Digital Video Rights Are Hurdle in CBS-Time Warner Cable Fight

Posted by glenfulce on August 9, 2013
Posted in: Business, Government, Networks. Tagged: . Leave a comment

Online Services Add Tension to Dealings Between Content Owners and Distributors

[image] Associated PressTime Warner Cable customers in some major cities have been without access to CBS programming since last Friday. Shown, CBS President Les Moonves, left, with TV host David Letterman at an event in New York in May.

Digital video rights have become a major sticking point in the carriage dispute between Time Warner Cable Inc. TWC +0.21% and CBS Corp., CBS -0.91% highlighting how new online TV services are adding more tension and complexity to the dealings between content owners and distributors.

Some three million Time Warner Cable customers in Los Angeles, Dallas and New York have been without access to CBS programming since last Friday because the companies haven’t reached a new carriage agreement. Talks have resumed as the blackout continues, the companies said Thursday.

Digital video rights have become a sticking point in the dispute between Time Warner Cable and CBS, highlighting how new online TV services are adding more tension and complexity to the dealings between content owners and distributors. Amol Sharma has more. Photo: AP.

In their negotiations, the companies made significant progress on the money Time Warner Cable would pay to carry the CBS TV signals, but one big roadblock was that the cable operator believes those fees should also buy it the rights to distribute content via on-demand platforms, people familiar with the talks say.

Under the companies’ now-expired TV carriage deal, struck in 2008, CBS had granted Time Warner Cable expansive on-demand rights. For example, the cable operator could automatically have the rights—at no additional cost—to any programming licensed to streaming video players like Netflix Inc. NFLX +0.94% and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.51%

Now CBS wants to roll back those rights to give itself more flexibility to strike lucrative licensing deals with the online video players and new entrants like Intel Corp. that are vying to offer cable TV channels over the Internet, the people say. In CBS’s view, the TV world has changed fundamentally since 2008 and the old terms are outdated.

In a sign of how far apart the companies have been, Time Warner Cable wanted at one point the rights, at no incremental cost, to put entire current or past seasons of CBS shows on its video on-demand service, compared with the current offering of just a few recent episodes, a person familiar with the situation said. Those are the type of rights CBS and other TV networks have begun selling to Netflix for large sums.

Martin Franks, CBS’s executive vice president of planning, policy and government relations, told a New York City Council committee on Thursday that Time Warner Cable’s aim is to “use those outdated terms to hamstring our ability to do business with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu Plus and other new entrants that pose a new competitive threat” to the cable company.

Time Warner Cable has been dropping CBS, as the companies battle over fees. Why cause such a massive disruption over what amounts to pennies-per-day per per subscriber? What’s at stake for the cable and broadcast industries? WSJ’s Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer.

Time Warner Cable says it is willing to agree to a fee increase for carriage of CBS but only if the old terms for on-demand rights remain in place. The cable operator believes CBS should be happy to grant it expansive digital rights since it is already a big customer of the broadcaster by virtue of buying traditional TV rights, a person familiar with the situation said.

The cable company denies it is trying to crowd out CBS from doing deals with new entrants. “CBS wants us to pay a lot more for a lot less and take content away from our customers so that they can give it to someone else exclusively,” a Time Warner Cable spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. “We want our customers to get what they pay for.”

At one stage Time Warner Cable also wanted to make recent TV episodes on CBS.com available only to pay TV subscribers, who would gain access with a username and password, a person familiar with the situation said. Other consumers could only access those shows eight days after they air. That request isn’t in Time Warner Cable’s most recent proposal to end the blackout.

Currently, CBS puts shows up on its website the day after they air, without restrictions on who can access them, and generates about $100 million per year in online ads, a growing revenue stream it doesn’t want to jeopardize, the person familiar with the matter said.

Digital rights have been part of negotiations between programmers and distributors for years. But the prominence of the issue in the Time Warner Cable and CBS dispute reflects how much the online video marketplace has matured since the companies last negotiated a carriage agreement five years ago.

“The original deal was struck in 2008—a lot of digital distribution as we know it now didn’t exist then,” said Mike Morris, an analyst at Davenport & Co. Media companies, seeking to adapt to changing consumer viewing habits and generate new sources of revenue, have become more aggressive about licensing their content to digital platforms, he said.

Like others in the cable industry, Time Warner Cable has been losing video subscribers and has blamed programming costs for driving up consumers’ bills. It has received support during the standoff with CBS from rival distributors.

“We do not have the profit margins to absorb those costs and are forced to pass them on to consumers,” said Dave Shull, chief commercial officer of Dish Network Corp., in a statement Thursday. Dish is involved in a blackout dispute with broadcaster Raycom Media in 36 smaller markets.

In his testimony Thursday, CBS’s Mr. Franks said Time Warner Cable can afford to pay higher programming fees without passing on costs to customers, citing the cable operator’s “handsome profit margins” from its high-speed Internet business. “They could easily choose to absorb these programming costs,” he said, “and still be very profitable.”

Write to Amol Sharma at amol.sharma@wsj.com and Shalini Ramachandran at shalini.ramachandran@wsj.com

Advertisement

A Winner in the Battle for the Living Room

Posted by glenfulce on August 7, 2013
Posted in: Business, OTT. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Now these guys completely disagree with the last article. I still believe content is King. And the cheerios theory tells us people love cheerios (content) but don’t really care where they get them so long as they are about the same price and they don’t have to work any harder to get them. The problem I see for Netflix is that they have lost their exclusivity on the “cheerios” and thier new “original content” is to expensive to maintain.  Right now Netflix is still cheap to get each month, but for how long. If they don’t keep their prices down then Amazon, Hulu and iTunes will just keep chipping away at them. The “mail to your home DVD market” may be all they have left.

Just sayin’
G
—————-

A Winner in the Battle for the Living Room

By Andrés Cardenal – August 7, 2013 | Tickers: AAPL, GOOG, MSFT, NFLX | 2 Comments

Andrés is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network — entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.

