Stage6 Goes Dark, and Google Big Oversight

Feb 29th was a sad day for video piraters and the mass viewers of Stage6's high quality video format, when the service went dark after a 6 month effort to sell the one of a kind video sharing site. What made Stage6 so good? It was the DIVX format and its embeddable player.

Back in the days of Kazza and other peer-to-peer file sharing networks, DIVX was crowned king of video for making it possible to fit a feature length movie on a single CD. The company's main business model exploded world wide, as it found an army of eager hardware manufactures to license the format for their devices. Today divx is found everywhere from DVD players to handheld devices and mobile phones, which is why Google missed the boat not acquiring the service and its technology.

For all the great aspects of YouTube, the video player’s quality is far below that of Stage6. Even when DIVX is used to upload content to YouTube, the encoding to flash leaves a lot to be desired.

Without Stage6 will divx remain the best video compression format available? Will other pick up the format for new high end video sharing sites? Or will the format got he way of Bata? One this is for sure, iTunes and their iTV quicktime formats are the big winners here.

The following is the letter set to Stage6 publishers on Feb25th:

I'm Tom (aka Spinner), a Stage6 user and an employee of DivX, Inc., the company behind the service. I'm writing this message today to inform you that we plan to shut down Stage6 on February 28, 2008. Upload functionality has already been turned off, and you'll be able to view and download videos until Thursday.

I know this news will come as a shock and disappointment to many Stage6 users, and I'd like to take a few moments to explain the reasons behind our decision.

We created Stage6 with the mission of empowering content creators and viewers to discover a new kind of video experience. Stage6 began as an experiment, and we always knew there was a chance that it might not succeed.

In many ways, though, the service did succeed, beyond even our own initial expectations. Stage6 became very popular very quickly. We helped gain exposure for some talented filmmakers who brought great videos to the attention of an engaged community. We helped prove that it's possible to distribute true high definition video on the Internet. And we helped broaden the Internet video experience by offering content that is compatible with DVD players, mobile devices and other products beyond the PC.

So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it's really as simple as that.

Now, why didn't we think of that before we decided to create Stage6 in the first place, you may ask? That's a good question. When we first created Stage6, there was a clear need for a service that would offer a true high-quality video experience online because other video destinations on the Internet simply weren't providing that to users. A gap existed, and Stage6 arrived to fill it.

As Stage6 grew quickly and dramatically (accompanied by an explosion of other sites delivering high-quality video), it became clear that operating the service as a part of the larger DivX business no longer made sense. We couldn't continue to run Stage6 and focus on our broader strategy to make it possible for anyone to enjoy high-quality video on any device. So, in July of last year we announced that we were kicking off an effort to explore strategic alternatives for Stage6, which is a fancy way of saying we decided we would either have to sell it, spin it out into a private company or shut it down.

I won't (and can't, really) go into too much detail on those first two options other than to say that we tried really hard to find a way to keep Stage6 alive, either as its own private entity or by selling it to another company. Ultimately neither of those two scenarios was possible, and we made the hard decision to turn the lights off and cease operation of the service.

So that's where we are today. After February 28, Stage6 will cease to exist as an online destination. But the larger DivX universe will continue to thrive. Every day new DivX Certified devices arrive on the market making it easy to move video beyond the PC. Products powered by DivX Connected, our new initiative that lets users stream video, photos, music and Internet services from the PC to the TV, are hitting retail outlets. We remain committed to empowering content creators to deliver high-quality video to a wide audience, and we'll continue to offer services that will make it easy to find videos online in the DivX format.

It's been a wild ride, and none of it would have been possible without the support of our users. Thank you for making Stage6 everything that it was.

--Tom

Player Review: Blip.tv

Blip.tv has so many great features and vision for internet video, we at the T-Cast want so much to love them. But they aren't making it easy.

The user profile dashboard seems simple enough until you try to navigate, menu items come and go, and loop you around. On some screens you have two menus one in blue one in grey with the title "Express Goodness". Its all really not intuitive.

