People who watch me dance today sometimes assume I've been dancing for many years. I made this video so you could see the awkward body that started just one year ago.
Here's my secret: I practiced everywhere. At bus stops. In line at the grocery store. At work — Using the mouse with my right hand and practicing drills with my left hand. You don't have to train hardcore for years to become a dancer. But you must be willing to practice and you better be hungry.
This isn't a story about dancing, though. It's about having a dream and not knowing how to get there — but starting anyway. With fantastic video which will surely go viral.]]>
At the time, the site served up porn streaming requests with the Real Time Messaging protocol (RTMP). More specifically, it used a Flash Media Server (FMS) solution, built by Adobe, to provide users with live streams. The basic process was as follows:
The user requests access to some live stream
The server replies with an RTMP session playing the desired footage
For a couple reasons, FMS wasn’t a good choice for us, starting with its costs, which included the purchasing of both:
Windows licenses for every machine on which we ran FMS.
~$4k FMS-specific licenses, of which we had to purchase several hundred (and more every day) due to our scale.
All of these fees began to rack up. And costs aside, FMS was a lacking product, especially in its functionality (more on this in a bit). So I decided to scrap FMS and write my own RTMP parser from scratch.
In the end, I managed to make our service roughly 20x more efficient. Actually a really interesting writeup of a challenging problem about multiple video stream demands.]]>
The new codec will considerably ease the burden on global networks where, by some estimates, video accounts for more than half of bandwidth use. The new standard, known informally as ‘High Efficiency Video Coding’ (HEVC) will need only half the bit rate of its predecessor, ITU-T H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10 ‘Advanced Video Coding’ (AVC), which currently accounts for over 80 per cent of all web video. HEVC will unleash a new phase of innovation in video production spanning the whole ICT spectrum, from mobile devices through to Ultra-High Definition TV.
ITU-T’s Study Group 16 has agreed first-stage approval (consent) of the much-anticipated standard known formally as Recommendation ITU-T H.265 or ISO/IEC 23008-2. It is the product of collaboration between the ITU Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). Great news. Though you feel sure there will be court battles over it at some point in the future. (Thanks @Clarkeviper for the link.)]]>
Unlike lightning, sometimes Vines strike twice. Please be patient if you see a Vine more than once. If it seems to freeze, refresh the page. Suddenly, it's all about video (short-form only). Didn't Flickr try this years ago?]]>
Google has tried to spur adoption of VP8 instead, which it's released for royalty-free use. One major area: online video built into Web pages through the HTML5 standard.
However, VP8 hasn't dented H.264's dominance, and VP8 allies failed in an attempt to specify VP8 as the way to handle online video. As a result, HTML5 video can be invoked in a standard way, but Web developers can't easily be assured that a browser can properly decode the video in question. Google, through Motorola Mobility, is also a member of the H.264 patent pool group. If MPEG-LA decided to sue over VP8 or VP9 infringing, Google would be suing itself.]]>
I’m sure it drives clicks, but in doing so, they’re dramatically missing the point on what this company is doing, why it’s growing so quickly, and why several top investors are falling all over themselves to get an early piece of the LA-based company.
This kind of thing is common with social companies. They are almost always seen as something frivolous at the outset. Facebook was long considered merely a college bulletin board that adults couldn’t imagine joining and surely college kids would mature out of using. YouTube was just a place for videos of your cat. Instagram was just mobile photos that a gimmicky technology could made look old. Twitter was nothing more than telling the world what you had for lunch. They're still harping on that for the last two. And missing the point. Snapchat is intriguing.]]>
"'The perception here is that Apple is more concerned with selling iPads and iPhones than they are with the people who have stuck with them since the 90's, the professional editors and VFX people,' said Jude Mull, who works at a post-production facility in Hollywood that processes and digitizes some of your favorite TV shows."Final Cut Pro X is looking for professionals like iMovie 8 did for amateurs - a refit too far. Professionals have alternatives, however - such as Avid.]]>