Industry giants like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are stepping up their efforts to win the living room war, an area that could have huge financial and strategic implications over the years to come. It´s still too soon to tell who the winner will be, but one thing is looking quite clear, though: Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) seems to be in an outstandingly strong position to profit from the future of TV.

The Giants

Microsoft is having a hard time lately: sales of Windows 8 have been a disappointment since tablets have continued displacing PCs over the last few quarters, and the company is having serious troubles in mobile with lackluster demand for its Surface tablets.

But the company has always remained strong in gaming with its Xbox console, and it’s trying to leverage that strength to expand into computing and TV with the new Xbox One. The new console is intended to be an all-in-one entertainment solution combining games, music and online video with the ability to jump from one to another as simply as changing a TV channel.

We still need to see how the Xbox One resonates among consumers, but Microsoft has a product that sets it apart from the set top boxes built by competitors like Apple and Google. If the company succeeds in its attempt to make the new console a Trojan horse to conquer the living room, this could be a real game-changer for Microsoft.

Apple knows it needs to do much better in TV if it wants to be at the same level it has achieved in smartphones and tablets, and the company is admittedly working on that area.

Tim Cook has said on several occasions that the company has “intense interest” in smart TVs, and a full-blown television set from Apple has been rumored for a long time. The company has only taken modest steps, like improving its $100 TV box so far, but according to reports from The Wall Street Journal, Apple is also collaborating with cable companies and TV networks for a new online TV service, which may even include a premium option allowing users to skip ads.

Apple is a famously secretive company, but one thing looks quite clear: the Cupertino giant is moving forward with its plans to revolutionize the TV.

Google TV has not achieved much success, but that doesn’t mean the search giant is giving up on the living room. On the contrary, the company has recently launched its new Chromecast: a 2 inch-long, $35 device that plugs directly into TV sets and streams video and other digital content from mobile devices.

Chromecast lacks the breadth of content provided by other dedicated streaming media players, but it’s inexpensive and easy to use, and it has received mostly positive critiques so far. Considering these advantages, and the fact that Google owns key strategic assets like Fiber and YouTube, the company has serious potential to become a relevant player in the smart TV competition.

Netflix Everywhere

Microsoft, Apple and Google have many things in common: one is that the three companies are trying to revolutionize the TV, and another is that the three of them have partnered with Netflix in that competition. This is quite telling about the strategic position the company has achieved; if you want to compete for the living room, you need to have Netflix on board.

With nearly 30 million members in the US and 8 million in international markets, the company has positioned itself as the industry leader, and that means that hardware manufacturers need to play nice with Netflix if they want to succeed. Both customers and industry players know that Netflix is the best way to quickly and effectively access huge amounts of content.

Original content is a big part of that strategy, and it goes well beyond short term profitability. Netflix will not make enough money with new subscribers to pay for “House of Cards” or “Arrested Development,” certainly not on a middle-term horizon, but the company is playing this game for the long-term.

For $7.99 a month members have access to a wide variety of titles, and there is a big chance that some of that content will be considered valuable enough to pay the modest membership fee. As the company continues building its library for the same price, the proposition gets even more attractive over time.

At this stage, and increasingly more over time, finding reasons to subscribe to Netflix is much easier than finding reasons for not doing so, and that’s a great thing for Netflix and its shareholders.

Bottom Line

The war for the living room is on, and it will only get more intense over time. While major industry players fight each other to own the hardware and software in the new TV paradigm, Netflix is simply focused on providing plenty of high quality content at a compelling price. The way things are going, Netflix is securing its position in the future of TV.

Netflix’ Worst Nightmare Becomes Real

Posted by glenfulce on August 7, 2013
Posted in: Business, Networks, OTT. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Netflix’ Worst Nightmare Becomes Real

TheStreet.comBy Richard Saintvilus | TheStreet.com – Tue, Sep 11, 2012 6:30 AM EDT

RELATED QUOTES

Symbol Price Change
NFLX 250.65 -5.25
AMZN 297.00 -3.75

NEW YORK (TheStreet) — I’m now into midway through watching the second season of “The Office.” In a span of two days, I’ve been able to watch almost two years of shows. This would not have been possible had it not been for streaming movie giant Netflix NFLX . The ease with which the service is able to make television shows that were old new again is certainly Netflix’ best quality to the consumer.

For investors, however, the question is how much worse can things get? Retail and tech giant Amazon AMZN has just signed a content deal significant enough to challenge Netflix for subscribers. Yet, that’s not even the worst of it. The deal announced last week is with premium TV joint venture Epix, bringing content to Amazon’s Prime Instant Video streaming service. Though terms of the deal were not disclosed, it is said the partnership will bring popular hit movie titles such as “Hunger Games,” “Thor” and “Iron Man 2” to Amazon’s streaming offerings. What this means is exactly what many Netflix investors had feared would have occurred — no more exclusivity. What was once originally a five-year deal, of which two were exclusive, has lapsed. Now enters Amazon. But what is Netflix thinking? This continues the streak of yet another misstep for the struggling movie giant, which has seen its stock price erode during the course of the year. Several weeks ago, as the stock traded just above $80 per share, I asked if the company can stay afloat and survive the unrelenting assaults it receives not only from Amazon, but also from cable giant Time Warner TWX and Coinstar CSTR (Redbox). While it may have been able to avoid death from these three, the story changes when one considers Apple AAPL and Google GOOG have TV and potentially movie plans of their own. What are the odds that Netflix is able to survive a living room revolution unlike anything the market as ever seen? I still maintain that a takeover is its best option. Outside of that there is no chance Netflix will survive. By having allowed Amazon to forge a deal with Epix, I’m starting to wonder if Netflix truly appreciates the dire situation it’s in. It is as if it no longer values its streaming content — the same reason why it opted to ignore its once-popular DVD model. Now it does not appear to want to protect that decision. Even worse, during its second-quarter earnings report, Netflix said that although it expects to remain profitable in the third quarter, it is forecasting a loss for the fourth quarter due to international market expansion. So essentially, the company has (for all intents and purposes) killed off its DVD business, allowing Amazon to chip away at its streaming division by losing exclusivity, but somehow thinks international expansion in Latin America and continental Europe is worth a fourth-quarter loss. It would stand to reason that a change in focus would be the wise decision until Europe gets its act together – at least that would be the option for a smart management team. However, no one has ever accused Netflix of having one. I would stay away from the shares until things get more clear in terms of the company’s strategic direction. Until then, there is only one direction the stock will go and that is down — affirming that things can indeed get worse. Follow @rsaintvilus

