Time to Launch your Own TV Channel

May 15

Posted by admin in Video Stuff

Online video has truly proven to be the killer app of the Internet. YouTube is nothing short of phenomenal, the numbers are mind blowing. From their own fact sheet, “People are watching hundreds of millions of videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.”  There are now at least 30 different websites where anyone can post a video and share it with the world at no cost. If you are promoting a product or business and haven’t put a video online; it’s something you should flag as a priority project and do it now. The question I’m asking now, however, is should you launch your own TV Channel on the Internet? Should you, and can you do live video?

First, consider the benefits of live programming.

  1. Audience participation with the presenter(s) and each other via chat. The content becomes dynamic and the audience becomes empowered.
  2. Scheduled events call your audience to action rather than leaving them to procrastinate watching your valuable content.
  3. Live events, in the context of doing them on a regular basis in a TV Channel like format allows you to build a following over time.
  4. Having a following not only motivates you to produce, it also empowers you. As you begin to tell your story, you will find that the ideas for content; and the sequels will begin to flow naturally as your production takes on its own life.

I spent this week looking at various technologies available for live webcasting and was especially curious about some of the free platforms that available. I found three that are well known and offer free access for the webcaster and the audience alike, covering their expenses with a paid advertising model. Justin.tv, Ustream.tv, and Mogulus. (Update: I should also add Stickam to the list.) Rather than keep you in suspense about who has the best offering for the webcaster; I’ll cut right to the chase and tell you it is Mogulus. (I refer to Mogulus throughout this post but today on 5/19/2009 they changed their name to livestream.com.)

Live webcasting is a lot more simple that it sounds. The minimum requirements are as follows:

  1. A camera, preferably with firewire, which simplifies the process and increases the quality giving your a pure digital video/audio stream directly to your computer. On the low end, a simple web cam will work
  2. a PC or Mac, again, preferalby with firewire (which can be added to a laptop or PC with an expansion card) or some other type of USB or PCI input for capturing a video feed.
  3. Software for encoding your video into either Flash H.264 format or Windows Media or Silverlight  (the only two real contenders in my opinion).
  4. A video server or CDN (content delivery network) that will take your single incoming stream and distribute it to your audience. Again, Windows Media and Flash video are the contenders. I have been using EdgeCast CDN, which supports both Windows Media and Flash and has worked very for my needs. The free platforms that are available all utilize Flash and on the server side could use Wowza Media Server, a less-expensive, robust alternative to Adobe FMS (Flash Media Server). There is an open source Flash Server that is also available called Red5, which is not as advanced as Adobe or Wowza.  (Confirmed by an employee of Wowza that Justin.tv uses Wowza. Adobe features UStream on their site as a customer.)

Mogulus covers the last two requirements and provides chat room capability for audience interaction. The first step to get Mogulus running is to create an account and name your channel, which creates an address on the mogulus.com site for your channel and only take about 3 minutes to do the basic setup. You can spend another 15 minutes filling in all the details and uploading your branding images. Their base-level Flash encoder software is integrated directly into their web-based producer, which accesses your capture hardware. Basically, this means that in a few simple clicks you are up and streaming on your own channel. From the Mogulus producer platform you can upload on demand clips, and other producers can also log in from any location on the planet and attach their cameras’, as well. This is the power-feature of Mogulus: that you can have a multi-camera, multi-location shoot, with integrated on demand video all controlled by you through the website in real time. The Mogulus producer also allows you to inject text overlays, and tickers on top of your video, which you can turn on/off and update in real time.

The web-based capture encoder is basic but one of the great things about Mogulus is that they allow you to use your own Flash encoder software. Adobe offers  Flash Media Live Encoder as a free download; which is still no frills but it gives you access to the On2 video codec, which is considered the best. You could also purchase Wirecast, by Telestream for around $449 (add HDV decoding for an additional $99). For the price, Wirecast offers a cutting edge encoding suite with lots of features found in hardware/software solutions that costs thousands: multi-camera switching (You’ll need multiple inputs on your computer, one for each camera), graphic overlays, text overlays, chroma-key (Blue/Green screen), screencasting, picture-in-a-picture and this software also utilizes the best codecs available. Wirecast can also stream to Windows Media server and the latest edition is integrated to Mogulus, making it extremely easy to configure since all you have to do is input your username/password and channel name.

Mogulus has juiced up their offering, however, by giving Mogulus channel producers a free encoder sofware solution which can be downloaded and installed to a PC called, Procaster. Procaster’s sweet spot is in being able to do screencasting along with video. The producer can switch between the computer screen and the camera, show both at the same time in either a 2D overlay mode or in a slick side by side 3D mode, which looks really nice. With the screencaster you can zoom in and pan around the screen. There is a third mode built in for gamecasting, which allows the producer to stream their gameplay in real time. I tuned into a Mogulus live webcast the other day and noticed that the producer was using Procaster and was showing a video feed in the screencast 3D split mode of a guest on their show; the guest could have been coming into the encoder PC via Skype or any video chat software. With the screencast flexibility there are a host of creative possibilities.

The last important feature of Mogulus to discuss is that they offer a couple of paid plans for the pros starting at $350. These plans up the amount of disc space and available bandwidth and come with a 99.5% uptime service level agreement. Paid channels also eliminate advertising and even allow the producer to white label the player; which can be embedded within the producer’s own website, hiding Mogulus as the platform provider all together. (Update: I found that UStream.tv also offers a paid service called Watershed. I haven’t given it a full evaluation but they offer a 99.9% SLA with very competitive pricing, including a pay-as-you go model.)

There’s never been a better time to launch your own TV Channel. The platform is free and it’s evolved into an amazing offering for the producer and the viewer. Blogging is a fantastic way to deliver your message, connect with your audience and showcast your expertise but audio and video create lasting memories for the viewer that will leave a deeper impression on them.

