Why embedding YouTube videos may not be the free lunch you think it is.

An article deriding the fabulous YouTube, written by the owner of a paid video service… I can hear the mumblings now. But before you bash me too much, I use YouTube a lot, and I love it. My saved favorites include clips of Muhammad Ali winding up Joe Fraser, "how to do a frontside board-slide" and more, and I do share these clips with my friends, via email and at home on Apple TV.

The reach that YouTube has is outstanding, the benefits of this reach for a ski resort are obvious, however, as a business, embedding YouTube videos onto your site may not be the free lunch you think it is.

Advertising overlays not only on a competitor's video, but displayed within the competitor's website!

There are a few things you need to be aware of.

A competitor can target your videos and display their ads on your own corporate site, and there are many examples of this happening right now. One of the worst I've seen was a weekly ski report video showing an overlay ad for ski vacations at a competitor's resort.

How can you stop this happening.

If you upload and embed your own content, which has no copyright infringed images or music, then you're safe, for now at least.

But with the implementation of overlay ads that appear on YouTube Partner videos, or videos that have been chosen to be monetized by the content owner (which may be you), or copyrighted infringement, most likely from music in the audio track, means that if you embed one of these videos on your site, it will display an overlay ad. There is no way for you to control the content of these ads, as they are based on keywords in the video's title, description, and tags.

OK, so you're not doing any of the above, but you may not be out of the water yet.

If you have a YouTube account linked to an AdSense account, your videos will automatically be opted into the AdSense offering, which will display overlay ads on your embedded videos. So if you don't want this to happen make sure you uncheck the "Allow AdSense overlay advertising for this video".

Now you may have finally nailed it, you have opted out of AdSense, you are the content owner, and the video has no music copyright infringement. Hell, you made sure of that by using AudioSwap, the YouTube feature that scrubs any audio out of your video and replaces it with approved music from their list. What sucks here is that even AudioSwap is copyrighted material, so by using it you will see ads. Doh!

There are tech ways around blocking overlay ads, from simple browser plugins to installing scripts into the code of your site, however you can bet Google won't allow that to continue for very long.

It's not just the advertising that can be a problem with embedded YouTube videos. How many times have you been to a site and seen a big black space with the message "This video has been removed by the user"? Also, the selection of videos users can choose from inside a playlist can be hijacked too, with the ability for competitors videos to be displayed on your site alongside your own. Egil Fujikawa Nes explains how to do exactly that in his blog "Highjack YouTube Marketing Videos".

To protect against possible brand damage from embedding YouTube videos, a resort needs to have guidelines for web managers and employees to follow, and they need to regularly check that Googles advertising policies haven't changed, and amend accordingly. This isn't a difficult task, but it is another task for an employee, and quite an important one with consequences should something be overlooked.

What are the options?

1. Vimeo is a popular choice right now, with high quality encoding and HD, favored by video makers because their work looks very nice online. And it's free. However, there are legal issues surrounding the use of Vimeo on corporate sites, and sites that contain advertising. You need to check that you are allowed, in their terms and conditions, before using it. Personally I find the download time of Vimeo videos take a lot longer than most, but this could be isolated as others I have spoken to have not encountered slow video.
2. Build video players yourself using free component systems. This is fine if your video content remains pretty static, however, if you regularly upload and update videos, this can take some time to manage. Whatever you build will need to be upgraded often to work on new browsers, operating systems and devices and therefore have a cost to maintain. Not to mention servers, loads and bandwidth, which all cost time and money.
3. Paid providers, and there are many of them, are available for a reason. They enable a business to display videos that they have complete control over, and allow for ad messages to be delivered that are of their own choosing. Many will have syndication options to YouTube and other SM, so the mass reach of your videos, which is the ultimate goal, is still attained, while avoiding possible brand damage. Paid providers maintain server networks and optimize delivery to users, they encode many versions of your videos to enable them to be seen on multiple devices, and they will also maintain and upgrade their video player software. A big thing to remember is, they are getting paid by you to provide a service and support, and more than likely will guarantee delivery. Try getting YouTube on the phone.

The outcome is this.

If you're not a big time video user, don't upload alot of content, and has a team that can easily deal with the YouTube account or manage your custom players efficiently, then keep doing what you're doing.

But if managing your videos becomes too time consuming and costly to manage with all aspects; server, bandwidth, encoding, web dev, staff, keeping up with technology changes and more, then paying the annual license fee of a paid video provider might end up costing you less.