But our main complaint is with the Playlist/Showpage organization of the videos. Your show page plays most recent to oldest, which isn't great for most shows. If you use the syndicate feature at the top right, you can get embed code that reverses the order. But you better have uploaded them in order because there isn't any way to change it later. You'd think this would be where a playlist system would step in, but no. And that isn't its only shortcoming. To load the playlist with videos you have to go to each video and add it to the playlist. Once you have them all in there , you can adjust numbers to order them. But doing so doesn't effect the RSS syndication options at the bottom right of the playlist page.

Still their player is nice. Check out the embedded syndication tools like "Tell-a-Friend" "video series embed code" and "preset RSS syndication, including iTunes".



You also get a "pop-in" of the show data and other episodes (showpage order). The full screen looks great and their are a wide array of ad options you can control. The post-roll ads appear between each video in your channel are high quality television ads, and your view can choose to skip to the next video at any time.

The views and ad revenue seems to be comparable to the new Revver scheme where earnings are made on impressions. There are stats for clicks, but they didn't seem to earn. We have tried driving traffic to these videos yet, so we can't say if the earnings are better or worse on syndication.

All in all, a nice player. The site has great potential but needs a total overhaul, as does the playlist/showpage controls. The Analytics is good compared to Blip's competitors, but it would be better if the views and revenue charts and graphs were on the same page so you could compare them. Definitely a site to watch.

Blinkx AdHoc a Strong Alternative to Video Ad Insertion

Looking to squeeze a bit more advertising into your shared video offerings. Blinkx has a new easy solution, but does it work?

Blinkx is taking a different approach to their video advertising network. They are auto inserting contextual advertising into the shared embedded video from other hosting sites like YouTube, Revver, and Veoh. The process is so simple. You sign up for an account, which only requires your email address, a password and your paypal email. Then copy and paste the embed code from your favorite video hosting site and presto, Blinkx gives you a new embed code that will drive their advertising. You can choose to have the ads float over the top of the video or above video all together.

Blinkx states that the ads come from a variety of third party advertising networks providing CPM, CPC and CPA advertising, as well as Blinkx's own advertiser network which offers cost-per-click starting at $0.05. They don't say how much of that will end up with the publisher, but we'll find out and let you know in a future post.

On testing, no advertising was presented and it seemed to really slow down the video serving. Of the hosting sites tested only Stage6's embed code failed to sync with Blinkx's processes. Below are examples of the same video hosted on different sites displaying Blinkx advertising.

YouTube:

Revver:

Veoh:

If you notice any bugs when these videos stream, please leave a comment.

Content Update: ComedyCaster

ComedyCaster has added the very original series, The Future Dead to its directory. This reworking of indy short films into a sketch like series with high production value and entertaining stories. Check out the first episode, then watch them all.

T-Cast Content Update: Entertainment News

T-Cast producers have compiled a list of relevant news material and added a player to the site to syndicate that news. News feeds are provided by The News Room, and displayed on the T-Cast News Page.

Enjoy.

Revver the next Google purchase, or maybe Stage6?

Google has build an empire on buying up the best innovations and integrating them into a vast advertising network. Providing free content and making billions for it. In a lot of ways Revver has what Google wants, a better player, CPC based auto insertion ad technology, and a pile of copy-right responsible content.

At T-Cast, we like the Revver model and wish them success. But there are problems with the things as they are. There is still no analytic reporting for video syndication and the revenue from those clicks is not broken down for either the syndicator or the content producer. Value of clicks are falling, but then are still better than most of the adwords content market with pay-per-click of $0.12 to $0.27.

It would seem to be smarter for the content producer to sell their own advertising, and the T-Cast producers asked Stage6's Divx support team for just such an opportunity only to be disappointed with the response. No question that the Divx authoring software is the best encoding software out there for under $50, and the Stage6.com site has proven that the player is post-roll clickable. Content producers could be running their own advertising campaigns off a wide variety of CPC, CPM and CPA advertising networks, and Divx HD quality video would be everywhere. Stage6 could be Revver for the masses.