Here are a few last tips:

  1. Use Twitter as your announcement tool. You may even want to get a Twitter account dedicated to your show. As you broadcast, continually remind users to join your Twitter feed and then keep your viewers updated as to when your next episode, upcoming plans, calls for content, etc. Mogulus integrated a Twitter widget right into the channels.
  2. Before you launch your channel, plan out your first 4 or more shows. You first shows can be short, 10 – 15 minutes isn’t a bad number. Once you make it through the first 2 shows, I’m betting that the subsequent content will flow naturally.
  3. Set up a WordPress Blog and embed your episodes into the blog so that your viewers can comment on them.

I have created a channel at  www.mogulus.com/ecropolis. The first episode that I have planned is to discuss SEO and what it really means; you will walk away knowing how to do a high-level evaluation on your own website and you’ll have some questions that you can ask your web guru to insure your website is getting the proper treatment. So, join our Twitter @ecropolis

I am happy to respond to questions and comments and will also note that Ecropolis can facilitate the launching of am Internet TV Channel online at any level.

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Gazelles Webcast Series: A case study for webcasting executive education

Apr 25

Posted by admin in Video Stuff

I just returned from the Gazelles/Fortune Small Business Sales and Marketing Summit, where I was  providing webcasting services for participants who were not able to physically attend. Gazelles is an executive education and coaching firm located in Ashburn, Virgina just around the corner from us. Gazelles (and the participating speakers) made an insightful decision in offering parts of this great conference via streaming video… with some risk. The risk, of course, is that by offering up the most popular speakers as a webcast for a couple hundred bucks, physical attendance would decline, which would cost thousands. Even in the face of a troubled economy, attendance was close to what it’s been in past years. Attendees got the benefit of interacting with their teams and other attendees and also received a solid 14 hours of good education. Also, it’s worth mentioning that the conference was in New Orleans at the Canal street Marriott; smack between the water, the French Quarter, and the Garden district. It’s a great city to visit if you like culture, food, and history. Webcast attendees only got about 3.5 hours of great education, but at a much lower price and in the comfort and quiet of their own offices.

Gazelles also cleverly offset the risk of loosing attendees by using the webcast to bring in more physical attendees. How? They offered to companies that brought at least three execs to the conference unlimited access to the webcast and the post-webcast archive. For companies this meant that for the cost of sending three executives to the conference; about 3K, the entire company could share in some of the meatiest parts of the conference. They can also, themselves, re-watch the webcast and reference parts of it for others members of the team to pay close attention to.

Another key to the successful formula of the Gazelles webcasts is that individual webcasts are also part of an overall series of three webcasts with a pricing structure that benefits companies who purchase the entire series; which by doing so gives them unlimited access to the archive by anyone in the company that wants to or who they may compel to participate… purchasing the series is a win, win, win. We’ve had numerous reports of companies filling conference rooms and watching together. In fact, one client, The Scooter Store filled their corporate auditorium with most of their 200 employees to watch Pat Lencioni talk about teaming.

Webcasts can easily go global. Gazelles has a strong overseas clientele which can be more difficult to reach. To date, we’ve seen participation on Gazelles’ webcasts with users in Australia, Dubai, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Poland and other points all throughout Europe. Especially for companies like McDermott, Will and Emory who has offices in several different countries, having the same educational opportunities is something that can bring their dispersed teams closer. For Gazelles it’s indispensable that they are able to offer their overseas clients this education experience. Webcasts give Gazelles a reason and a means to stay connected with companies in different parts of the world and lets those leaders know that they are important and included.

It can’t be discounted that Gazelles has access to some of the most prominent business thought leaders of our time. We’ve had the remarkable experience of webcasting Pat Lencioni, Seth Godin, Guy Parsons, Chet Holmes and David Meerman Scott. We’re looking forward to webcasting Dr. Victoria Medvec next month and Keith Ferrazzi in May. It’s really incredible that for less than $1000 companies are able to get 5-6 hours of quality education for their entire team.

For Gazelles, which earns a profit from providing quality education to the executive teams of fast growth companies, the model is working. Speakers who are providing the education are also doing well by teaming with Gazelles and this is very important for the model to work. Just like any professional group, they network and talk to each other. If one of them reports that it wasn’t profitable being on the webcast, then others will not be interested.  The Gazelles speakers have been able to deliver their information to an interested without leaving their home or office and still retain a handsome fee. We webcasted from Seth Godin’s living room; at one point he got up to let his dog out while he was still talking; reality TV meets executive education.

Ecropolis plays an important part in the equation also. We provide the on-site technology and services to film the speaker and stream him or her live to the audience over a global CDN. PowerPoint slide presentation is almost always an important part of Gazelles’ speaker’s presentations and we’ve developed our own simple technology for advancing the slides live as the speaker is presenting in a side-by-side format. Our platform/interface also provides moderated chat, which has even been used for the audience to send questions to the speaker. Post-event: within 10 hours we’re able to post an edited, fully-functional archive in time for users on the other side of the world to view. For on-demand versions, we’re also able to translate the synchronized slide/video presentation into the most popular video streaming formats: Windows Media and Flash. Ecropolis also provides all of the user registration service from the gazelles.tv website.

Webcasting provides an amazing opportunity for all types of organizations even if the model isn’t one of direct returns like the Gazelles pay-per-view model. Product and service evangelizing is an example where profits may be indirect. Fund-raising and membership drives for non-profits and associations is another example. It takes some creative thought to determine how a webcast might fit with your organization and maybe even some experimentation. It is a new world for sure. Many companies sailing ahead and taking advantage of the new opportunities available for them to efficiently and effectively communicate their messages to their customers and potential customers alike.

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