conigs

The origin of the NBC peacock logo?

Great animation by Nathan Love (in collaboration with NBC Artworks).

Being in the precess of redesigning my portfolio, I’m very interested in current web technologies. One of those technologies is the HTML5 working spec and its <video> tag which I’m hoping to use. It may seem like a geek thing, but it can make embedding a video as easy as embedding an image. Compare that to the current method of embedding video… you’ve seen the complicated YouTube embed code…

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has a good write-up of the current debacle surrounding the choice of video codec in browsers (Safari & Chrome (and IE9) support H.264, Firefox & Chrome support Ogg-Theora). It will be interesting to see where things lead in a few years and what will happen with h.264 licensing, as well as possible patent issues with Ogg-Theora.

I want everything we do—that I do personally, that our office does—to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything or that a client thinks it’s worth anything or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me.

– Saul Bass

[via Motionographer]

A Behind-the-scenes about the “HBO Starship” intro from the 1980s. It’s good to remind ourselves how far effects, graphics, & animation have come in only 30 years. I’m also tempted to use some of these techniques digitally.

[via Motionographer]

I’m really growing tired of this typography treatment, but this video is done very well and I love the message.

[via swissmiss]

“Show us how to do it so that we can do it in house.”

This is too perfect.

(via Final Cut User & @Filmbot)

We all know attention spans diminish rapidly once content moves online. With traditional mediums such as theater, television, and radio, you have a relatively captive audience (though I believe lessening as you go down that short list). True someone may get up during a TV show, but they’re still mostly just sitting there with the sole purpose of watching the program on the box.

Online entertainment is a different story, especially for video-based content. Personally, I believe it is a combination of the “snack mentality” and multitasking. In the former, people just want a little bit of something. They usually don’t go online with the sole intent of watching this video or that, they go online to be entertained or gather news & information. The specifics usually aren’t that important¹.

More to the point, TubeMogul recently posted a study in which they tracked how long users would watch a video. The results aren’t really surprising: Roughly 90% of people watch more than 10 seconds, while fewer than 10% will watch more than five minutes, which a fairly strait drop-off as you move between the two. Though there is a slightly larger dip once the one minute mark is passed.

Though, as with all statistics, the numbers make little sense without context.

For a two-week period, we measured viewed-seconds for a sample of 188,055 videos, totaling 22,724,606 streams, on six top video sites

So we know it’s from a variety of sites and (likely) a variety of different videos. The thing I believe is missing is context, namely the type of videos. For example, I have a fairly low tolerance for for shaky cell-phone footage of some dude wiping out on his bike. However, I will often watch most narrative (and the more traditional documentary) pieces through to the end, provided they are intriguing & interesting.

Many times at work, we are constantly talking about this magical “two-minute threshold,” where if a video is longer than two minutes, it’s often too long. However, I tend to disagree. I don’t think there is a hard threshold. If something is engaging, people will watch, provided the have the time. There’s just a difference between watching someone else’s antics and being told a story.

For the sake of argument, many on-line videos are just images of something that (generally) regular people are doing. Dropping Mentos in Diet-Coke, someone’s kid doing something silly, high-school students left to their own devices with a camera²… I, and I believe many people, just don’t have a high tolerance for any lengthy video in that category. I believe this is the reason for the rapid fall-off in the TubeMogul chart. Those videos just aren’t worth our attention when our time is finite.

What I would be curious to see is a break down of types of videos. I firmly believe that people will sit down and watch more of an online video if it is narrative or  a more traditional documentary. But I could be wrong. It’s been known to happen once-in-a-while.

[via korrejohnson]

[update: also posted this on the All About Face blog.]

1. Notice I say “usually.” Sometime people fire up the YouTube for a certain video. Also, research is also a pretty targeted task. One doesn’t often say “You know, I think I’m going to research… something.” ↩
2. If you’re a high-school student and reading this, just put the camera down, seriously. Just think about what you are going to be documenting. Chances are, it’s really not a good idea… at all. ↩

The enterprising individual at Mr.doob¹ has come up with a unique way of using YouTube videos to present a higher resolution than normal. (Warning: semi-Rickrolling.) If you’re interested in how it was done, the source code has the answers.

[via core77]

1. Or would you say Mr.doob is the enterprising individual? ↩

Okay, so I have no idea how I missed these. So far, I’ve seen Statler & Waldorf, Sam the Eagle, Gonzo, Beaker, and the Sweedish Chef (featuring Beaker). I have to say, my favorite part is reading the descriptions on the Beaker and Chef videos. (The videos are also embed after the break, if you want them all in one place.)
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