Sony Media Software put up a teaser for their upcoming release of Vegas 8. One of the first changes right off the bat is the name which is now Vegas Pro 8. This helps differentiate between the Vegas professional users have known to come and love and the more consumer oriented Vegas Movie Studio. New software features include a 32-bit floating point video engine, Multicamera editing built right in, Blu-ray disc burning straight from the timeline, and a ProType titler (one of the most requested features for a long time.) With the new title tool you can…

Create animated text effects with splined paths, per-character animation, and advanced curves. Add shadows, glows, blurs, and gradients for unique text treatments. Supports Unicode and TrueType fonts, as well as OpenType fonts with kerning pairs, alternate styles, bidirectional text, ligatures, custom kerning, and more.

The 32-bit video capability will allow for more presice color with less gradient banding. Most other video editing suites support up to 10-bits and if you wanted more control over your color you would have to jump over to Adobe After Effects or Apple’s new program Color. Now you can stay right in Vegas for a speedier workflow while you color correct without losing quality.

Earlier this year at the National Association of Broadcasters conference Sony was showing off a preview of 64-bit Vegas which would take advantage of the new processing power in modern chips. Video is the sort of application that would really benefit from 64-bit processors as it is extremely data intensive. There has been no word if there is 64-bit support, but Vegas is multi-threaded aware meaning it can utilize the multi-core chips that are becoming mainstream to process video faster.

Vegas 8 doesn’t come with a few dissapointments. Corporate politics seem to have limited support for some formats as it will only back Sony’s own Blu-ray DVD burning (from the timeline i.e. no menu’s) and only Sony’s flavor of AVCHD from it’s own camcorders. The lack of HD-DVD burning is a bummer especially since the proclaimed winner of the format war seems to flip-flop every week. There are other camcorders out there that record to the AVCHD format including Panasonic and Canon. While Vegas could have been the first editor to support native tapeless AVCHD editing, they have instead dropped the ball choosing to support only their own devices.

One of the more head scratcher features announced will the support for digital signage. This makes it easier to produce and edit video that will be displayed on tall, rotated video displays. The software makes it easy to switch between a taller format and a regular widescreen horizontal format.

Sony will demo the new software at the IBC tradeshow on September 7th – 11th. Vegas 8 will go on sale September 10th for $699 which includes DVD-Architecht 4.5. I anticipate getting my hands on Vegas 8 to try out the new goodies and report back with a full review in the near future.

Bi-weekly web magazine A List Apart (ALA) launched two fresh new articles. Unfortunately I was saddened that Erin Kissane, editor at ALA, approved an entire article about designing specifically for the iPhone. I know the iPhone is amazing to many geeks out there but it is no where near as prevalent as the number of web enabled mobile devices.

According to market researcher iSuppli, the number of mobile phone subscribers topped 2.6 billion globally last year. Since I couldn’t find any statistics on mobile web devices, let us assume only a quarter of those can access the web on their phone. That works out to 650 million potential mobile web users. Apple reported it sold 270,000 iPhones over it’s launch weekend but let’s assume they sold 30,000 more shiny devices between now and then. Using the above statistics, the iPhone accounts for only 0.046% of all web-accessible mobile devices; a drop in the proverbial bucket. And I am supposed to be excited to specifically tweak my site for it?

The web design world has standards with the goal of being able to code once and access the content in any browser or on any device. Standards arose because in the late 90’s and early 2000 websites were often designed for one browser at a certain resolution. You may remember seeing such terms as “Best viewed in Internet Explorer 5+ with a resolution of 1024×768.” One of the founders of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, even expressed his displeasure of the trend in Technology Review (July 1996):

“Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.”

By designing for a single device, you are essentially jumping back to the dark ages of the web while cutting out a large chunk of the global audience. I agree that mobile web standards leave a lot to be desired but by essentially ignoring the rest of the world (remember iPhones are U.S. only for now) you are only making things worse.

Web technologies like Apple’s mobile Safari and Microsoft’s Deepfish show great promise in fulfilling the web standard utopia. These tools don’t require separate coding for mobile devices which in turn will speed up the adoption of the Internet on-the-go. But it will be several more years before they are in a majority of devices and until then we have to remember that there are other phones out there other than Apple’s precious iPhone.

