Archive for December 26th, 2007

You can publish, host and distribute video on the web for free at many sites. Even long-format videos. But take away the picture and try to publish just the audio (eg, as a podcast) and you’ll have a much more difficult time finding free hosting. Not that it’s not out there (eg, at Podango, to whom I’m an advisor), but it’s nowhere nearly as common. And whereas there are many fee-based publishing options for audio-only podcasters, almost no one charges to host videos any more except at the high end. Why? I imagine it’s because of (a) the continued buzz surrounding the purchase of YouTube by Google, (b) the current use of player-based branding by the video hosting companies, and (c) long-term potential for advertising in videos.

Note that if you don’t even have audio and just want to host a simple web site, it’s even more likely that you’ll pay.

(Study the picture first, before reading further.) I was watching Frontline World on PBS tonight and they re-ran a story from May of last year on the Chopin piano competition in Poland. What absolutely drove me crazy was that someone — perhaps the editor — decided that it was okay and for some reason desirable to flip many of the shots horizontally. That might be okay under normal circumstances, but it’s very disconcerting to watch pianists play the low notes on the right and the high notes on the left. And then there are all those shots with pianos that open on the wrong side. As far as I can tell, there’s absolutely no reason why anyone would do this, but someone did. My (musician) son noticed it first in a very subtle shot, but I think I would have noticed eventually as it was extraordinarily blatant. Not just in one shot, but in many throughout the story. This photo is actually from the Frontline World web site. Notice which side the stick is on? (No, it’s not a left-handed piano!) You can watch the video for yourself.