YouTube puts premium on moves, TV
Google bought YouTube more than two years ago. Now the bill has arrived.
YouTube’s upcoming redesign will dump its current navigation scheme using “channels” and instead funnel viewers into more traditional categories such as “Movies,” “Shows” (TV) and “Music.”
Looks like Google thinks amateur content, YouTube’s lifeblood to date, isn’t enough — or maybe just not good enough. Advertisers have felt that way for some time, given the video site’s history of failures in the ad arena.
Meanwhile, YouTube has cut a deal with Disney for limited content from its television unit, including the networks ABC and ESPN. Content will be mostly clips that will appear on branded pages, meaning this is largely a promotional pact. In order to watch ABC network shows, for example, you’ll sit through an ad, watch a teaser and then follow a link over to ABC.com for the real deal. Disney reportedly is near a deal to buy part of Hulu.
The web site ClickZ broke the story of YouTube’s redesign and shift to premium content.
“It’s totally a Hulu approach, but that’s best practices right now,” an ad exec told ClickZ.
The idea is to segregate premium (Hollywood, network) content from the works of the rabble. Three of the four navigation tabs will point to movies and TV shows, while the amateurs get one tab. The overall page designs could mitigate this imbalance, or make it worse. We’ll see soon enough as launch is set for April 16, after a delay.
The new YouTube player also will follow Hulu’s lead, the report said. YouTube went to a widescreen format for its video player at the end of 2008. (The Disney deal also brings its first third-party video player, from ESPN.)
TV.com’s redesign recently “borrowed” Hulu’s layout and presentation for its redesign.
The ad presentation for YouTube also will be similar to Hulu, with the spots in-stream so most viewers will sit through them.
YouTube’s monstrous traffic of 100 million monthly visitors hasn’t coverted into revenues, as the user-generated-content site struggled with various monetization schemes and annoying advertising placements.
“They need the money,” Mike Vorhaus, an online media consultant, said of YouTube and ABC. The move to premium content is “how they’re going to get it,” he told the New York Times.
Advertisers will feel more at home now, since they don’t think much of populist video presentations, UGC long being a dog for revenue.
Ad execs were said to be enthusiastic about the YouTube redesign previews. Let’s hope Google isn’t putting its stamp on the design scheme: Big G’s page designs have always sucked like it’s 1999 and at least three of the top Google designers have walked in recent weeks.
One problem with all this: YouTube’s premium content consists of mostly studio and network catalog retreads.
My prediction for launch date April 16: viewer firestorm.
YouTube, top talent agency near deal
YouTube and Hollywood’s the William Morris Agency are about to sign a deal in which WMA’s clients would appear in online videos.
The Web video talks were first reported in today’s New York Times. Reps for both parties refused to comment, the Times said.
WMA apparently will take an ownership stake in the videos produced for or by YouTube.
YouTube, owned by Google, has been taking tentative steps toward adding professional video to its sea of amateur footage. It has started running authorized online TV episodes from CBS and Showtime, and recently retooled its site for the widescreen video ratio that filmmakers favor.
It also has added an enhanced video quality option described as HD. Its Screening Room recently featured the premiere of a Wayne Wang movie.
YouTube stretches out for HD content
YouTube’s slow dance with high-definition content has picked up a bit of speed with the introduction of an “HD”-only section and another wider video screen that looks quite good.
YouTube, you probably recall, played around with low-grade high-definition video before surprising users last month with a widescreen player used for all videos. That 16×9 screen measures about 640 pixels wide. Now, a wider version of the HD player automatically appears when selecting HD video, rolling out at 850 pixels wide over the 965 page.
Videos that appear to have HD-quality images tend to stutter a bit, even for those with decent bandwidth.
Here’s the latest super-popular “Where the Hell Is Matt” video that YouTube has been pushing as a demo for the new HD player. You’ll start out in standard, before clicking on “Watch in HD” at bottom right of the screen. Pretty impressive, especially if you’ve never caught Matt’s act.
YouTube thinks wider is better
YouTube’s flirtation with widescreen images and high-definition has bloomed into a full-scale romance.
Have a look, courtesy of our animal friends Big Buck Bunny (an HD toon) and Charlie the Unicorn (widescreen with the quality upgrade).