Mashable.com created a list of 30 Firefox extensions for web developers and designers. To be honest, you really only need two: Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar. These two extensions incorporate nearly every other extension listed, and who wants to manage 28 separate extensions when they could just use two.

If you are still digging through source code by hand, then do yourself a favor and get to know Firebug. You’re job will never be the same again.

Stage5Studio.com

This little site is a nice example of how to do a dark-colored site using bright colors for highlight. I really like the idea of highlighting certain info with a solid background color similar to the rollovers of my links. Best of all, the site is a single page. Straight and to the point.

blog.CircleSixDesign.com

Circle Six uses a killer color combination of orange and blue. I really like the logo which plays with depth by wrapping through the logo and on top of and over the orange nav bar. I’m not a big fan of the fluff at the bottom. The best thing has to be the Twitter status which fades in both size and color as the updates age.

I have previously discussed how the current InVideo ads on YouTube will ultimately fail. What can Google do to turn the most popular video distribution hub on the net into a money maker like text ads? Here are a few of my own ideas.

Related Video Clicks

Create a cost per click model on the recommended videos users face at the end of a clip and right side viewer. Mixing in a few relevant videos from sponsors ensures YouTube has the viewers full attention since they initiated the action rather than having the ad forced upon them. By charging advertisers for every click that comes off of other videos, similar to links from sponsored ads on AdSense, Google can leverage what they know best: connecting people with the content they are looking for. While any advertiser can post their own clip now, Google could offer more specific statistics and demographics such as how long people watched the video, age and gender breakdown of viewers, and even what keywords or actions brought the user to the video. All of this information will help advertisers hone their message for their specific audience.

Video Owner Controls Ads

The overlay ads currently in use by YouTube would be more effective if it wasn’t competing with the content. If publishers who wanted to monetize their content had more control over the ad insertion, than everyone would be a winner. For example, someone who does a weekly video blog might design their show to have a commercial break in the middle. The vlogger would mark where the commercial break is and Youtube could automatically splice in a dynamic ad on playback to fit the desired duration of their inventory. The content of the ad can be determined by a multitude of different information on the page including the title and description of the clip, user comments, tags, and even an audio to text conversion. Google would already be interested in transcribing audio in order to add to their huge search database so they can better index video contnet (Remember they did this with Google Video when it first launched). Different positions could be awarded different impression and click through rates. A quick ad in front, say less than 5 seconds, might be worth the least amount. An ad inserted at the end would be worth slightly more while the most coveted ad space would be in the middle of the clip where the user is the most engaged. Google limits the number of ad units that appear on a web page which could be applied to video based on length.

The YouTube AdSense model could go beyond click throughs and instead focus more on actions. For instance, clicking an ad would take the user to the advertisers web page. If the user clicked on another targeted area of that web page, the video owner who reffered the viewer to the advertiser could earn a little bit more money. These actions could be more than just clicking through to a web page, including subscribing to a channel, watching another video, or even leaving a comment! There are many interactions that occur on YouTube that Google can track and profit on.

Who Says It Has To Be Ads?

Content creators go to YouTube because that is where all the people are. Offering premium services is another route YouTube could take, appealing to the more serious video producers. Such perks to being a paid member might include offering your content in a higher quality, download options, highlighted attention in search results/related videos, or click through ads at the tail end of a video. People are desperate to stand out in the massive video community, so much so they would be willing to pay for special benefits similiar to Pro accounts on Flickr. Imagine a small movie maker is trying to sell his movie by soliciting the trailer on YouTube. At the end of a trailer could be a special interactive insert that would take the viewer to the movie makers store to buy the DVD or subscribe to the RSS feed for further updates. Google would then take a small fee for connecting a publisher with an audience member via an action.

In conclusion, there are many ways YouTube could be transformed from a money bleeder to a money maker. The online video site isn’t a colossal hit because it mimics television, but because it offers something different to the viewer. The InVideo ads are just a copy-cat idea from a current trend currently being exploited on regular TV channels. By focusing more on the unique strengths of online video, (interactivity, more precise feedback, and greater control of the user experience), YouTube could begin roping the advertisers in and paving the way for another high-flying success like AdSense.

