Angus Farquhar, Online Video Producer

Newspaper video up 1500%

Well it looks like we’ve got some good news for a change with recent data from video service provider Brightcove showing the number of videos uploaded to newspaper websites grew by a massive 1500% in the last year.

In an article on Mediapost.com, Brightcove claims that after looking at 187 of the US newspaper sites it serves video for, video uploads “grew from an average of 186 per month to 638 in 2008.”

And even better, Brightcove claims that most companies are managing to monetise the content with advertising.

Lets hope that media companies can take full advantage of the opportunity and use this growth to help them through this difficult market rather than shying away from all things new/digital and retreating to ‘core products’ as has often been the case recently.

Posted by Angus Farquhar (09/04/09 - 18:11)

G20 protests - Citizen video from the thick of the action

With the G20 protests taking place just a few miles from where I work and my cycle route home taking me directly past them, I have been lapping up all the media coverage of the events, both official and unofficial. But once again it wasn’t the mainstream media that gave me the best look at what was gong on down there.

Several times on the BBC News Channel I saw the same footage of a guy jeering at the police with blood running down his face. It did look disturbing in it’s own right, but it was twitter that brought me the other side of the story with a Tweet from @CurrentUK.

The article on Current.com didn’t provide all the news but acted as a channel for people to post what they could see was happening.

So amidst all the personal accounts from both sides of the fence comes two amazing peices of video from right in the thick of things that capture exactly what happened before and after the guy was struck by the police (warning: clips contain very strong language and violence) .

Now I will admit that the BBC reporters were in the crowd at the protests and did get some good footage but the best way to get the full picture was to see through the eyes of the protesters themselves.

Published by Angus Farquhar (02/04/09 - 13:49)

Panasonic GH1 - The ideal VJ tool

When all the hubub started last year after Canon launched the 5D MkII and Nikon launched the D90, everyone got really excited about these new tools that were coming available to the video journalist. But it soon became clear that they both had some serious issues when it came to video.

Firstly the 5D is way too expensive for anyone who isn’t a full-time snapper (especially with budgets shrinking as fast as they are at the moment). The Nikon D90 ticks the budget box but it doesn’t have an audio input so the sound wont be up to scratch. On top of all that neither camera can do continuous auto-focus for those moments when you just need to point and shoot.

But it looks like Panasonic have stepped up to provide the ideal solution for the video journalist with the launch of the DMC-GH1. Bargain price - check; audio in - check; continuous focus - check.

Based on last year’s G1, the GH1 is a micro four thirds camera so combines the compact size of a bridge camera with an image sensor nearly as big as a DSLR and a range of detatchable lenses to suit whatever you need. 

It’s compact size makes it almost pocketable and definately something that can be stuffed in a bag and left there until it is needed.

Not happy with putting 1920x1080 HD (AVCHD) video in to the camera, Panasonic has gone one step further and designed a lense specifically for video.

The video lense has a 14-140mm focal length (28-280mm 35mm camera equivalent) which is more than enough for most jobs, but also comes with a motor suitable to continuous focusing and that is quiet enough to prevent any noise being picked up by the on-board mic as is so often the problem with compact/bridge cameras.

I’m hoping to get my hands on the GH1 soon and can’t wait to see if it can deliver the kind of image quality and depth of field that the D90 and 5D can.

If it lives up to expectations this really will be the camera that every journalist - not just video journalist - on a modern news team should be provided with.

Posted by Angus Farquhar (11/03/09 - 20:33)

Geneva Motor Show - The cars that really matter

Despite only having 36 hours in Geneva, myself (video producer) and two journalists from Which? managed to pump out an exhausting 16 videos and 26 pages of copy on all the latest cars to come out of the troubled motor industry that normal people buy - none of those aspirational six figure cars here.

Thanks to impressive press facilities we managed to publish 8 videos directly from the show with another 8 following when we got home, which just shows what you can achieve with some good planning, a journalist who can think on his feet and some decent portable kit (HP laptop, Premiere CS4 and Sony EX1).

I’ve only been doing this a few years and always want to improve so would love to hear any comments anyone has, good or bad.

Posted by Angus Farquhar (07/03/09 - 11:36)

"They gave the advertising away for free"

Yesterday I tried to articulate how I feel about the demise of newspaper websites in a comment on my post about the closure of the Rocky Mountain News, but today Paul Robinson over at Vagueware has posted something that is much more eloquent than I could ever have put it.

Paul expresses exactly my feelings on how newspapers have failed to make money from the scarey new online world - in fact they have spent years undermining their ability to make money out of their websites by jealously trying to protect their dying print publications and failing to think creatively.

“Phone any regional newspaper title in the country and speak to their ad sales team. The conversation will result in them offering you a rate card for the print edition. Sound sceptical about the costs and benefits. They will offer space online for free.”

I’ve seen that happen so many times it is scary - despite the online team (ghetto’d as we were) pleading them not to.

“In essence to secure the advertising for the print edition, they have in the past completely undermined the business they need to survive in the future. They have told every one of their advertisers that online adverts are not worth paying for.”

And now these businesses think that after years of getting consumers accustomed to free content and advertisers thinking that there is no value to online advertising (despite the fact that an online eyeball is demonstrably more valuable than a print one) that they can now start asking consumer to pay for their content!

“News websites will slowly shut down and become adverts for the print and subscription-only content via the new technologies sure to become dominant in coming years. Except of course, the audience won’t care. They won’t sign up. Why would they if even a few websites remain free and open for business?”

Exactly. I’m a very dedicated reader of the Guardian and it’s website, but there is almost zero chance that I would sign up to a subscription website model unless they come up with some new very compelling model.

