JamieG Analysis

Video has become the future of the internet. Between 40-90% of all traffic has been reported to be P2P sharing, with the bulk of that Video. And if its not P2P traffic, its most likely from YouTube or any of the hundreds of copies.

Obviously there is a great need to bring this unabated use of mostly illigal content under control. Strangely enough, however, these tools are not available to the producer. Well, they are if they pay through the nose, or prostitute themselves to the gatekeeper incumbent players.

Still, I find this quite amazing as, can you imagine the internet without the open source Web server Apache? Without Open source product like WordPress? These tools have been the keys to the community growth of the internet. Strangely enough Streaming technology has been largely left behind.

This brings us to the opportunity. Imagine being a founding member of the programming team to go down in history for making that for which Apache has been for the internet, but for Video. The opportunity is now.

Lets have a look why.

Firstly lets get to the first question in you mind. “We are doing no now, for example Youtube and progressive download”. Simply serving web pages does not a web server make. Features like SSL must be a part of a Web server. As such, features that streaming and a form of SSL (One would call DRM) will obviously be part of a full featured Video server. These features will enable better experiences, more efficient control of the process and predominately better monitoring of who is using the content. (More on this later)

Recently the online video arena has been hotting up. The previously dominant player, Microsoft, has been pulling out all stops to grab back the online video market. There new product is called Silverlight. It is a great new technology from Microsoft. Looking at any demo of interest for this technology, it is always a Video application using Microsoft Media server as the back end. It is obvious that this technology is squarely aimed at Adobe/Macromedia flash.

Flash from Adobe/Macromedia as literally taken over the web. It has become the de facto standard for web video. (You see some Quicktime still Mainly from Apple, and near no Microsoft Video, unless the implementation is tied to it.) Adobe has also been reacting to Microsoft Silverlight. (Isn’t competition great.) Recent ground breaking developments in FlashPlayer betas has been two major additions.

1. The ability for hardware playback. This lets the flash player do full screen playback of video all the way up to HD 1080p.
2. Support for a SMPTE standard H.264 and AAC audio. This is the MP3 of video, OR, is the next big codec to replace the ubiquitous but older MPEG2 codec.

This pretty much has sunk Microsoft’s Silverlight boat but not completely. It is a different technology and has different strengths. Still, Microsoft will most likely come to the conclusion they will never be the ubiquitous technology the world uses for video. Still, they have there own walled garden to look after. (Xbox 360 online movies).

At the end of the day, the real issue on all of this is. “Who controls the back end.” The server. The funnel that all the content must go through. The Gatekeeper if you will? Well according to Adobe, that anyone who wants to pay $45,000 per server for FMS (Flash Media Server).

This is where it all falls down and why this technology has been so long coming. Adobe, Microsoft have been spending years marketing, formulating, manipulating the market, into a position in which it can become, at least a part of, the gatekeeper of content. And really, who can blame them. They are companies who are in it to make money.

But really, if anything, over the last few years, the Internet has shown us that if a technology gets in its way, it will find a way to bypass it. Looking at the current state of pirated content, some interesting topics have recently surfaced.

Anyone with there ear to the ground known it is easier to use Bit-Torrent to download a movie or TV show then it is to buy it off iTunes (And usually better quality). But not until recently, after the Apple and NBC public dummy spit (See this story), have larger respected journalists actually written articles stating this. And, to me, largely endorsing it by writing about it in this way.

Considering this, any content that plans to be sucessfully distributed over the web has to be able to compete with FREE. An example of this is in underdeveloped countries where you can purchase any movie you like for $2-3 dollars. Anyone trying to sell DVDs at typical western prices simply cannot compete so don’t even bother. And this will be the case for the internet.

I make a point of this as, Adobe or Microsoft clipping the ticket just so you can server your media is unlikely to work within this equation. At the fact that a streaming server is not really the hard part here. Its establishing the standad platform that flashplayer with H.264 is.

FMS3, due out early Q1, 2008, will supply this platform, using, what I expect to be (Any input from people who know appriciated) a proprietory implementstion of a streaming protocal with a control protocal and SSL/DRM implementation on top. Adobe have gone all OPEN SOURCE recently, but from what I understand, not in this area.

Still, these proprietory API’s can be reverse engineered legally, and open source can supply the same or part there of, feature set. This is inevitable, but until then, Adobe will be milking it for all they can.

Before I conclude, I want to polish up the DRM/SSL issue a little here. Many people are completely against DRM. This is understandable, however, for the future of Video distribution on the internet to be full of interesting and compelling content, methods to encourage users not to copy content, or simply to track that every time they watch the content, they got to the source and are counted. These tools can be used in a way that does not hinder a viewer but improves the opportunity for the producer to get a return on an expensive business or put more money into a production making better content. How would you feel if content like ER, Heros, could only be made to look at good as lonlygirl15? This comparison is a little over the top, but I hope carries the message as to why, like SSL is to a Webserver, DRM is to a Video Server.

Finally we get to the opportunity. Who is going to implement the open source Streaming server? Well, if your a coder, and what to go down in history, it could be you.