Google needs to figure this out or it could get away from them. And there are other divx encoders out there. One of these companies has to put internet video syndication and dynamic advertising together before some hacker does.

Content Update: ComedyCaster and DramaCaster

We have added two very exciting shows to our directories. Prom Queen a teenage drama about getting ready for prom night, promises some big surprises for the big night.


Online Videos by Veoh.com

And Snowmen Hunters! A crazy comedy/reality tv spoof will surely teach you a few ways to hurt yourself. Don't try this stuff at home.

Producer Tip: Short is King!

If you're a film director you really want to be able to "get your vision out" but there is always that producer standing behind you saying, "do it faster and cheaper". Well if your producing or directing for the internet there is one more demand on that list. Make it short! On the internet short is king.

One of the goals of the T-Cast Network is to get a real grasp on how to create and market fiction based internet video. And then bring that knowledge back to producers and the community at large. We use a number of services like Revver reports, Google Analytics and Feedburner tracking to make observations in our "Producer Tips" stories.

So...

Lesson Learned 1 - Short is King!

In our original series The Retired Porn Producer's Guide to... we have four episodes:

Blogging
- 2 minutes, completes views 11% , converts clicks 3% of the time

Office Meetings
- 2 minutes 20 seconds, completes views 13%, converts clicks 0.7% of the time

Water Cooler Chit-Chat
- 3 minutes, completes views 10% , converts clicks 0.4% of the time

Biking to Work
- 3 minutes, completes views 8% , converts clicks 0.2% of the time

and one promotional episode
A Complicated Man
- 1 minute, completes views 21%, converts clicks 2% of the time

Since posting the videos to Revver, the promo episode, which is the shortest, viewers complete the view 21% of the time, nearly doubling the average. But the Blogging episode, which is 2 minutes long and completes views slightly better than average, converts clicks far better than the promo episode.

But is shorter really better, if so what is the best length? We also have two random un-promoted clips to test the shorter is better theory.

Stop-Animation: Joggling
- 9 seconds, completes views 37%, and converts clicks 2%

My Alien's Not to Bright -
1 minute, completes views 16%, and converts clicks 3.1%

Here again we see that the shorter the video the better it completes views but that a moderately long one minute episode converts more clicks.

If you want to make your video more financially successful you need to keep the clip length under a minute, but make the clips substantial enough to draw users in and entice better advertisers.

Video Sharing Evaluation: MetaCafe

MetaCafe is another video hosting and syndication service that provides revenue to producers. Like AtomFilm, MetaCafe is a selective content distributor and all submissions must be approved by a selection committee before they are posted. The site doesn't detail exactly the type of content they are looking for, but we've had our animation rejected for its frank sexuality which I guess was to racy for even the adult filter section.

Also like AtomFilms revenues are generated on a per view (instead of a per click) bases. Canadian Press reported on March 29^th that MetaCafe "offers creators $5 for every 1000 views." For those of you who aren't that good at math, I'll break these numbers down for you.

$5/1000 views = $0.005 per view or $0.01 for two views

That's a fair bit behind what the click through service Revver.com that in our experience averages $0.025/view. These royalties are paid on consistent and predictable bases, which makes it very attractive. But does MetaCafe have the traffic to make it worth while?

An examination of the site's most viewed content reveals MetaCafe's revenue potential. The most viewed clip, "Animals vs. Humans" has 11 528 064 views over 17 months, or $57 640; the second most viewed clip, "Freaky Women in an Elevator" has 9 313 248 views over 11 months, or $46 566. Many clips have enjoyed 200 000+ views or $1000.

So MetaCafe could be a great revenue generator for producers and the clips syndicate easily on the T-Cast Network. The video ads are post roll as opposed to AtomFilms pre-roll model, which is nice because viewers aren't really all the patient. Thank you MetaCafe, for creating such an innovative service.