How to produce 360º panoramas yourself. (Video)

360º panoramas provide great visual appeal on your site and allow for a level of interactivity that users enjoy, however capturing these images, stitching them together and then producing the finished product has always been a job for specialised 3rd party vendors, but this doesn't need to be.

Just like with videos, you want your panoramas to show blue bird skies and powder snow, but how often have you hired a photographer/videographer and the weather just didn't play ball, leaving you with expensive material that doesn't do your resort justice, and to rub salt into the wounds a few days later the conditions are perfect.

What this tutorial does is show you how to capture the conditions or events yourself using only a basic digital still camera and then stitching those images together with a simple $79.99 software application, which you can then embed onto your web site or maps.

Not all panoramas you see are produced the same way.
Some are taken using a spherical lens on the camera and with only a single shot, which produces an image that is warped on the edges. We have all seen those 360 VR's that feel like you are viewing from inside a fishbowl.
Others are made by taking multiple still shots then stitching these shots together to form a single wide image. This produces a more realistic 360º panorama that is not warped or curved.

How the pro's make panoramas and how to cheat and get some excellent results.
Using the multiple shot method a pro will most likely have a heavy tripod with a panorama head attachment and a high quality SLR camera. The panorama head allows the camera to be rotated precisely around a complete 360º circle taking still shots that are perfectly lined up with the horizon and overlap each other by the correct amount. Shots that are lined up and overlapped in this way are so much easier to stitch together.

So what you need to do is copy their method without the panorama head equipment or tripod and using your own simple digital camera. If a tripod is available it does makes things easier.

Video shows you how to do this:





Click on the image below to see the finished product.




The goal is to take multiple shots standing in the same place while turning around in a circle, and to have all these shots follow the horizon, plus overlap each shot by around 20%. You might take about 8-12 shots depending on the camera lens and how much overlapping you have done. A good rule of thumb is take a shot for each hour on the clock.
The next thing you need to do is make sure your camera is set on manual exposure NOT auto. If you use auto each shot you take will have different exposure settings and when you go to stitch them together they won't look like a single consistent image. So manual exposure is required and to set this up you firstly leave the camera in auto mode and with your finger slightly depressing the shutter button, pan around in a circle, you will see that the shutter speed and aperture settings are changing all the time. The object is to settle on a exposure that will work best around the complete 360º circle. Some areas may come out darker and some brighter but its an average you are looking for. Snap off a few shots in auto mode, preview them on your camera, and see what exposure settings were used on the shot you like the most. If its say, 2.8/125 (lens aperture & shutter speed) then this is the settings you use when the camera is back in manual mode and ready to take the shots.

Most common problems.

If you don't follow the horizon closely when you take the photos it makes the stitching process so much harder and you will get an image that is cropped heavily at the top and bottom.

If you haven't used manual exposure then there's no chance of a nice looking stitched image.

If you haven't overlapped each shot with the last then the stitching may not be able to match points.


Check list
1. Shoot all photos on manual exposure settings. Choose an average exposure setting and use that setting for all 12 photos.

2. Take one photo for each hour of a clock, 1 thru to 12. By taking 12 photos per panorama it gives plenty of overlap to assist in stitching.

3. Make sure you stay level to the horizon. (very important) By staying level to the horizon means stitching will work best. Your first shot and the last shot should be on the same level plane. A tripod is handy for this.

4. Shoot at high res.

5. Name the images and place into a folder for each panorama on your computer.


Stitching the images
The software itself will have detailed instructions on how to use it, but basically it goes like this:

1. It will ask you what type of stitching you want to do, such as wide screen or 360º. Choose 360º. It will also ask you for other things like lens used or output size, what I use is auto for the lens and medium for the output size.

2. Next it will ask you to import the 12 photos you have taken and then thumbnail preview each shot lined up beside one another. Select them all and include them into the stitch window. If they look correct hit next. This is where the auto stitching starts. If all your shots were taken with the horizon in mind will make this stitch so much better.

3. Now you will get a preview of the stitch and if all is good the stitch might be perfect and you can save the jpg, however more than likely some shots won't be lined up perfectly to the last shot and you will need to fix. Hit the Fine Tune button and select on the image where the problem is. This will show you 3 marker points on each image that you drag onto specific points that match the same point on each image, such as a tree top or lift tower or bump in the snow. Once these are set hit ok and the app will start to stitch again using your marker points. You may need to do this in multiple places before the complete stitch is finished.

4. Save the image in the required format for the player you will be using. MVP or vicoMap panorama players uses a jpg, or you can export a .mov file to be used in Quicktime players.


