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MillimeterFields & Frames
Jul 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Dan Ochiva
We noted in May's column that Google had started to solicit video content, offering just about anyone the chance to upload clips to their servers. You figured they had some higher purpose in mind than just looking at all those vacation reels. Well, the other cassette dropped in late June when Google announced that you can now not only keyword search those clips via encoded metadata, but play them directly in your browser window. This is made possible with the open source VideoLan (VLC) codec, and not with the Windows Media Player. ▸ While a payment option is not yet implemented, you'll soon be able to buy any of the uploaded videos for sale with a PayPal challenger Google is currently developing. What does this mean? For starters, many small businesses, schools, and others who could never afford to post and stream video will now have an outlet to show their video and sell it, if they like. Even the lowliest of video posters can rely on Google's brand-recognition as well as its worldwide reach. ▪ Microsoft, with its proprietary, stand-alone, DRM-enforced media player, faces some interesting decisions. As for Hollywood? Stay tuned. ▪ For its part, Microsoft is taking on the popular BitTorrent app, which both gained popularity and engendered angst as the most efficient peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software app out there. Microsoft's competing product now under development (code-named “Avalanche”) will also enable file sharing without a central server. But, at its expected debut in 2006, the product will include a built-in digital rights management system. ▪ It's fast times in the display industry. This past June, at the annual Society for Information Display (SID) conference in Boston, attendance not only jumped almost 20 percent over last year's number, but also marked the introduction of a number of key display technologies you'll be using soon. ▸ For example, Insight Media, a display media market research firm, awarded its top Best Buzz award at the conference to Samsung Electronics' 40in. 1280×800 OLED Display. The largest OLED TV ever produced, it delivers improved video response times and low power consumption along with OLED's established benefits of wide viewing angle, thin package size (about 1.2in. in the final version) and no need for a color filter or backlight. Philips Research won Buzz for its Multi-spectral Backlight for LCD panels (delivers high color saturation at 130 percent color gamut) and the Polymer Vision Rollable displays, which use ultra-thin 25-micron plastic substrates combined with flexible organic electronics to create “roll-up e-readers” and the “wrap e-reader.” Both can roll up in something not much bigger than that pencil you used to scribble down your ideas with. ▪ Even if you're not planning to attend Siggraph, if you happen to be in LA on August 3rd, you might want to stop by an all-day conference for “Linux motion picture technologists,” says Robin Rowe, one of the organizers of this day-long event. Discussions will cover the latest advances in state-of-the-art Linux software and other technology for feature film production, with presentations by technology experts from Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks Animation, and Adobe Systems. Visit linuxmovies.org for more.