Now check out the downside, via another online video critter.
As you can see, YouTube today expanded to a 16×9 video player, meaning viewers of non-widescreen images are seeing vertical black bars on either side of the newly expanded screen (or on all sides, as above). YouTube Nation is not a happy place right now.
That letterboxed dynamic will be familiar to owners of 16×9 TVs as the result of an Academy (full screen) image being crammed into a widescreen (16×9) presentation area.
YouTube began experimenting with 720p HD last May and has been offering up high-def images since then. (The more desirable 1080p is what comes out of your shiny new Blu-ray player.)
Unfortunately, YouTube’s user-generated content is almost exclusively done in what’s ironically called full-screen, the same aspect ratio (4:3) as analog TV broadcasts. That, of course, is changing as most professional content is being created in the widescreen format. Home videos, too, are shifting over, especially via the new cheaper HD video cameras for home use.
And guess what: A good deal of YouTube content shot in widescreen had been deliberately masked by the creators so it didn’t look like crap on the old 4:3 screen.
Looks like the YouTube faithful will be looking at those black bars for a long, long time — assuming the new screens remain, without some kind of option to switch formats.
“Widescreen YouTube is great, except for when watching anything not widescreen … which is pretty much everything,” one fan of the online video service Twittered tonight.
Another commenter on the YouTube blog complained that it shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all: “4:3 videos should play in a 4:3 player and 16:9 videos should play in a 16:9 player. I mean this isn’t a TV.”
YouTube’s blogger chief says: “Don’t worry, your 4:3 aspect ratio videos will play just fine in this new player.”
Here’s a response from the street: “I really really dislike this feature. It makes all of my old videos look like they are floating in the middle of the player.”
The move to widesceen may be a result of YouTube’s revenue-seeking explorations in professional content. Earlier this month, MGM (Fox) and YouTube sealed a programming deal that brings some older films to an ad-supported channel. In October, CBS signed up its catalog fare.
A swarm of YouTube Live videos posted two days ago get the black bar treatment, suggesting less than tubular internal communications.
Embeds are still going out at 425×344 resolution, with YouTube wisely avoiding a Web-wide graphics explosion.
Wang’s ‘Princess’ premieres on YouTube
Now showing: Director Wayne Wang’s new movie, “The Princess of Nebraska.” The opening weekend screenings are exclusively on YouTube, where the youth drama is streaming for free and at full length in the new Screening Room.
Wang’s decision to put his indie art film up for online viewing is more or less unprecedented for a major director. (Michael Moore did let fans view his latest docu “Slacker Uprising” for free for a couple of weeks.)
Yes, there’s a catch. Part of the strategy is to drum up publicity for Wang’s “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” now trying to find an audience in traditional cinemas. They are companion films, based on stories by Northern California author Yiyun Li.
“In France they actually were shown side by side,” Wang told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We were trying to figure out how to show them together (in the U.S.), and (distributor) Magnolia said, ‘Why don’t we show it on the Internet?’
There are, of course, many feature films on YouTube — some authorized, some not — but this looks like a major coup for the online video sharing service. As of Sunday morning, almost 130,000 people had watched some of the film, not bad numbers considering.
On YouTube, the film looks good at its original size (about 480 pixels, widescreen, on my monitor). Blown up to full screen, image quality becomes an issue. Audio is just OK. YouTube uses a better quality player for its Screening Room, billed as “a platform for top films from around the world to find the audiences they deserve.”
“Princess Nebraska” tells of a hip young Chinese woman who finds herself in San Francisco, pregnant and wobbly under the weight of the decisions ahead of her. It’s shot with tight frames, using various hand-held digital devices. The New York Times called it “beautifully shot and awkwardly acted.” I thought it was well worth movie lovers’ time.
Like Wang’s breakthrough indie film, “Chan Is Missing,” the action is mostly down at street level. “A Thousand Years,” meanwhile, has the look of a studio film.
“The Internet’s ability to provide free streaming video is going to radically redefine independent film’s access and availability to its audience,” said Magnolia’s Ray Price. “It provides a new platform, which can free us from the ‘Top Ten’ mentality in the same way that FM radio did for the music business.”
Wang pointed to Radiohead’s free online album, which has since gone on to success via traditional distribution.