Enjoy taking your photos and remember - stay horizontal to the horizon!

Flash vs HTML5 - how will it affect resorts?

We in the resort industry love our technology. Our websites get overhauled every 2-3 years, we have to use the latest gadget or service. Whatever it is, we're in. My Space, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter - I'll have one of each please. We have to be like this because competition is fierce and almost everyone is a potential customer so we need to have fresh information and it needs to be everywhere. For that very reason, the latest attacks on Adobe Flash, by our god-like hero, Steve Jobs, comes with a word of warning.

While Flash vs HTML5 battles flare up on blogs around the Internet, the people that are most affected by the outcome of the war (our customers) don't even know, or care about it. They just want their stuff to work.

The hype factor

Steve Jobs and Apple are the masters of hype. I'm in awe at what they've done with the iPad, it's just mind blowing. They've been able to make people clamber over themselves with product lust for a device that's the equivalent of an oversized iPhone with a broken camera, and to pay more for the privilege. 

I consider myself to be a level headed person. When the iPhone came out, I wanted one, but I looked at what it lacked and waited. I finally got one last year and I love it. What an awesome phone!

With the iPad though, I just didn't get it. Why would I want an iPhone that doesn't doesn't fit in my pocket? And why has it sold twice as fast as the iPhone ever did? As I say, mind blowing. The story of The Emperor's New Clothes comes to mind. 

This run of good fortune that Apple has at the moment has given them a huge amount of hype momentum. They're convincing young developers and IT departments about what the future holds and putting fear in the hearts of decision makers all around the globe. The message is, you need to ditch Flash, use HTML5 for your web pages and H.264 for your video format and if you want anything really fancy, you need to make an iPhone app and put it on the App Store. It's the way of the future.

Misconceptions

(FYI, H.264 is the video standard of choice for many, including, but not limited to Apple, Adobe, Google, and Blue Ray discs)

There are a few things being bandied about in the Flash vs iPhone debate that need to be explained.

Myth #1: Flash performance is terrible compared to HTML5.  The truth is, it may well be one day, but at the moment, it's not. Both Flash Player and HTML5 performance is going to get better, but for now there's no clear winner as each has its merits. Check out this video on current Flash Player vs HTML5 performance on a Mac and mobile devices: http://recombu.com/news/flash-player-101-pwns-html5-on-a-nexus-one_M11610.html

Myth #2: Flash player can't play H.264 videos which are now the standard. Flash player has been able to play H.264 videos for more than two years now and according to our stats of active web video watchers, more than 98% of people's Flash players can do this. Flash player is the most widely used H.264 video player.

Myth #3: iPhones and iPads will soon overtake the number of people needing Flash Player, right? Shouldn't I be changing to suit? Given that us in the resort industry change our websites every 2-3 years, we're in a great position to be able to take advantage of the now, and look at future technologies when the time is right. That current comparison of Flash penetration vs iPhone OS penetration is so far in Flash's favor, it's actually a closer battle if you just compare active Farmville users to iPhone OS users. (Farmville is a Facebook game made with Flash) :

85 Million iPhone OS based devices sold to date (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad)

vs

69 million active Farmville players. 

That's almost as many people actively playing Farmville as there are iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads ever sold!

Farmville's just a game though you say... OK then, what about Google Analytics? That uses Flash. Google Streetview too. Google has actually recently hard-coded Flash Player into their Chrome web browser so it's no longer treated as a plugin. They're even going to be very soon supporting Flash in their own mobile platform, Android. You see, there are some other big players that have differing views on the future of Flash than our beloved Steve.

Myth #4: Our website stats show that Firefox is now almost as popular as Internet Explorer, bring on Firefox and it's HTML5 H.264 video! You'd assume that because Firefox is an open source project, that when the phrase "H.264 is an open standard" is mentioned, you think the two are a perfect match. The sad truth is, H.264 being "open" is somewhat of a grey area because the standard is actually owned and patented by MPEG-LA.

Even though MPEG-LA's patent license conditions for H.264 are very reasonable, the fact that they receive royalties for this patent is something that is against the core of the Mozilla Foundation's licensing agreement, and because of that, they've already stated that Mozilla does not and will not support the H.264 video standard in its Firefox browser.

