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.

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.

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

So catching up on the random clip side of the site, we have syndicated 10 great short films that where lost in the pile called Youtube. If you have a short film that you'd like promoted contact us.

Check out the new clips!

Service Report: Revver

On April 10th T-Cast Editors contacted Revver support about inconsistencies in the new reporting system was tallying views and clicks. It is now April 14th and the validity of the reports are still in question. Revver's initial response explained the problem as such:

Couple of things here, all related to one bug that was causing duplicate views on videos over the last 24 hours. To fix the problem, we had to reset our view aggregators. Reset doesn't mean "started over," and you're not going to lose credit for any views. It just means recounted, so you're viewcount will be corrected of any duplicate views and should be back to normal by later tonight. If you haven't seen your viewcounts increased by tomorrow let us know.

The next day the reports where still changing and videos that where earning 1-2 clicks a day were still not reporting any earnings. So we continued our inquiry:

My reports still don't make any sense. The Summary says one clip downloaded more times than the total for the day according to the by month report.

Does this effect clicks for those days?

Revver's Response:

Due to the duplicate view bug, the events aggregator had to be re-run - which means that views and earnings (two different kinds of "events") had to be re-aggregated and displayed on the site. So your earnings were also recounted, which means they would have dropped and slowly built back up. The events aggregator is still catching up, but your earnings will be back to their previous levels by tomorrow.

Are video's are in fact earning again, and the reports are as expected except for April 10 where we had a 40% decline in views only. Completed views where as expected. We plan to follow up on Monday, but what we are seeing when we compare our other reporting tools (Feedburner and Google Analytics) is that no embedded video views have been counted for April 10. 100% of the views on that day came from our rss feed.

There are a number of outstanding issue's within Revver's automated reports. There is still no data that would assist in the syndication of videos for either the producer or the syndicator.

Money Making and Video Sharing Blogs

We'd like to draw your attention to a couple of other blogs that may help you on the journey to monetize your content.

Embed My Videos is "A blog for Revver users to share and promote their videos" on which there is a great post about various places to promote and syndicate your Revver video( Embed My Video: How to promote your Revver Videos ). This blog is a great resource for people with any kind of content to promote their revver videos.

Dosh Dosh is a great blog to learn about all things money online. Posts include everything from affiliate marketing, to Adsense, to blog, podcast and website promotion. If you want to develop a master plan for a internet business this is a one stop shop and a great place to start.

Video Sharing Evaluation: Revver - Part 1

If you've been reading this blog you'll know that, for all its problems, we believe www.revver.com to be one of the best video syndication/monetization sites out there. In this first posting we will detail the pros and cons of Revver's website and syndication tools.

Website
The website has some real problems. Its ajax interface is sloppy, slow and may be the doom of the service since it isn't really all that enjoyable entertainment experience. The quality of the actual video playback and its transcoding is quite good, but unlike iTunes and Stage6, Revver doesn't have its own codec technology so video quality is only as good as the uploaded file. After uploading your video it will be in flash and quicktime, and your thumbnails are generated automatically.

The flash player is solid and loads quickly, and is used for video playback on the site. The search functions are pretty basic, as the metadata indexing seems to be weak in general. There are channels, most notably Lonelygirl15, Ask a Ninja, and V Cast Videos from Verzion. User uploads seem to be made into channels automatically, but you search by user not channel. Most noticeably absent from the site is the ability to create a content producer profile, at the vary least they could have a place to promote a link to the producer's website.

Syndication
Syndication is generally Revver's strong point. Even when website service was down during Revver's recent growing pains, our syndicated videos continued to play. Your syndication choices are:

- Flash using Javascript
- Quicktime for Myspace (<EMBED>)
- Flash Embed
- Quicktime using Javascript
- Thumbnail link

These simple cut and paste codes provide much more variety than YouTube, AtomFilms, and Veoh. They are easily modified and allow for syndication without having to delve into Revver's API.

Advertising is delivered with your syndicated content. Just as it does on the site, the ad plays at the end of the video only once ending on a still frame advertisement. The advertising is clean, varied and seems to be converting between 10-50% of the time. We will post details of the revenue sharing service in a second posting.

Certainly Revver is more of a syndication service than a social network. Your videos are screened to ensure copyright and content eligibility, and its player, streaming capability and advertising are clean and robust. Really a great video hosting/syndication service for independent producers, but is unlikely to bring you strong viewership. You will be responsible for promoting your videos on services like the T-Cast Network Channels ( www.comedycaster.com , www.dramacaster.com , www.scificaster.com).

Service Update: Revver

Revver has finally upgraded its revenue reporting system, and has even more plans in the works according to Sean Boyd (Revver Member Services Coordinator). This upgrade was sorely needed, and will provide producers a more detailed evaluation of their content's advertising potential. If you've been reading our blog you know our estimated earnings off of Revver has thus far been approximately $0.025, but this upgrade changes and elaborates on this calculation.

We will be posting an assessment of Revver's entire service shortly, please check back.