Ultra HDTV: Gaming’s Next Frontier

Posted by glenfulce on August 6, 2013
Posted in: Business, Networks. Tagged: . Leave a comment
By [a]list daily, Published August 5, 2013
Television programming is undergoing a revolution, with Netflix being nominated for Emmys and even Amazon preparing original programming. Apple and Google are continuing attempts at changing the way people view TV, even while digital media is poised to see more viewer time than TV. Meanwhile, the last great innovation that would sell zillions of TVs – 3D – has crashed and burned as consumers decide they don’t care to pay extra for it. Sony alone has lost over $8.5 billion in television manufacturing over the past decade, and other TV makers aren’t doing great, either. All of this may be about to change, as the next great innovation in TV looks like it may arrive far faster than anyone suspected. Unlike 3D, this innovation actually has a good chance of getting adopted, and in a big way. It’s 4K TV, also known as Ultra HDTV – a TV picture with a resolution double that of current HDTV in both directions resulting in 3840 x 2160 pixels. As we all know, more pixels means more eye-melting goodness. Ultra HDTV: Gamings Next Frontier image ultra 42 Ultra HDTV’s were all over this year’s CES show, but mostly they were very large (84” and above) and extremely expensive ($10,000 to more than $20,000). Now, rapid manufacturing advances is driving down the cost of Ultra HDTV to the point where a Chinese manufacturer is bringing a 55” Ultra HDTV to market this holiday season for only $999. Tablets and PCs are already moving towards Ultra HD resolution, with Apple’s MacBook Pros sporting 2880 x 1800 resolution to critical acclaim. So why will it succeed where 3D TV hasn’t? No glasses are needed, for one thing. The difference is easily communicated, readily understandable and can be demonstrated in a store without any special effort. The big drawbacks right now are the price and the content – both lack of 4K content and the distribution of it. The lack of content isn’t that big of an issue since current films are mostly shot in 4K resolution or better. Current movie content could be re-mastered for Ultra HDTV, and content created for HDTV could be upscaled. Yes 4K movies will take up a lot more space, but higher-capacity Blu-Ray drives are already in the works. Codecs have already been demonstrated that will compress 4K video streams to a manageable level for distribution, not much greater than HDTV streams. How does the advent of Ultra HDTV impact gaming? Sony is getting ready for Ultra HDTV in a big way, hoping it will revive the profits of Sony’s TV business. The PS4 is said to be ready to handle 4K output, bringing gaming to Ultra HD quality (although at a lower frame rate than is possible on HDTV). Sony’s hoping that when Ultra HDTV becomes a significant market segment in a couple of years (or three), the PS4 will be ready to game right along with it. Games created in 3D (which describes most console and high-end PC titles these days) are mostly resolution-independent. Interface elements might have to be revised, but that’s relatively easy. The vast expanse of the battlefield will just get bigger; you’ll see a much larger field of action. Many high-end PC games already let you spread a game across several monitors, though usually you’ll need a pretty beefy graphics card or two to handle that with all of the graphics options turned up to maximum. Overall, the transition for gaming to Ultra HDTV will be simpler than most technology transitions. Ultra HDTV: Gamings Next Frontier image xbox one social2 Games could also be shown in a somewhat smaller window that allows for multi-tasking alongside, the way Microsoft showed in its Xbox One demos. Imagine playing a full HD game, or maybe larger than yet, along with your friends in HD video chat windows along side. That’s truly social gaming, with your friends’ virtual presence giving you the next best thing to them being in the same room with you. Here’s where it starts to get really interesting: Apple’s rumored iTV may actually get real, and have a real chance to sell. It never made much sense in the original iTV rumors, which had an Apple-labeled HDTV that would sell for $2000. Most people have an HDTV, so would they really buy an Apple HDTV just to get some features they could already get by buying an Apple TV? Now, though, stir in the rumors that Apple is sourcing Ultra HD screens. Suddenly the idea could make sense. Apple’s incredible manufacturing power would give it an edge on pricing and availability, just the sort of edge Apple loves to have. Picture this scenario: Apple goes to an Ultra HDTV screen maker and dumps billions of dollars in cash on them, buying up all the factory capacity for the next two years. This locks in Apple’s supply at a great price, and prevents other manufacturers from getting any Ultra HDTV screens at any price. This is exactly how Apple started the iPad, which gave Apple a market share lead in tablets that still hasn’t been overcome. So Apple sells an iTV for under $2000 that features Ultra HDTV resolution in a 60” screen, and voice/gesture control, and perhaps finally some breakthrough deals with content providers to make it easy to find and display any content you want. At the same time, Apple opens up an App Store for iTV, and offers a new Apple TV that brings these capabilities to your current HDTV (sans Ultra HD resolution, of course). Throw in cloud-based DVR features to boot. Add a slew of Ultra-HDTV games that start flowing from game publishers eager to be in on the ground floor of the next gaming revolution. Result: The entire landscape of TV changes, with a massive impact on gaming as the App Store finally arrives in the family room. It’s a good time for game developers, marketers and publishers to be flexible, creative, and ready to move as the market changes. By Steve Peterson via [a]listdaily
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/ultra-hdtv-gamings-next-frontier-0574913#YgrcFvqgRU8GRfIZ.99

Rethinking How We Watch TV

Posted by glenfulce on August 2, 2013
Posted in: Business, Networks, TV Shows. Tagged: . Leave a comment

Intel, Apple and Others Push New Technologies to Take Control of the Living Room

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—To understand how much television could soon change, it helps to visit an Intel Corp. INTC -0.69% division here that runs like a startup.

