ViKi.com, Singapore based startup, is making international TV and movies more accessible to world-wide audiences via crowd-sourced sub-titling - in approximately 160 languages. Yes, even Klingon.

ViKi acquires the rights to programs, uploads them to viki.com and then leverages the power of its translator community. These willing translators provide real-time subtitling of world TV and movies–from Japanese Anime to Spanish Novelas to Korean dramas to Egyptian movies to the latest from Bollywood as well as TV series from Hong Kong, Venezuela, Russia, Korea and the UK.

According to TechCrunch.com, ViKi is attracting around 8.5 million unique visitors with approximately 36 million visits per month, representing a four-fold increase over the past year.

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You know, we often talk intergenerationally about what technologies did and didn’t exist “in my day.” It’s kind of the modern parenting version of walking to school “uphill, in the snow, both ways… BAREFOOT.” We tell the children around us how lucky they are that they have the miraculous digital toys that are widely available today, and joke with other adults about raising kids who never had a plug-in telephone in their house.

But rarely do we think about this topic from the child’s perspective. Here, a toddler shows us what happens when high-tech babies and old media collide…

Last week, Netflix announced new pricing structure to split online streaming and DVD delivery into separate plans. So instead of paying a minimum $10 per month for both, users will pay at least $8 per plan, for a total of $16 to keep both plans. Netflix’s 60% price increase has sent shock waves through its user community. To date, there are over 5000 comments on Netflix’s official blog, over 70000 comments (including multiple comments from same users) on its Facebook page, with plenty of complaints going around.

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The psychsters over at Psychster Inc. have done something that media creators have been clamoring for ever since the collapse of the first internet bubble a decade ago.  They released a study looking at how engaged web users become with video content.  One of the continual challenges for web producers is how to effectively evaluate the cost benefit ratio of developing and distributing rich multimedia content online.  Consumers have more video choices now than they have ever had before, but video producers, directors, editors and writers are being squeezed by the emegence of “content farms” that produce very low cost (and sometimes low quality) video content for web sites.

There is a growing debate among media pundits and economists alike about the inflated valuations of tech companies like Groupon and Facebook.  These voices have raised the specter of a new and potentially bigger tech bubble developing.  Facebook, Google’s YouTube and other Web 2.0 giants have all pioneered business models based on user generated content—not professionally produced content.  Psychster’s recently posted study looks at the effectiveness of online video content in relation to production values.  In short, the study asks the question:  do web users engage with professionally produced video content more than they do with cheaper content?  Why is this important?  Lets back up a little and look at how video on the web has evolved over the last decade. Read more…

It’s funny how pleased I am that I face yet another high-profile opportunity to have people watch the content that I create for free.  Snagfilms.com is currently featuring Independent America: Rising from Ruins on its homepage, and will distribute it through a number of other channels, including Hulu and hopefully Netflix at some point (my first film “The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop” is already on Hulu, and is heading for iTunes).  Sure, you can still push for more money via a broadcast TV license, but at least as an indie filmmaker, those are getting harder to find, and they’re paying less.  So we content ourselves with the “digital pennies” as the “analog dollars” slip away, with the sheer hope that online, multiple-channel exposure leads to benefits in other ways (i.e. keep your day job, build your own personal brand).

The world of content — especially professional content — continues to shift beneath our feet.  Three years ago, I used my first class as a digital media professor at the University of Washington to understand just what I had produced with that first “amateur” film of mine (I had been a professional journalist, but I had never filmed my own feature-length documentary before).  The title of the class?  “Selling the Message: The Business of User-Generated Content.”  The “business” then, was under threat from pseudo-amateurs like me, with the explosion of digital media capture tools (aka, cheap cameras) and distribution platforms (aka, YouTube).  The established, institutional studio system seemed to be under attack as this proliferation in new “voices” transformed media into yet another commodity.

But interestingly, despite this commoditization, apparent amateurization, and the uncertainty of the economy, somehow the increased availability of media online has also produced more demand for “professional” content.  Witness Steve Jobs’ remarks this week as as he introduced Apple TV: Read more…

Like blogging, vlogging (video blogging) is a way to share your insights on a subject with an online audience. However, vlogging goes beyond the text of a blog post, transforming your content into an audio-visual broadcast. If you’re interested in vlogging, but don’t know how to start, here are some tips:

The first thing you’ll need is the right equipment, and the good news is you don’t need much, just a camcorder or a web camera and a good microphone. Also, for a vlog that has a more polished look, you’ll want to learn how to use video-editing software. This will enable you to add music, subtitles, etc. to your vlog. There are numerous online programs like Wax or Zwei-Stein Video Editor that you can download for free. Also, Apple iMovie and Windows Movie Maker are both easy to use and come pre-installed on Macs and PCs.

Once you’ve assembled your equipment, I recommend experimenting. Test the sound quality of your microphone; make sure there is sufficient lighting where you’re recording your vlog and figure out how you want to look on camera. Remember that vlogging is a form of communication, so you want to not only be visible (no low lighting), but also intelligible. Most vlog “episodes” should be one to three minutes, keeping the amount of bandwidth needed to host them to a minimum. Therefore it’s a good idea to rehearse your content. At the very least, I recommend preparing a script or some type of plan before each video so that you can deliver concise, focused content. Finally, don’t be afraid to have fun with your vlog. Depending on your audience, you’ll want to be more than just informative; you’ll also want to be candid and entertaining. Like blogging, it’s important to pick subjects you love and can explore in a series of posts. One episode doth not a vlog make.

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Throughout this quarter, Flip the Media will be featuring some of the best video projects from the winter Multimedia Storytelling classes.

“Henry: Portrait of a serial muralist” by Ross Reynolds

The subject of the video was Ryan Henry Ward, an artist known for his murals found on automobiles, buildings, retaining walls, coffee houses and schools in Seattle. He was living in his car when he decided to make murals, first by finding blank walls and asking if he could paint something there. Today private collectors commission his work, and he can afford the rent to live in a shared house. He recently painted the wall of Value Village in North Seattle.

The goal of the video was to convey the vivid whimsy of his work while telling the story of his artistic life.

I shot the video with a Panasonic Lumix camera, recorded the audio on a Marantz digital recorder and edited it in Final Cut Express.

One thing I think I learned was what to leave out. I considered narration, music and interviews with other people, but in the end opted for the simpler elements of the murals and Ryan telling his story.

Seattle-based Pet Holdings, Inc., CEO Ben Huh (purveyor of beloved LOLcats and many other hilarious image macros) contracted with me to produce his Cheezburger Network’s 3rd Anniversary Video, an effort to celebrate the 3-year anniversary of icanhascheezburger.com and the 1 billionth collective view of the entire network’s user-generated video content.

As a new media producer and recent graduate of the UW MCDM program, I had been looking for Web video work and a means of applying the skills I had been developing as a graduate student.  About a month ago, Kathy Gill, one of the MCDM’s most popular professors (and exceptionally well established in the Seattle social media sphere, I might add) connected me with Huh via Twitter.  Huh has been in the process of hiring for various positions within his expanding Network and had been advertising such through his tweets.  However, at the time, the need for a video to celebrate Cheezburger’s birthday and billion video views had not completely arisen.  Only recently had the Cheezburger Network noted that they were approaching 1 billion video views, as the majority of their blogs’ entries have focused mainly on funny still images and memes.  Huh came up with the idea to produce the anniversary video (as well as to expand their video presence) in part based on conversations with me, and, I am certain, simply by looking at his sites’ video numbers.  As a fan of LOLcats, FAILs, and all things meme culture, I seemed like a really good fit for the project, and late one evening just before Christmas, we commenced work. Read more…