web video has become a staple of video production and viewing. “Very, very close to 100% of the projects that we do today have at least one Web video component,” says Emmy-winning producer Michael Kolowich. Formerly with WGBH and the founder of ZDNet, Kolowich is president/executive producer of DigiNovations, a digital media production company in Concord, Massachusetts. “[Web video] is by far the dominant delivery destination,” Kolowich continues. “Even when we’re doing TV spots or live events, there is almost always a Web version that’s a little longer, more comprehensive, and tailored to Web audiences.”

So where does Web video stand now? What challenges does it pose for video producers and customers, and where is Web video headed? Here’s what the experts told us.

A Paradigm Shift?
In TV’s early days, broadcast was king. In the 1970s and ‘80s, cable and satellite TV began to take over, followed by the creation of Web video in the late 1990s. But the future is nothing less than “the transition of television distribution off of the airwaves and cable to delivery over the Internet,” predicts Andrew Maisner, the president of TV Pro Gear, a Los Angeles-based systems integrator that is currently building 12 HDTV Web video stations. “Within five years, the majority of Americans will get their TV via IP,” Maisner predicts. “As the cost of the elements of production falls and the cost of distribution approaches zero, thousands of special-interest, Internet-delivered stations will come into being. Because costs are dropping by magnitudes, these new channels can succeed by being very narrowly focused.

“Also, ‘choice is in,’” Maisner adds. “By this I mean that we will gradually change to a universe where we can view whatever we want, whenever we want, with or without commercials, via micro payment. For example, in the future, I will ‘tune’ in to watch the Lakers play. Before the images appear, I will be given a choice of seeing the game free with commercials or having my credit card debited 50 cents and seeing it without commercials.”

Only time will tell if Maisner is correct. But his predictions certainly point to the many distribution and sales possibilities offered by Web video. For video producers and production houses, this makes having Web video capabilities increasingly important.

Where Web Video Stands Now
Although there are many Web video platforms available, Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight are the majors, with Microsoft Windows Media, Real Player and Apple QuickTime also having footprints in the market.

The good news: “Until recently, the biggest challenge in Web video was in the many steps required to prepare, transcode, upload and test it,” explains Kolowich. “Much of that has changed in the last year. The latest versions of NLEs have a raft of presets that handle the most common cases. Services like Brightcove and YouTube employ server-side encoding software that will take just about anything you can upload and make it look halfway decent. Note I said ‘halfway,’ though.”

(Advice to producers: Shoot in HD, then dub down to whatever format your client needs for Web video. This will ensure that your video masters will stand the test of time and will support possible resolution upgrades.)

Then there’s the bad news: “There are no agreed-upon standards for resolution, aspect ratio or anything else,” says Dan Rayburn, EVP of StreamingMedia.com and a principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “As for the desirability of ‘HD’ video online, namely high-resolution video that comes through at 3 Mbps or more? Despite what people will tell you, it’s not a tech problem — it’s a business problem. Unlike broadcast TV with its one-to-many model, Web video distributors pay for every viewer they get and how much bandwidth they consume. Offering HD Web video at 3 Mbps instead of 500 kbps SD video means a sixfold increase in bandwidth cost, with no benefits in return. That’s why people are generally sticking with SD Web video unless they can make a business case for it.”

There are instances where HD video is economically viable. A case in point is Major League Baseball’s HD Web video subscription service, which even allows paying users to select between five different camera angles. “But this is the exception, not the rule,” Rayburn warns. “In other cases, where viewers see no reason to pay, offering HD video doesn’t make sense.”

This lesson has been absorbed by WebStream Productions (WSP) of Indianapolis, Indiana. WSP shoots about 400 live sporting events for the NCAA and other clients, events that its crews stream live to the Web for free viewing by surfers. The feeds are shot using Canon’s XL2 and GL2. WSP’s crews travel to games just like any major sports production unit, except that they use the client’s own Internet backbone to send the signals back to WSP for distribution.

“We provide 480 x 320 full-motion video for our clients,” says WSP president John Servizzi III. “Because we can use their infrastructure to transmit the programs — which have professional announcers and instant replays incorporated into the multi-camera shoot — we can keep costs way down. This allows conferences to cover niche sports where broadcast television is not cost-effective, and allows smaller conferences to increase exposure for their programs. Doing this in HD just wouldn’t make sense — 480 x 320 does the job and is affordable at all stages of the process.”

Opportunities and Considerations
Compared to conventional video products, Web video is inexpensive to shoot, edit and transport to clients. Meanwhile, the economics of serving Web video, with each additional viewer representing an extra bandwidth cost, means that clients are motivated to choose SD resolution video for their sites.

In terms of opportunities, the sky is literally the limit, as WSP has proven in the niche sports market. Clients who could not previously afford to offer Web video now can, be they radio stations, local newspapers, businesses, colleges or minor league sports franchises. For video producers, this translates into a whole new market of potential clients that can be approached and sold. For innovators, opportunity truly abounds.

This said, clients require handholding to obtain Web videos that truly meet their needs and expectations. “Web video is popular among clients, but, for most of them, their understanding of the possibilities is not terribly sophisticated,” says Kolowich. “Many of them are marketing communications pros who’ve just been told, ‘Get us one of those viral videos on YouTube, please.’ They need education about the difference between putting up a video and a smart video marketing program.”

Looking Ahead
Web video has already become a powerful player in the video production sector. Its importance is only likely to increase as clients bite the bullet and move to higher-resolution streams, if only because their competitors are doing so.

Increased resolution isn’t all that is in the cards: “Over the next year, we can expect to see more interactivity built into the video stream,” Kolowich predicts. “Clickable hot spots, synchronized Web page events, sidebar video segments are all coming, which will extend the experience of Web video viewing beyond the 16:9 frame and onto the Web page that surrounds it.

“At the same time, analytics will get a lot more interesting and valuable,” he adds. “We’ll be able to tell even more about how groups of viewers react to a video segment, second by second, and relate those reactions to commercial calls to action, such as buying a good or signing up for a cause. And finally, video for mobile devices will start to become more standardized, and therefore more consistently available as a messaging platform for video makers.”

Michael Kolowich has one last prediction: “I believe these new capabilities will come to full flower just in time for the next presidential campaign, which will kick off just about a year from now.”

It will be interesting — and potentially profitable — for video producers to see how his predictions pan out in 2010 and beyond.