Adobe Media Player tracks downloadable media

Mike Hudack, CEO and co-founder of Blip.tv, says Adobe Media Player "solves the critical issue of tracking the viewership of downloaded files in Beet.TV's Adobe Media Player is a "Huge Step Forward" In the Tracking of Downloadable Media.



There was talk of a break-up but it looks like he just won't let go:

The Break Up
by geertdesager

Update: Adobe Media Player: Understanding the structure of the RSS feed.

Adobe TV launches with Media Player

Adobe TV launches with Adobe Media Player today. Adobe TV rounds up various blog and marketing content with the stuff from the Adobe Video Workshop.

Adobe Media Player is limited in UI and ability compared to some Flash-based players or other technologies like the K-Multimedia Player or QuickTime, but Adobe is trying out revenue sharing, ad support, DRM, usage data etc. As discussed in previous posts, most of the features are for back-end developers, but there is a partnership with Blip.TV that provides an easy way to generate a custom channel with a MRSS feed. Also, there's already a code-oriented feed tutorial shown by Tiago.

There should be much more on this soon from the usual suspects; for now Deeje Cooley has a summary in Internet TV: Redefining "Media Player".

Update: Beet.Tv has an interview in which "Adobe's Kevin Towes explains about file size, bit and byte rates of Flash files and how the new application provides a means to download and save large files. For an in depth review of AMP, check out this post by Michael Calore in Wired."

Adobe introduces its own DRM for Flash

No matter Who Needs Flash on the iPhone More: Adobe or Apple?, Beet.TV leads with Adobe Introduces Digital Rights Management for Flash, and an interview below to ease you in.

Also, consider if you will EFF critical of Flash Video DRM and Look mum, no DRM: BBC launches iPlayer on iPhone and iPod touch.



Update: John Dowdell, Ryan Stewart, and Desiree Motamedi have some details on the Flash server DRM solution ($40,000 per CPU), which can encrypt FLV and H264 video content so that it only plays in Adobe Media Player (AIR integration built in), and manages on the server-side to restrict playback to rules set by the content owner.

Update 2: CNET reports Adobe realizes SDK not enough for Flash on iPhone,

Adobe clarified its CEO's comments in an official statement on Wednesday: "Adobe has evaluated the iPhone SDK and can now start to develop a way to bring Flash Player to the iPhone. However, to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone Web-browsing experience we do need to work with Apple beyond and above what is available through the SDK and the current license around it." Key words there: "beyond and above" (I always thought it was the other way around).

AIR and its implications for video

Beet.TV has an interview on AIR and its implications for video with Ryan Stewart, a Rich Internet Application Evangelist for Adobe. Beet.TV has more from the Adobe Engage conference, just scout around.



Apparently Microsoft's Silverlight will be in the spotlight next week. Silverlight 1.0 is primarily focused on video, and word is that the features management wanted could only be done now in Flash (which is often done on the Mac inside MS). That should change with Silverlight 2; see Scott Guthrie's blog post First Look at Silverlight 2 (beta release 1).

Update: there's more on this from Adobe VP David Wadhwani (and more analysis on Beet.TV and a 2007 overview in The Architecture of Flash):



Update 2: eWeek (3/3/08) talks to CTO Kevin Lynch about AIR and Open Source in Adobe Floating on AIR.

RichFLV among Adobe AIR Apps to Check Out

Read/WriteWeb has a coupla articles on Adobe AIR, which was launched at the Adobe Engage 2008 event today in San Francisco: The Best Things About Adobe's AIR Platform and 6 Adobe AIR Apps to Check Out.

RichFLV (pictured above) seems cool; it let`s you edit .flv files and metadata.

There are more AIR apps at the Adobe AIR Marketplace, and John Dowdell and Ryan Stewart note other press coverage.

Update: Lee Brimelow has an article on Streaming Media on Building Video Apps With Adobe AIR.

Update 2: Adobe released a new version of the desktop color harmony browser kuler.

Custom Adobe Media Player channel with Blip.TV

Adobe Media Player prerelease 2 is available on Adobe Labs. It is improved from a user perspective. Also, there's an easy way to start your own iTunes or AMP channel with custom branding using a Blip.TV account. Bob Donlon walked through this the other night at the SF Cutters meeting and it's quite easy. When you log in to a Blip.TV account, click on distribution in the blue panel at the left to create various RSS feeds.