Paul does offer some potential solutions to the whole that newspapers have dug themselves in to, but I have to say I’m sceptical about their ability to listen. There are too many people with vested interests protecting the current model even if, ultimately, it means the demise of their livelihood.

Without a wholesale restructuring of everything from business models to bonus structures and hiring policies many companies will simply stick to protecting a smaller and smaller ‘core’ business instead of innovating and embracing fully this new age we find ourselves in.

Final Edition - Rocky Mountain News closes its doors

Not much I need to say about this other than it is a very nicely produced video, such a shame it is being produced by a group of people that are no longer able to work together to serve up such high quality content.

Lets hope the obvious talent here gets snapped up quickly and not wasted.

(Courtesy Multimedia Shooter, picture by ladydog22)

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

After 149 years and 311 days, the Rocky Mountain News published its final edition on February 27, 2009.

Posted by Angus Farquhar (27/02/09 - 23:33)

It’s so sad to see the continued shrinking use of video in online newsrooms around the world when we have only just started to see the full potential of all the VJ talent that is out there.

Let’s hope that Colin Mulvany is right when he says “I believe the need for innovative people and ideas will flow once again.  If not, I’m sure what ever rises from the ashes will need a visual journalist who can do it all.

Posted by Angus Farquhar (27/01/09 - 18:44)

Pro HD camcorder in miniature - JVC GY-HM100

JVC chose the FCPUG Supermeet in San Francisco last week to make a pretty significant announcement - the launch of the tiny JVC GY-HM100 camcorder.

But it’s not just the fact that it is small that really makes it stand out from the crowd, it’s the fact that it shoots full 1920x1080p HD at 35Mbps in to a Quicktime file and records it straight to two SDHC cards while maintaining full manual controls (many of them physical).

What that means in practice is you can shoot on really cheap media, then just pop it out, slot it in to you computer and begin editing. No capturing and no format conversion.

Having just just published 11 videos from the press room of the CES show in Las Vegas with a Sony EX1, I can attest to the benefits of a file-based workflow, but my aching arms would dearly have loved to have been carrying the 3lb HM100 rather than the 6lb (plus wide angle lens) EX1.

Like the EX1 the HM100 also shoots in XDCAM EX but instead of recording on rediculously expensive SxS cards (32GB = £750), you can use a bog standard SDHC card (32GB = £70), which are coming down in price every day.

Annoyingly I just bought a Sony A1E as my second camera. If only JVC had been a bit quicker I could have had a totally tapeless workflow.

MacVideo were in San Francisco and posted a good video of the launch of the HM100 that shows just how small it is and how easily it imports in to Final Cut.

Posted by Angus Farquhar (12/11/09 19:13)

Print publishers shouldn't back off from online video

I’ve just managed to catch up on my blog reading after the Christmas downtime and one post stood out for me from Colin Mulvany, multimedia producer at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, on his Mastering Multimedia blog.

Chris gives a neat roundup of how Newspaper multimedia progressed on 2008, but one thing stood out for me that just sums up how much print publishers still have to grasp about the importance of video.

“In these challenging economic times, many newspapers have backtracked into full retrench mode as they prepare to make their final stand to save the traditional print product from extinction. This last year, online and photo departments got hit harder than expected. I lost seven of the 12 people I trained to shoot video. Other papers disbanded entire photo departments.”

The last few weeks have seen a plethora of new statistics that show the continued rise in popularity of online video with consumers around the world and yet publishers are mad enough to cut resources in the only area they have that is growing!

This week I’m lucky enough to be at CES shooting video for which.co.uk and the rise of online video was highlighted to me at the show in two seperate ways.

Firstly, when I get up in the morning to get ready for a day of press conferences I want to check what everyone else is saying about the show (Hey, I’m a geek, I can’t get enough) but there is now way I’m sitting down to read text. So I click on the video links and leave it playing while I faff around getting ready in my Medevil themed hotel room. Now I know I’m not alone in doing this.

The second thing that really brought it home was just how many video cameras there are floating around in the hands of journalists and bloggers. (Photo courtesy Steve Garfield)

I’m talking about everything from little Flip flash devices to full broadcast cameras and I’d say at least 90 percent of them were recording for the web.

If print publishers really think this is a time that they can afford to scale back in online video to focus on the survival of their ‘core’ print business then this really will be their death knell. If they don’t do video and leverage their existing strong brands to make it a success then there are a hundred blogs in the wings just waiting to seize the opportunity and put the final nail in their coffin.

Posted by Angus Farquhar (08/01/09 17:04 Vegas time)

Print publishers can do online if they try

After all the doom and gloom in the recent weeks about the imminent demise of the print publishing industry and the likely disappearance of many traditional publishing companies, I thought it would be nice to highlight some people that are making the transition to digital work really well.

Gazettelive.co.uk was brought to my attention by friend and social media star Daniel Thornton (via PaidContent) because they have managed to monetize ultra-local video by using a sponsor-filled pop-up screen  behind their sports reporters.

Now this in itself is worth praising, but looking around the site you can see that they have properly embraced the way the web works rather than the hesitant approach we often see.

• They have video and image galleries to accompany their written articles in both incidental form and produced pieces
• They promote videos about the local area that aren’t necessarily produced by them
• They encourage users to send them images by Flickr and get involved in the stories
• They get local community groups and individuals to blog on their area of expertise
• They use polls, social bookmarking, UGC and a whole host of other tools

Now the site still doesn’t go as far as it should to generate user involvement (not enough calls to action on stories and hidden UGC articles to name a couple of things) but compared to the majority of print publisher’s sites, this really is a good example of what can be done with a little effort and a the will to try.

Posted by Angus Farquhar (17/12/08 11:33)