Michael Seibel: The Problem With Live Web Video And How To Set It Free | Hacker News Reader

Michael Seibel: The Problem With Live Web Video And How To Set It Free

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21 pointsevansolomon11 comments

This is not the real problem. The bigger issue is that youtube videos are EDITED. People put hours into editing a single clip to make it palatable. Even if you DO catch a live stream the signal/noise is usually unbearable. No amount of technology will fix this.

For personal video sharing flip/iphone is perfectly fine. I have no interest in watching video of my baby nephew live-- let mom pick the best videos and I'll watch them when I have time.

From there you jump to commercially produced live content. I'm still amazed I can't stream live broadcast TV, but that's only a matter of time.

The real question: is there a middle ground? Will there be semi-professional producers who can create compelling live content that people actually want to watch? I'm very skeptical.

Mass media shows us images of people living fantasy lives. But it's completely artificial. The truth is that our lives feel very boring because we consume so much sexed-up mass media. Question: how many celebrities do you see life streaming? None. Why? Because they don't want to ruin the artificial mystique they have created.

Consider "The Real World" -- the only way they get people to watch is by editing in into something very UNREAL. What is troubling is how many people then feel compelled to create artificial drama in their life just to feel like their life has meaning. But that's neither here not there.

You could have asked the same question about prerecorded video several years ago, and come to the same conclusions. You had professionally produced and edited shows, and you had home movies; there wasn't much in between.

There are definitely amateur/semi-pro live video producers that are producing content that people want to watch. There are several of our broadcasters that regularly have 150+ viewers; I assume that they're doing something that people actually like.

I've been doing live video for over a decade and getting viewers never was the problem.

The biggest stumbling block for a long time was simply that you needed a piece of hardware, initially those were video capture cards hooked up to regular cameras.

Connectix with their 'quickcam' changed the world, and after being bought by Logitech they plastered the world with cheap cameras, USB made it fast and work more or less out of the box (initially we were busy more with supporting out users to get their hardware to work than anything else).

Integrated webcams were the next step, and nowadays it is probably harder to find a laptop without one than with, which leads to all kinds of funny issues for companies that have a 'no webcams' policy on their premises.

Mobile, the final frontier of live video is mostly hindered by the telcos and the phone manufacturers, using video formats that require real time transcoding before you can send them to a browser with a customized stream matching the speed of the consumer.

He mentions the importance of the post-live experience, as well as, of course, the actual live broadcast, but he fails to mention whatsoever the importance of the pre-live experience. The build-up, the marketing, the getting-the-message-out that a live show or event will be happening.

It's silly to think one can just flip on their camera and expect users to suddenly start appearing. It would be plain common sense to let people know beforehand that your show or event will be happening. Duh?

One other thing that makes a live cast successful is a regularly broadcast format such as Mixergy, where users know when to expect the next live broadcast, whether it is daily, weekly, or monthly, or where one can check a schedule of upcoming events and add it to their calendar.

Michael makes the excellent point that a truly live, synchronous experience is very hard to do on the web. It would be valuable to study how people "sync up" in the real-world so they can all share the same experience at the same time.

Honestly the getting viewers issue seems to be fairly straightforward and was solved by traditional broadcast a long time ago. When they wanted people to tune into a live broadcast they _scheduled it at a particular time_ then marketed this time.

That still works on the web, but most people either don't think that far ahead or don't have an effective way to advertise their timeslot.

Can't do much about the first (an alert system? but even then your content would have to be good enough to get people to stop what they're doing and watch your content)

As to the second, that could be a great problem for Justin TV to solve ;-)

Do you think that's really the right solution for content creators that aren't TV studios? You could say that the static video distribution model was solved a long time ago too--release the video as a real time experience (a movie), choose an arbitrary waiting period and advertise a lot, then release the video (VHS, DVD). Of course, that's not at all the way anyone on YouTube distributes their video, so the old "solved" model doesn't always work best.

To be clear, I completely agree that TV studios figured out how to get people to watch live content very well. But I disagree that that's applicable to potentially millions of simultaneous individual broadcasters.

I absolutely believe that this is the right solution for content creators that aren't TV Studios - in fact its easier for them, live broadcast is painful and ugly for studios.

I'm not sure why its not applicable, please explain. In fact I think Justin.tv's role could/should be one of facilitating this process? Why not a Justin.tv Guide?

The biggest downside of live video content on the web (and this can't be resolved) is that one thing the web brings is a global reach, and you're not going to be able to adequately serve a global audience with live video.

I agree that live broad/podcasts need a very strict schedule, but I don't think that they're not doing it because they haven't thought of it.

I think the problem is either they're not serious enough about their content or that unscripted, live shows are hard to lock down to a single length every week.

When online shows are scripted, filmed, and edited down to exactly 22 minutes, then scheduling will get much better.

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