It's not just Firefox, the major browser vendors are split on this. Opera and Firefox will not support H.264, only the Theora codec which is free, and Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome and Safari will. What does that leave us with? It means that without plugins like Adobe's Flash Player, every video has to be encoded, saved, and uploaded twice, and special code put in your website to recognize which browser is viewing your webpage, and to give the viewer the video format that they need. (You can eliminate a couple of those steps though by using an online video platform like Brightcove or our very own MVP)

HTML5's biggest issue

HTML5's biggest problem is Microsoft Internet explorer. More specifically, it's the fact that people that use that browser (and they're still the majority in most cases), take years to update their software. And that comes down to the one reason I believe  Microsoft are the biggest software company on the planet - backward compatibility.

Most software coming out now for PCs will still run on Windows XP, the Microsoft operating system that was first released in 2001. There's not one current software product I know of that will run on Mac OS circa 2001. This is the reason we still have people using the likes of Internet Explorer 6. Also released in 2001. About 5% of our website's traffic at resorts-interactive.com  is IE 6. I find that amazing that 9 year old software is still being used, but the fact of the matter is, we don't want to cut off that 5%... not yet. 

Fast forward to the present (2010) and Microsoft is poised to release IE9 which they promise will support HTML5. Fast forward to 2019 when we might finally be able to start looking at implementing HTML5 when we decide that those 5% that are using IE 8 can go to hell and upgrade their crummy browser to be able to use our website.

The other issues that plague HTML5, like disagreement between browser vendors, will pail in comparison to the IE issue. We must remember that we can't force technology on the masses. They can be gently steered over years with some amazing hype, but when it comes to the crunch, we can only look at what they're currently using and adjust to suit.

So if it's going to be that long before we can really start taking advantage of what HTML5 has to offer, why has Steve Jobs whole heartedly attacked Flash and ruled it out from current and future versions of the iPhone OS? There's a simple answer actually. The App Store.

Adobe has handed Apple the perfect opportunity for a smoke screen

As a Flash developer who's computer of choice has been a Mac since I became a convert in 2003, I've witnessed first hand that Adobe are no angels when it comes to Flash on the Mac, but at the end of the day, I'm winning.

Because of this little bout with Apple, I now have a Flash Player that has all the features I wanted from the Windows version - mouse wheel support, proper vector printing and excellent performance increases. This has all come too late for some, and Apple have been able to capitalize on Adobe's shortcomings as the perfect smoke screen. 

Flash being the rich, cross-platform software that it is, if people could run apps on an iPhone from a webpage, for free, Apple would lose out as they take a 30% cut from the developer of all sales made on the App Store. What's more, you can't make iPhone OS apps on a PC, you have to use a Mac, and a recently purchased or upgraded one at that. That equates to more Mac sales.

Adobe, and several others, wanted a piece of the Apple pie (sorry, couldn't resist), and decided that they'll be clever and make something that allowed them to convert apps made with Flash, to iPhone apps. Now how nice would that have been? Flash developers could have made one app, that worked across all devices, including iPhones and iPads.

That was until Apple changed its developer terms and conditions to state that only Apps made with their software are now allowed. That's downright dirty, and it's why there is now a preliminary anti-trust investigation into Apple's actions being undertaken by the US government. Are Apple being anti-competetive or is Steve Jobs just a control freak? I'm thinking it's a bit of both.

You can trust my opinion, because I'm awesome

I know what you're thinking, "You're just defending your patch! Resorts Interactive's products rely on Flash!". It's true, all our software uses Flash to some extent, and it has done since day one. I am a Flash programmer, but I'm also business owner, a husband, and a father, I have to make good decisions. Flash isn't the only technology I know and rely on. HTML, Javascript, PHP and MYSQL are all staples for us at Resorts Interactive. I'm even having a blast making an iPhone app at the moment and learning Objective-C, Cocoa Touch and Apple's Interface builder (for us geeks, iPhone development is fun!). We've done all we can to accommodate the differences between websites that work well on PCs, Macs, iPhone and iPad. We've made all our videos and photos from MVP (our multimedia management product) automatically viewable in the iPhone OS in Mobile Safari, and without the use of HTML5 I should mention.

My point is, like all good web software creators, we use the best technology for the job for the current audience. For us, like thousands of others, Flash plays a big roll in meeting those requirements. We're not about to retire our software and wait for HTML5 to play catch-up. We'll keep an eye on the state of play and adjust to suit if and when the time comes. We'll do our own research, look at the figures, avoid the hype, just like any other responsible business.

To sum up

Flash is as strong as ever. Despite what Steve Jobs' visions of the future are, Flash is a current technology that people, in their hundreds of millions, use every day. We can plan for the future, but we need to live in the now. Flash is not going to disappear before your next website revision, and for resorts, it's going to be at least three or four website revisions before HTML5 has enough market penetration to become a viable alternative.