Erik Huggers, a Dutch-born former British Broadcasting Corp. executive, has assembled a 350-person team with talents beyond computer chips—programmers, industrial designers, artists and experts in fields like video encoding. Working in bright, newsroom-style offices that differ from standard Intel cubicles, they’re creating an Internet-based service that doesn’t only serve up on-demand programs but overhauls live TV as well.

Intel’s plans include a server farm to record every piece of programming aired—local, national and international—and store it for at least three days in the “cloud.” With an Intel-designed set-top box, people won’t have to own DVRs or even plan to record programs.

Switch on the TV in the middle of any show, and a viewer can simply go back to the beginning. “This is live TV—but you can rewind it,” Mr. Huggers says.

Intel is just one entry in the computer industry’s growing land grab for the living room, one likely to bring voice activation, restyled remotes, new on-screen interfaces and other major changes in the way people interact with TVs.

Other tech giants pushing TV advances include Apple Inc., AAPL +1.00% Microsoft Corp., MSFT +0.33% Sony Corp. and Google Inc., which last week announced a device called Chromecast that expands a category of devices that wirelessly transfer content from mobile devices to TVs. Google and Sony have also been working on Internet-based video delivery services, people familiar with the matter have said.

Computer industry players have been pushing new TV visions for 20 years, with decidedly mixed results. Cable and satellite TV providers have strong positions, with big players like Comcast Corp. CMCSA -0.39% preparing major technology upgrades of their own.

Negotiations with media companies for content rights could delay new services and limit some features, though Intel vows to enter some markets by the end of the year.

Yet there is a growing consensus that underlying technologies are evolving to the point that major changes in the TV experience are all but inevitable, whether delivered by new entrants or incumbents.

“I’ve never seen as much innovation in television as there is right now,” says Ulf Ewaldsson, chief technology officer at Swedish telecom-equipment giant Ericsson, which plans to step up its own TV efforts.

Propelling the activity are changes that have made the Internet a more viable delivery medium, including the growing proportion of customers with broadband service that can accommodate high-quality video signals.

Many customers now have Internet connections in their living rooms through various devices, used largely to stream or download video programs from a variety of sources, including Netflix Inc. NFLX -1.66% Consumers also use tablets and smartphones to view movies and TV shows as well as to serve as companions for action on the big screen.

Despite the developments, much is missing from Internet-based services. Popular programming, including live sports and news, is often limited to conventional carriers by licensing restrictions.

When large video libraries are available, finding specific programs can be cumbersome—especially with conventional remotes that weren’t designed for entering text. Most TV services also lag the Web and mobile apps in helping discover new content.

“The phone, the laptop and the tablet have advanced so dramatically,” says Tom Rogers, chief executive of TiVo Inc., the DVR pioneer. “Television has been drastically left behind.”

Tech companies trying to change that include Apple. The Silicon Valley trendsetter has since 2007 sold an add-on box called Apple TV for streaming content, but has been mum about new TV offerings. The company has tested designs for its own televisions, executives at Apple suppliers have said.

Apple has explored a number of new features for such a product, people familiar with the situation have said, including integrating DVR storage and its iCloud Internet syncing and data-storage service, and voice-interaction capabilities—which Apple’s Siri brought to its mobile devices.

Microsoft is also promoting voice recognition as it positions its videogame consoles and companion Kinect controller for a broad role in home entertainment. The company’s Xbox One, due out this fall, allows customers to turn on multiple living-room devices by simply saying “Xbox On,” the company says. They can also navigate to programs by speaking commands such as “Go to ESPN,” or “I want to watch Breaking Bad.” Some Xbox apps can also be used while watching television; a Skype video chat or fantasy sports scores, for example, can appear on TVs alongside a game.

Microsoft has experimented in other areas—including offering an Apple TV-like set-top box without videogame capability, building Xbox circuitry into TVs and adding DVR capability to Xbox models, people familiar with its prototypes have said.

Sony, which hasn’t commented on plans for a content service, has been less vocal about technologies like voice interaction. But it has been active in other areas to improve the TV experience.

The Japanese company, for example, has developed a tablet and smartphone app called Sony TV Sideview that augments TV program guides. It supplies information on topics such as shows and actors—while also letting people incorporate searches across Netflix, YouTube and, of course, Sony’s own video and music services.

One basic challenge is simply managing the growing array of content options, including movies from Netflix, Web-originated fare like YouTube, conventional live TV and video consumers have recorded. TiVo has been particularly active in offering interface software that searches through the varied offerings and works on mobile devices as well as set-top boxes.

Comcast is promising similar search advances as well as personalization features in X2, the cable giant’s name for what it calls a new entertainment operating system.

That software, which Comcast plans to begin rolling out by the end of the year, is designed to recommend content currently on live TV based on tracking a customer’s past viewing habits as well as topics trending on Twitter and Facebook. Comcast says X2’s interface can work on TVs, PCs and mobile devices—allowing users to manage their options from multiple screens—and supports voice searching capability.

Intel’s Mr. Huggers, who spearheaded development of a popular BBC content app called iPlayer, sees advantages in starting from scratch. For one thing, his developers can exploit Intel technologies such as new chips for servers and set-top boxes, configuring them to call up programs and change channels noticeably faster that other living-room hardware.

One feature Intel has decided not to pursue for now is a camera equipped with facial recognition software to help personalize offerings for each user in a household. Mr. Huggers says the technology didn’t work well enough in the low lighting common when watching TV and raised privacy questions.

