Category: General

Hey NY Times: Can You Back Up The Claim Of $200 Billion Lost To Counterfeiting? http://bit.ly/9GTU3I I thought not, they’re totally bugus.

The mainstream media really do themselves a disservice when they blindly quote “statistics” or “reports” from any record industry, movie industry or counterfeit-fighting source because the statistics are clearly bogus you do any investigation.

If the media won’t investigate, what purpose do they serve? Disseminate press releases?

I could take arguments of the “damages from piracy” a little more seriously if the “proof” wasn’t so obviously just made up with no provable case.

Back in 2007 we wrote about a study by the well-respected GAO which noted that industry claims on counterfeiting were massively overblown. The GAO looked at the actual data and found that, contrary to claims from the industry that 5 to 7% of world trade involves counterfeit materials, the research they’ve seen shows it happening in less than 1% of trade and the value of those goods was significantly lower. Of course, obviously, those trying to pass counterfeit goods across the border will do their best to hide it, the evidence of the supposed 5 to 7% is totally lacking.

The Terence and Philip show, Episode 3 Live. http://bit.ly/aTWoxi. Terence Curren and I continue our irreverent discussions.

New Bill to Mandate Captions for Web TV http://bit.ly/dawU17

First there has to be a commission set up to determine the time scale for implementation, and it only applies to material that has first been broadcast somewhere else. Since broadcasters mostly have to close caption for broadcast, the source material will be available.

This would be a burden if it were ever extended to original “web TV” (whatever that is).

But if it is ever mandated, then the Universal Subtitles Project might be the solution.

Matrox Announces Vetura Capture Application for Mac OS X http://bit.ly/d0Zh6t

Preparing for the next FCP without L&C (Joking folks, joking) More likely that Matrox simply wants to improve their offerings for OS X and be somewhat independent of any host NLE. I wouldn’t read too much into it.

Update: Scott Simmons is probably spot on when he says that it solves the capture problem for MXO mini users and Media Composer. With Vetura they could capture DNxHD media if Media Composer is installed. Oops, not such good news for those selling Avid hardware.

The Terence and Philip show Episode 2 http://bit.ly/9WHnxK

Interesting experiment in recovering color from B&W TV signals http://bit.ly/aF5UXd

It’s geeky, which is probably why I like it, but of use for documentarians and historians who will need to recover color in B&W recordings to fit it into a modern video presentation.

The Real Cost of Netflix Streaming is the Movie, Not the Bandwidth http://bit.ly/arTkUD

Despite my summary, it would not be feasible to distribute a blockbuster, like Shrek X , to everyone who wants it on release day. With the numbers that are typical for such a blockbuster release, it would take more than the world’s currently available bandwidth for several weeks.

Even Netflix continue to see growth in physical media delivery, expecting that to continue until 2014 before streaming takes over.

But it is an interesting data point that the costs of the rights are much more than the cost of the actual delivery of on-demand streams to subscribers.

But despite a huge increase in the amount of video streams it’s serving up through Watch Instantly, Netflix’s streaming costs haven’t increased proportionally. In the second quarter, the company said costs associated with delivery over third-party CDN networks only increased by $1 million versus the previous quarter. Netflix is benefiting from bandwidth costs continuing to fall exponentially as it grows its streaming business.

With the DVD side of the business, delivery costs outstrip programming costs:

But expenses associated with DVD delivery offset its reduction in purchase costs. According to Netflix, the costs of its DVD-by-mail business increased by $23.1 million in the second quarter. Due to the vast increase in its subscriber base, the number of discs shipped grew 9.3 percent, despite a 20 percent decrease in the number of DVDs per sub. Those costs could increase even further next year, as the U.S. Postal Service has announced plans to increase postage rates (again).

YouTube to increase upload limit from 10 to 15 minutes http://bit.ly/962Bgl

Overall an evolutionary move with YouTube, which has progressively increased the file size limit, the highest quality limit (although I don’t buy “4K”) and now an extended duration for those who aren’t YouTube Partners. YouTube Partners have been exempt from the duration limit for a while now.

Just think about it: the move would bring 50% more “haul videos,” from shopaholic teen girls; 50% more crazytime rants from random dudes; 50% more hamster montages; and 50% more double (whoah that’s almost a triple) rainbows.

Why now? I don’t know. Why not? But I’d put my money partially on the company’s recent win in the Viacom case, and a sense that they’ve now figured out more effectively how to help the big content owners (labels, movie studios, TV networks) identify infringing uploads, which might tend to fall largely in that longer-form category.