Adobe track backs

As noted in an earlier post Go Viral + a web video swarm, behavioral tracking is a popular topic among marketeers as companies try to leverage information from data mining (so careful what you click). The hullabaloo on Adobe and Apple partaking in tracking -- as acknowledged by Photoshop product manager John Nack in 3 posts so far-- got me thinking about behavioral targeting again. For more check out Anil Batra's ISP based Behavioral Targeting and Watching What You See on the Web from the Wall Street Journal, though the topic still confuses me.

I was also confused by all the Omni-s: Omni Consumer Products LLC which borrows its name from Robocop was involved in the Idiocracy energy drink, and The Omnicom Group owns Agency.com ran some behavioral marketing project for Adobe. But it's Omniture which collects data from iTunes and CS3 clicks through a tricky domain "2o7.net" (it's an o not a zer0).

Both Mitcho.com and dev.netcetera.org discuss opting out of the schema.

Anyway, there are privacy concerns and even under the current Bush administration the Federal Trade Commission took note, albeit for "self-regulation" with Online Behavioral Advertising Privacy Principles. Maybe Adobe is going to tap revenue streams for services, which was perhaps signaled by the purchase of Scene7. They could leverage existing products a la Bridge Home and the Flash panels, and draw in new customers with free services like Adobe Share and Adobe Media Player plus all the AIR widgets looming on the horizon. The question is still open on which direction the industry in general takes: follow the seemingly hands-off model of Google (expires in 2038) or go brilliant but "evil" like Facebook. GigaOM summarizes many of the issues in How to Safeguard Your Privacy Online.

Update: Wired takes a look at the World's Top Surveillance Societies and a mix of privacy and fear concerns in THREAT LEVEL's Year in Review -- 2007.

The trend in video seems to be "social-networking TV," an electronic panopticon where you can "participate in your own manipulation," as EBN mused.

Update 2: In a funny turn, if you remember the revelation about the pre-9/11 wiretapping by the telecom giants and dark forces, the Democratic National Convention Committee announced their telecom provider for their convention. See DNCC Goes With Qwest.

Update 3: John Dowdell notes a story from the BBC in Underestimating privacy, where "a newspaper columnist said 'oh privacy is overrated' and published his bank account number to prove it." He also notes the scraping friends story from Judi Sohn's Scoble, Facebook & Plaxo: It’s a matter of trust. And fear. Privacy policies may change with the bottom line.

Update 4: John Nack has more from Adobe on the issue.

Video on the Web & Adobe

Here's a basic overview of video on the web & Adobe with a few twists I hadn't heard; and comments from John Dowdell:

"W3C: Lynch on video: A 20-minute video interview with Adobe's Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch, at the W3C Video on the Web Workshop earlier this month. I haven't listened to it yet, but it likely follows the Adobe position paper submitted to the conference: video needs extend beyond HTML browsers; we need improvement in metadata, search, quoting, text tracks, distribution controls, and delivery to multiple devices; and Adobe has no objections to a VIDEO tag if the browsers change to invoke the user's choice of video engine that way: "[It would be useful to] establish video as a top level element in HTML, and support mapping to player technology. This could be approached even more generally, to enable better integration of technologies such as Flash Player with the HTML document object model." More position papers are here, and there are additional video interviews with the W3C's Steve Bratt and Doug Schepers."

Update: NewTeeVee has some rather involved posts with and about video, including: What Will Happen to Online Video in 2008?, NTV Predictions: Mobile Video, and NTV Predictions: Video in the Living Room.

Adobe Media Player in prerelease beta

Just in time for YouTube to get Adsensed and the Joost launch (promising a set-top), Adobe Media Player is now in prerelease public beta. AMP attempts to bring the best of both the broadcast television and web video worlds to your desktop. Not sure about that, but ads and metrics are features for producers as noted in previous posts; see Online players again (especially the Deeje Cooley video) and Adobe adds H.264 support to Flash; AMP delayed.

I'm still wondering Will Adobe address Joost Copycats? Will AMP keep up with the smaller innovators (UI, etc...) and will CS3 users benefit from integration? More at Mashable's Adobe’s New Media Player Launches with Several Partners.

Update: Adobe's Edge newsletter go deeper with Adobe Media Player: A new way to deliver high-quality content.

If you want more on Silverlight vs. Flash check out the many thoughts at JD on EP.

Will Adobe address Joost Copycats?