Intel is testing its technology with 2,500 Intel employees in California, Oregon and Arizona. Documents that surfaced this month suggest Intel may call the service OnCue, though the company has declined to comment on that possibility.

Whatever the name, Intel and others planning to create new Internet-based services are widely expected to face tough sledding in negotiating rights for video content. Such companies are in a position to demand lucrative terms, says James McQuivey, an analyst who tracks TV technology for Forrester Research.

But he doesn’t expect licensing hurdles to stop long-term trends that will weaken the influence of TV incumbents. “The business is very quickly shifting away from the people that have controlled it forever,” Mr. McQuivey says.

—Daisuke Wakabayashi contributed to this article.

The Anatomy of Chroma Subsampling

Posted by glenfulce on July 31, 2013
Posted in: Business. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

DNA Strip showing video’s primary colors of Red, Green and Blue at keypoints.

The anatomy of video contains a wide variety of parts—some remain hidden, right before the viewers’ eyes. Pixels, like cells of the body, work together, combining to make the overall image. Chroma subsampling is the DNA of color information in the pixels of a video image. It’s a small part of each individual frame, but one that plays a major role in the construction of the overall clip of footage.

Chroma subsampling involves the compressing of color information in video footage, to reduce the overall storage size and bitrate of video files. It’s a method used across multiple video codecs, and how much compression happens is often expressed as a set of numbers such as 4:2:2. Instead of serving you number soup, let us make sure you have an explanation of what it means. Whether it’s 4:4:4 or 4:2:0, this specification can have a profound impact on a video, especially during post-production.

Pixels: The Video Building Blocks

In order to understand chroma subsampling, it’s important to understand how an image is created in a frame of video. In the simplest terms, a video image is made up of pixels — solitary points lined in rows across the screen. Each pixel has a specific luminance and chrominance, both determined by the data that defines that pixel. Luminance refers to how bright a pixel is, it creates contrast and detail within the overall image. If the luminance information is isolated, without the chroma information, the resulting image will be in black and white. Technically, it would be grayscale, as there are variable depths of contrast between pure black and pure white.

Chrominance is the color information of a pixel, it determines whether a pixel is red, green, blue, or somewhere in between. There are several color spaces by which color is rendered, regardless of which, the basic method of chroma subsampling is the same. Whereas luminance can render a black and white image when isolated, chrominance renders black when isolated. It is dependent on the luminance to create an image. The chrominance is the data that defines the color, and how much of that color is represented in each pixel. Chroma subsampling is a reduction of color information. It’s achieved through the sharing of data for one pixel across a sampling of several pixels, fewer than those that compose the entire image.

The Human Eye

Chroma subsampling is effective and successful, not only because of the anatomy of the video, but because of the human eye and how it sees color and interprets images. The human eye is a remarkable part of the central nervous system. It is able to capture and focus light onto its photoreceptors and deliver the data of that visual input to the brain. Photoreceptors are the cells that line the back of the eye in the retina, where light is focused. There are two basic types of photoreceptor cells: rods and cones. Rods are highly sensitive to light and are achromatic, meaning they do not see color. The cones are less sensitive to light but are chromatic, able to perceive color. There are 100 or more millions of photoreceptor cells, and less than 20 percent of them are cones when compared to rods. This is why the human eye is more sensitive to the luminance, the brightness and contrast portion of an image and less sensitive to the chroma, color information of an image. When the luminance and chrominance portions are combined to create the overall image, a degraded or compressed amount of chroma information is not highly noticeable. The human eye sees the overall image, with the sharpness of that image defined by the luminance and the chrominance information composited within. The fact that there is less detailed information in the chrominance is overlooked by the eye and the complete image is perceived.

How does chroma subsampling work?

In order for chroma subsampling to work and the data size of an image to be reduced, engineers figured out a way to share chroma information across a range of pixels while maintaining a different amount of luminance information for that same range of pixels. The selection of information from a portion of an image is known as sampling. Subsampling is the selection of specific pixels, but not every pixel, to determine the chroma information that is used as representative of all pixels. Subsampling is a portion, or fraction, of the overall chrominance sampling in an image.

Chroma subsampling is expressed as a numerical formula that represents the ratio of pixels used in the subsampling of that clip. This ratio is represented by three numbers, separated by colons. Written out it appears as J:a:b, this is a ratio of the pixel width of a sampling region compared to the number of pixels sampled from each row in that sampling region. “J” is representative total number of pixels in the horizontal sampling region. In most cases “J” will equal four. The next two numbers of the ratio, the “a” and the “b” digits, refer to the vertical resolution that is sampled across the “J” sampling region. The second digit of the ratio, the “a” position, is the number of pixels sampled amongst the first row of pixels as defined by “J”. The “b” position of the ratio is the number of pixels sampled amongst the second row of pixels in the “J” region. There are codecs that will note a fourth position in the ratio, it represents the sampling of pixels for an alpha channel.

Common Chroma Subsampling Ratios. Blocks of color showing Chroma Subsampling of 4:4:4, 4:1:1:1, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 color information.

Common Chroma Subsampling Ratios

4:4:4
This is the highest quality and it effectively has no subsampling. Each pixel is represented and retains its own luminance and chroma values. The best video cameras will have the capability to output 4:4:4 chroma. These are professional grade tools and they’re priced accordingly.

4:2:2
The 4:2:2 chroma sampling, samples two pixels from both the top and bottom rows. This reduces the chroma information to 50 percent of the uncompressed source chroma. This is one of the more popular samplings and is found in codecs such as AVC-Intra 100, Digital Betacam, Panasonic DVCPRO HD, Apple ProRes 422, and XDCAM HD422.