This growth coming from the bottom of the C&O canal looks like something out of a horror movie.

Over the weekend I worked on a little micro project to help me during web development work. Have you ever needed a dummy image while laying out a site but opening a graphics app, entering the dimensions, saving it out, and uploading said image to your server seemed like too much work? Yea it was a bother for me to.

That’s why I created DummyImage.com which let’s you spit out a filler image at any size you want. All you have to do is construct a URL like so http://dummyimage.com/300×240. Replace the numbers with whatever you want and my script will spit back a GIF image for you.

I have even packaged up the source code so you can download it, run it on your own server, mash it to bits or whatever else you want. Comments, suggestions, improvements are always welcome and hopefully this thing won’t take down my server from all of the image generating on the back end.

Happy Dummy Imaging!

Apparently the two worst shoe fashions have mated creating one super fugly footwear mashup. Birkenstocks and Platforms? No Crocs and Uggs, which are officially called Mammoth’s though I like to call them Cruggs. The creator of these hideous foot coverings wised up to the idea that no one was going to wear aerated plastic shoes in the middle of winter. Expect to see these on the feet of teeny boppers everywhere in a matter of weeks. Ick!

For more ugly shoes, check out Shoewawa.

Digg is the center of the universe for tech geeks like myself, which should come as no surprise that there is a Digg Test for determining your loyalty to the epicenter of the Internet. DiggTest.com asks you various questions all about Digg and your digging habits. According to the test I am “sickly in love with Digg” ranking in the 93rd percentile compared to other quiz takers. It should be no surprsise since I signed up with the site back in July 2005.

At the end of the test you get a nifty button that you could post on your blog to help promote the test as well as strut your impressive web-nerd knowledge to the rest of the blogosphere. See…

Google announced what everyone expected with the addition of video advertisements to YouTube appropriately called InVideo ads earlier this week. The blogosphere has mixed results about the new feature; publishers are eager to make money off of their video offerings and users want a clean, uninterrupted experience.

Fortunately YouTube has decided against pre or post-roll ads citing evidence that viewers just don’t respond. Instead, as the name implies, the ads pop up in-video and only take up the bottom 20% of the player screen. Clicking on the ad will pause the video and open another mini video player inside the one you are watching. Ad metrics are based on the percentage of the ad you get through and if you should leave within the first 15 seconds that doesn’t count as an impression.

Many think video ads will be another big business for Google but video ads are a far different beast compared to text ads. For one, InVideo ads are only shown on the content of trusted partners for obvious legal reasons. Unlike text ads that require no screening process, video owners must have all of the legal clearances to engage in commercial activity. This bottleneck greatly reduces the potential pool of advertisers unlike the ubiquity and ease of AdSense.

Second, in order to prevent “saturation” or dampening the user experience, video ads will have to be deliberately limited. Text ad units are splattered across the web on millions of blogs taking advantage of the Long Tail of niche content. While this means higher costs per click and per thousand impressions the amount of ad inventory is inherently limited.

Finally, ads that pop up in the middle of video, even if for a brief 10 seconds, are distracting. Text ads are successful because they blend in with the content; obvious to the reader when they need them and not a distraction when they are uninterested. Watching video is a concentrative task. Anything that intrudes on the message, stealing the users attention, takes them away from the story and lowers the experience. Think about how annoying it is at a public theater when someone is talking next to you or a cell phone goes off. TBS has been running ads like YouTube’s in the middle of shows like Everybody Loves Raymond however Youtube has a leg up by giving the viewer the freedom to close the ad display right away. See an InVideo ad in action.

Ads in the middle of YouTube videos may be all the buzz now but I feel those enthusiastic of the new feature will eventually grow tired of it like the rest of us. YouTube user fardousha sums it up best with the following comment…

If ads invade youtube, i will desert it.
What attracted me in the first place is ads free quality time. Long story short, it ain’t a good idea.

There is already a Firefox extension called TubeStop to stop YouTube ads from even showing up, protecting the users patience as they take in all that YouTube has to offer. There is only a certain amount of aggravation one can take in regards to advertising and InVideo ads certainly cross that threshold. This is why the YouTube ad experiment will ultimately be a failure.