TechCrunch asks Will Joost Address The Copycats? but will Adobe address them too in Adobe Media Player? Or will all the good stuff be under the hood for advertisers? I think Apple's movie player is still the best for users (global spacebar stop, frame advance with arrows, etc.), though many Microsoft-oriented engineers can't accept that. In the past some engineers even refused to make an up arrow raise a numeric value (not lower), because that was a "Mac" UI convention and not in Microsoft MFC!

Adobe adds H.264 support to Flash; AMP delayed

Danny Prinz on the AE-List noted that Adobe announced a Flash Player 9 beta will enable "the delivery of HD television quality and premium audio content through the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player and pave the way to expand rich media Flash experiences on the desktop and H.264 ready consumer devices. The latest update for Adobe Flash Player 9 will be available in beta for download today on Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com/."

Update: Adobe's Tinic Uro San has extensive comments and technical details, and Aral Balkan has a FAQ with commentators grumbling that Adobe is using a proprietary RTMP protocol and disabling RTSP support to sell server software.

John Dowdell follows up to clarify an important point, 'Here's the fuller quote from Tinic: "Video needs to be in H.264 format only. MPEG-4 Part 2 (Xvid, DivX etc.) video is not supported, H.263 video is not supported, Sorenson Video is not supported. Keep in mind that a lot of pod casts are still using MPEG-4 Part 2. So do not be surprised if you do not see any video." He's referring to H264 video here, in its various implementations. The Sorenson Sparc codec works in the Player, same as before. I understand how this passage could read the other way though. But the Sorenson reference in this passage is to flavors of H264, and does not affect the world's existing FLVs.'

Update 2: Beet.TV has more info, including comments by Adobe's Ryan Stewart on ZDNet and by NewTeeVee. Beet.TV also provided the interview below with On2 CEO Bill Joll on H.264, and another Joll interview Adobe's Flash Video to Play on Mobile Phones. There's yet another at Joll interview (8/23) at Seeking Alpha.

Click To Play

Update 3: Beet.TV also notes that Adobe Media Player has been delayed until 2008.

Online players again

As previously covered, Innovation in web video players continues. Now, NewTeeVee shows AppleTV in action updating to YouTube in Apple TV Now Playing YouTube: Hands-On Video.

Meanwhile, Veoh is further refining their content delivery system. Again NewTeeVee has the summary in Veoh To Launch ‘VeohTV,’ Take on Joost. Veoh has a ton of content because it leverages other services, like YouTube, too. But they also let you publish across services and track usage.

Veoh's new player (hard to find demo here) competes with several players including, Adobe Media Player, previewed here earlier but again below (works in Firefox XP).

AMP will feature RSS feeds, custom channel branding, interactive real-time advertising overlays (NAB video), viewer tracking, custom UI inserts to create custom social networking functions among other things. Not shown is the player controls, which hopefully will be more like QuickTime than WiMP.

Adobe Media Player previews

Deeje Cooley and Mike Chambers both have new videos on the upcoming Adobe Media Player (AMP, codenamed Philo), which is not quite yet available on Adobe Labs (unless you're a developer). If you watch on Mike Chamber's video.onflex.org, the little button on the right of the timebar lets you watch fullscreen.

Update: AMP's ability to overlay and insert interactive ads seems favored now that marketers are seeing that the paid video download market is a dead end.




...and earlier from John Dowdell on comparisons to Joost:

'Anil Gupte has a short post [and more now fixating on Joost -ry] showing some of the differences from other video projects: reliance on live peer-to-peer connection, and fixed schedules of particular centralized content, like cable TV, are some of the key points he mentions. The upcoming Adobe Media Player (FAQ, video) differs in a number of significant ways, including more control for viewers, more control for creators, more choice for advertisers. Both are currently described by the phrase "desktop video player", but I think that as we get closer in we'll see how these basic decisions affect the different ways each initiative can evolve.'

Adobe Media Player

JD says keep an eye on Adobe's Deeje Cooley for the best information on this subject, which is Adobe Media Player (announced at NAB), so you too can monetize eyeballs with "happiness metrics" and video streams.

Update: JD has more thoughts on AMP and Microsoft initiatives, and sees AMP more in the space with Joost, Miro/Democracy and the like. It's hard to say what developers will do with Silverlight, the MS answer to Flash. Some are already noting that the real battle's between Adobe and Google, and not about Silverlight. Gizmodo has a report on AMP from NAB.