4:2:0
The more reduced 4:2:0 sampling takes two chroma samples from the top “a” row of pixels and none from the bottom “b” row. Instead, the bottom row shares choma information from the top row sampling. This reduces the overall chroma information to approximately 25 percent of the uncompressed chroma. The configuration of 4:2:0 sampling is common in HDV footage, AVCHD, the Apple Intermediate Codec, and in many of the MPEG encoded video formats used by DSLR cameras.

4:1:1
A chroma sampling of 4:1:1 also reduces the amount of chroma information to 25 percent. It takes one sample from the top “a” row of pixels and one sample from the lower “b” row of pixels. A sampling of 4:1:1 is the sampling ratio found in DVCPRO, DVCAM, and in NTSC DV.

example of halo effect on a poorly applied chromakey shot

What does it all mean?

A video producer’s aesthetic decisions are limited by the technical limits of their footage. That’s why it’s important to have an understanding of chroma subsampling and what it does to footage. Chroma keying and color grading are two processes of post production that are affected by chroma subsampling.

Footage that relies heavily on chroma subsampling will yield poor results when chromakeying. Video compositing software is able to create transparency by selecting a particular color, or range of colors in a clip, and applying that selection to an alpha channel. The alpha channel creates transparency in the image. The quality of the color information in the image is the main factor in pulling a clean key from green screen footage. Uneven lighting or color consistency will make it more difficult to create clean areas of transparency. Chroma subsampling becomes apparent in the edges of keyed footage because the key is based on the shared chroma information across blocks of pixels. Footage with a chroma subsampling equivalent of 4:1:1, or less, will result in block-edged artifacts along the edge of the key. Even footage with a ratio of 4:2:2 will contain some block artifacts. The cleanest keys comes from footage with an uncompressed 4:4:4 ratio.

Color grading is the post-production process of changing the dynamics of the color in footage to achieve an aesthetic goal. Sometimes color grading is subtle with changes that aren’t noticeable. Other times color grades are drastic with significant changes to the color and dynamic range of an image. When the chroma information is reduced due to chroma subsampling, dynamic color grading can reveal digital artifacts in footage. This is most often seen in the banding that occurs across gradients of color. Instead of a smooth transition from one color into the next, bands of color appear as graduated steps between the two colors. The reasoning for this is simple — chroma subsampling reduces the amount of color information between two regions of an image. As these colors are changed through color grading, the color steps between them — the chroma subsampling, become more apparent. It’s as if they were stretched out. This is another reason why producers who work on commercial projects, ones that require intense color grades, choose to work with the highest quality footage allowed by their budgets.

Know What’s Under the Skin

A producer needs to know the technical limitations of their footage and what they can do with it. There are many shooting situations when it is advantageous to capture footage that relies heavily on chroma subsampling in order to compress the image, save space, and reduce expenses. There are also situations when it is critical to acquire footage that is of the highest resolution possible, footage that is uncompressed without chroma subsampling.

Chroma subsampling is part of the hidden anatomy of video, working within its host body. By a having a solid knowledge of what chroma subsampling is, producers are better prepared to doctor their video and get the results they desire.

Chris “Ace” Gates is an Emmy Award-winning writer and content producer.

[Sidebar:]
Accessing 4:4:4 Output
Chroma subsampling helps in compressing the overall size of video files, but those files can be trickier to work with in post-production. This is something to be aware of when that footage is being used for green screen work, visual effects, and serious color grading. There is more latitude for what can be done with footage in post-production when there is a greater amount of color information in the image. The best option for any recorded and processed video is to have uncompressed video with a chroma subsampling of 4:4:4.

The problem lies within the fact that most cameras record internally to solid state media, necessitating compressed video with chroma subsampling of 4:2:2 or less. Most video cameras and DSLRs have a video output, such as SDI or HDMI. Depending on the camera’s image sensor, as well as its image processor, it may have the capability to output video with 4:4:4 chroma subsampling. When this video output is coupled with an external recording device or a computer outfitted with a high-end video capture card and corresponding software, it becomes a powerful tool.  If the camera is capable of outputting 4:4:4 color video, and an external recording device capable of recording the signal is attached, the resultant video will be better suited for post-production processes. This is why on many studio visual effects shoots, such as green screen capture, there is a large camera rig that is tethered to a computer. A camera’s technical manual is the best place to find out if it’s capable of outputting 4:4:4 color. Online forums dedicated to the best video cameras will have in depth discussions on the best ways to output uncompressed video.

POSTED from http://www.videomaker.com

http://www.videomaker.com/article/15788-the-anatomy-of-chroma-subsampling?utm_source=enews&utm_medium=email&utm_content=feature_enews_2013_wed_07_31&utm_campaign=traffic&_wcsid=FD31C76875F127549839FE78B7A95A6EF8061C694936A0FDFA31522EDF911CF6

11 Simple Concepts to Become a Better Leader

Posted by glenfulce on March 8, 2013
Posted in: Business. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

Sometimes we forget that good leaders are not born that way. That you have to always be striving to be better…to your family, your colleagues and even yourself. This is a great article.

Being likeable will help you in your job, business, relationships, and life. I interviewed dozens of successful business leaders for my last book, to determine what made them so likeable and their companies so successful. All of the concepts are simple, and yet, perhaps in the name of revenues or the bottom line, we often lose sight of the simple things – things that not only make us human, but can actually help us become more successful. Below are the eleven most important principles to integrate to become a better leader:

 

1. Listening

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway

Listening is the foundation of any good relationship. Great leaders listen to what their customers and prospects want and need, and they listen to the challenges those customers face. They listen to colleagues and are open to new ideas. They listen to shareholders, investors, and competitors. Here’s why the best CEO’s listen more.

2. Storytelling

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.” -Robert McAfee Brown

After listening, leaders need to tell great stories in order to sell their products, but more important, in order to sell their ideas. Storytelling is what captivates people and drives them to take action. Whether you’re telling a story to one prospect over lunch, a boardroom full of people, or thousands of people through an online video – storytelling wins customers.

3. Authenticity

“I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I’ve become. If I had, I’d have done it a lot earlier.” -Oprah Winfrey

Great leaders are who they say they are, and they have integrity beyond compare. Vulnerability and humility are hallmarks of the authentic leader and create a positive, attractive energy. Customers, employees, and media all want to help an authentic person to succeed. There used to be a divide between one’s public self and private self, but the social internet has blurred that line. Tomorrow’s leaders are transparent about who they are online, merging their personal and professional lives together.

4. Transparency

“As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.” -John Whittier

There is nowhere to hide anymore, and businesspeople who attempt to keep secrets will eventually be exposed. Openness and honesty lead to happier staff and customers and colleagues. More important, transparency makes it a lot easier to sleep at night – unworried about what you said to whom, a happier leader is a more productive one.

5. Team Playing

“Individuals play the game, but teams beat the odds.” -SEAL Team Saying

No matter how small your organization, you interact with others every day. Letting others shine, encouraging innovative ideas, practicing humility, and following other rules for working in teams will help you become a more likeable leader. You’ll need a culture of success within your organization, one that includes out-of-the-box thinking.

6. Responsiveness

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” -Charles Swindoll

The best leaders are responsive to their customers, staff, investors, and prospects. Every stakeholder today is a potential viral sparkplug, for better or for worse, and the winning leader is one who recognizes this and insists upon a culture of responsiveness. Whether the communication is email, voice mail, a note or a a tweet, responding shows you care and gives your customers and colleagues a say, allowing them to make a positive impact on the organization.

7. Adaptability

“When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” -Ben Franklin

There has never been a faster-changing marketplace than the one we live in today. Leaders must be flexible in managing changing opportunities and challenges and nimble enough to pivot at the right moment. Stubbornness is no longer desirable to most organizations. Instead, humility and the willingness to adapt mark a great leader.

8. Passion

“The only way to do great work is to love the work you do.” -Steve Jobs

Those who love what they do don’t have to work a day in their lives. People who are able to bring passion to their business have a remarkable advantage, as that passion is contagious to customers and colleagues alike. Finding and increasing your passion will absolutely affect your bottom line.

9. Surprise and Delight

“A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.” -Charles de Gaulle

Most people like surprises in their day-to-day lives. Likeable leaders underpromise and overdeliver, assuring that customers and staff are surprised in a positive way. There are a plethora of ways to surprise without spending extra money – a smile, We all like to be delighted — surprise and delight create incredible word-of-mouth marketing opportunities.

10. Simplicity

“Less isn’t more; just enough is more.” -Milton Glaser

The world is more complex than ever before, and yet what customers often respond to best is simplicity — in design, form, and function. Taking complex projects, challenges, and ideas and distilling them to their simplest components allows customers, staff, and other stakeholders to better understand and buy into your vision. We humans all crave simplicity, and so today’s leader must be focused and deliver simplicity.

11. Gratefulness

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” -Gilbert Chesterton

Likeable leaders are ever grateful for the people who contribute to their opportunities and success. Being appreciative and saying thank you to mentors, customers, colleagues, and other stakeholders keeps leaders humble, appreciated, and well received. It also makes you feel great! Donor’s Choose studied the value of a hand-written thank-you note, and actually found donors were 38% more likely to give a 2nd time if they got a hand-written note!

 

The Golden Rule: Above all else, treat others as you’d like to be treated

By showing others the same courtesy you expect from them, you will gain more respect from coworkers, customers, and business partners. Holding others in high regard demonstrates your company’s likeability and motivates others to work with you. This seems so simple, as do so many of these principles — and yet many people, too concerned with making money or getting by, fail to truly adopt these key concepts.

Which of these principles are most important to you — what makes you likeable?

 

Dave Kerpen is the New York Times bestselling author of two books, Likeable Social Media and Likeable Business.

NAB 2013 Registration

Posted by glenfulce on March 6, 2013
Posted in: Business. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

If you’re heading to Vegas for NAB 2013 and need a pass to get on the exhibition floor, AJA Video Systems is offering this free code. Just click on the photo below to go directly to the NAB registration page.
If you are going to be in town let me know and we can meet for coffee.

NAB is always a blast.

See you there.

Just Sayin’

G

AJA

AJA invites you to join us once again at NAB! Find out about new products, amazing collaborations and take advantage of the opportunity to speak with AJA product experts in person!

AJA will be located in the south lower hall at booth SL3816. Haven’t reserved your exhibit pass yet? Use this VIP code to register FREE! This code is applicable only through March 22nd, 2013. Beyond this date there will be a fee of $25 to register.

VIP Code: LV4167
Register now

Making an Outstanding Business Video

Posted by glenfulce on July 21, 2012
Posted in: Business. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL – First things first: if you encounter a video production service that offers a “one-price-fits-all” estimate, RUN! DO NOT WALK. RUN AWAY. Building a video is like building a house; no two effective ones are ever the same. Cookie cutter one-size-fits-all pricing will get you a video that looks and feels like all the others that company cranks out. Your message will get lost as the production company slams together your video with nothing but their bottom line as a guide.

Choose a professional company that will listen to what you want, make suggestions and then work with you on a script and budget that works for you. Also understanding what the REAL costs are going in will save you from sticker shock later. Making quality videos takes many hours of many talented people’s time to be done right. It is not for the faint-of-heart. It’s like anything else in life; you really do get what you pay for.

HOW TO AVOID STICKER SHOCK – A professional production company will deliver an estimate that includes the number of locations, travel time and tickets, production days, special effects, graphics, editing requirements, as well as possible professional talent or narration. With all details in hand, producers can come very close to a final price. If the proposed project is very complex, requiring multiple locations, stand-by days and last minute travel, it may not be possible to submit a final budget until the actual script is complete. Some video production companies put a contingency fee in the final estimate. A contingency figure in the budget reflects the fact that even the most thoroughly pre-planned video production can fall prey to “Murphy’s Law,” with delays and problems that cannot be foreseen or controlled.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN – Before the pre-production even begins, the client must assign one person to “executive produce” the video. Without a defined approval manager, the production team will have too many bosses. This will lead to confusion, delays and more cost to the over-all production. This person is the video production company’s main contact; the “go to” leader who has the knowledge to ensure the production team gets everything right, eases the way into every location, and has the power to approve each production phase.

The Three Phases of Video Production

1. PRE-PRODUCTION
This is where you save money…lots of money. Mess this part up and your project will be come in over budget and most likely never deliver the results you wanted. This is where you plan…change your mind…plan some more…change your mind…plan some more…Get it? This is the point where changing your mind costs much less than at any point going forward. After pre-production, the cost of changing your mind costs 10X, so get this part right.

Scriptwriting – Like blueprints for a homebuilder, a detailed script helps insure a successful, on budget production. Video production is a highly skilled and detailed process. Without a carefully designed script, your project will cost a lot more than expected and still not tell the story you want told.

The script not only includes the talent’s lines, it also plots all visuals (such as camera angles), and contains creative elements (like special effects) that will hold the audience’s attention. The script is the master plan for the actual production work. Scriptwriting for video is different from other forms of writing. In video – less is more.

Remember, the video script message is carried through the visuals as well as the words. Research studies have shown that people learn faster –and remember more of what they learned — when they see rather than just hear the story.

Steps to developing a good script

Research – You can’t write about what you don’t know! A professional script-writer will collect all the pertinent information: interview your technical advisors, employees and customers. They will discover what’s essential to your video so you don’t waste time recording unnecessary details. Recording what you don’t need waste money and makes the post-production phase take even longer.

The Treatment – This is a condensed version of the script describing, in a general way, what will be seen and heard. It is written in paragraph rather then script format.

The Rough Draft Script – Just as the name implies, the first script is a draft that will explain, in detail, the look and feel of the finished project. There WILL BE more than one rough draft. This is where you work out the kinks and fine tune what is, and maybe just as important, what is not needed in the final video.

The Shooting Script – Once all of the additions and/or revisions from the rough script have been approved, the result is the shooting script – and the production can begin!

The Final Script – Often you will discover better sound or find material after the production shoot. The producer will re-work and re-write the script to accommodate the new/better material and conform it to the shooting script for the company’s approval.

Once you have your script, the next stage is the budget. Once these two items are finished and agreed to, you move on to choosing locations, graphics, music, animation and talent. Sometimes it makes sense to use company personnel as “talent” in the video, and sometimes it will take a trained actor to project the right image. It’s almost always better to used a trained actor for any voice over and narration. This decision has to be made in pre-production.

I cannot stress this enough; this is by far the most important phase. Make the hard choices here and you will save time and money.

2. PRODUCTION
This is actually shooting the video. This is the part of the process most people think of when they envision a video shoot. This is the LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION part. Most people think of it as the FUN part. But be prepared. It will take longer than you think and make a much bigger mess that you can imagine. Prepare yourself and your company for the disruption and distractions. The video crew and producer will travel to the selected locations and record the video footage. This will include interviews, cover footage, product shots, and procedures as needed to tell the story your video is intended to tell. Narration may be recorded at this time on location or later in an audio studio. Music and graphics may be produced during this period as well. All the elements that will be used in post-production are created during the production phase.

Once the final script is approved, your production company will help arrange the shooting schedule. Specific locations will need to be reserved, arrival times will be determined and needed people and resources will be arranged. You may be surprised to see how much time is required to set up and light a scene. A good production is the direct result of creativity and craftsmanship. Rushing the job will adversely affect the final results. Understanding this will help you bear with the video crew while they set up their equipment. They will also record a scene from several different angles.

3. POST PRODUCTION
This is the “longer-than-you-think-it-takes” time in the edit room phase. Now is when the production team edits the video, mixes the audio and inserts titles and special effects. It’s where all elements come together to create a production that grabs your audience and keeps them glued to the screen. This really is where the magic happens; where all the hard work in pre-production and production pay off.

Logging – During this first phase of post production, all the shots recorded during production will be logged. If a script supervisor was used during production this process is much easier. If not, each recording will need to be logged manually (viewed and shots written down) and sound bites will be reviewed. After the recordings are logged, the next step is to create the video equivalent of a rough draft.

The Rough Cut Edit – Once the shots are logged and organized, the producer and editor will be able to start on a first cut or rough-cut of the production. By transcribing the good video shots and listening to the sound bites, the editor can decide the video’s order and pacing in the rough-cut. Also during this first edit, the editor will start choosing any required music and graphics and make sure all copyrighted material is cleared or will inform the company what license fees might be required for music, stock video, etc. Once you have approved the rough-cut edit of your production, it could take several more rough edits that fine tune and polish the production. Then the post production team will move on to the final edit.

The Final Edit – The approved rough-cut edit will serve as a guide to create your finished project. This phase of editing includes final audio mixing, color correction of scenes, insertion of titles, graphics and animation, as well as special effects and transitions.

See, that was easy. OK, not so easy, but the finished product will be amazing. Get each section right and you will have an outstanding tool you can use for many years.

Have You Been Hacked?

Posted by glenfulce on July 16, 2012
Posted in: Business. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

HACKED!Hackers broke into the webmail servers of Yahoo through a hole in their sub domain architecture.  Then, to rub it in, they then posted usernames and passwords of over 453,000 users along with information from other webmail clients such as GMail and Hotmail.  Is you’re part of the list?  Here’s how to find out.

Go to a special verification site set up by Securi to check.  Input your email, and it’ll let you know one way or another.  If you find yourself with a compromised email, what do you do?  That’s the simple part.  Just change your password.  Which you should make a regular habit of doing three of four times a year anyway.

Just Sayin’

G