This is a truly cool and useful post from Emmy Huang, the product manager for Adobe Flash Player. First off, Flash 9 had a very important release in late August (known affectionately as Flash 9.0.47, not to be confused with the newer release of 9.0.97 which provides Leopard fixes) that finally brought H.264 and Flash together. Now the playing field of mainstream web video codecs will merge into 2… H.264/Flash and Windows (VC-1).

Emmy’s post helps provide basic estimates for clients who want to know when all this video goodness will become mainstream. I quote “So here is a basic guideline that you can use to project penetration of a particular release:
@3 months = 30 - 40%
@6 months = 55 - 65
@9 months = 80 - 85%
@12 months = 90+%

So we are looking to the end of summer 2008 to reach near ubiquity, unless everyone starts switching over sooner. Hopefully by this time, the marketing executives at major brands running Windows 98 SE will have upgraded to new machines and will no longer request rough cuts in MPEG1 format

The new Flash player will open up a lot more cool playback possibilities for companies with large Quicktime 7 spot collections.

I remember the first post on Wheresspot where someone asked when agencies would start accepting DVDs (as opposed to 3/4″), somewhere back in 2000. At that time, home-burned DVDs still didn’t play reliably in DVD players, so the best way ways to replicate 500 or more. I also remember in 2003 hearing about the first agencies that stopped accepting 3/4″ altogether. Within 1 year, 3/4″ quickly disappeared… because NO ONE wanted to keep sending and schlepping those big ass tapes around anymore. But until that day, everyone kept saying “But agencies won’t accept anything besides 3/4″. Well, I believe we are in that transition period again. Recently two major agencies have declared that they will no longer receive DVDs and want ONLY online reels. Two years ago, the mix was 90% DVD and 10% Wiredrive reels. Now it’s 50%/50% and within 2 years it will be 10% DVDs and 90% Wiredrive Reels. Mark my words! All it takes is a few brave agencies and the rest will follow. We have seen this shift accelerate within the last few weeks - people who three months ago were wondering why they needed online reel delivery capabilities are now calling for favors to get work sent immediately.

We recently heard from a client this great story regarding the change in messenger vs. online reel delivery. His Messenger Service called him a month ago, wondering if he was using another competing service?

——

Client - What’s bothering you?

Messenger Service - From last july to this july your business has dropped 50%. Have you started using someone else?

Client - Well, I’ll be honest with you, you are still our only messenger. In the last year we are sending out materials online a lot (using Wiredrive). People don’t want to wait for hard copies. They’d rather forward an email, especially so THEY don’t have to pay for FedEx. Right now, we are about 50/50 in links vs. DVD, so it makes sense that business has dropped by half. 

This isn’t just for clients in Europe and NY. It’s some place that is 3 miles away who would rather have it in a more convenient form. Our clients want to send the Wiredrive reel to the Agency and the Director and they don’t want to pay for FedEx. The only guys who want DVDs are picky directors looking for the full quality image. 

Client - The messenger wasn’t happy to hear that. 

——-

The last thought on the matter is our old, poor environment… why send your printed, stamped and FedEx’d reel to an agency when you can post it online? No jet fuel expended. No plastics used for pressing disks, packaging materials and other soon-to-be-landfill stuff. And a bonus kicker… you get your work there in time in the format the producer WANTs to see it in and maybe land a new job. What’s not to like

Till next time,

Bill

We’ve been traveling a lot this year - collectively our sales team has visited 4 countries and 10 US cities, often several times. As providers of an online web service, we are constantly demoing our service and are really reliant on our internet connections. It’s amazing how varied the experience has been, ranging from blazing speed to slower-than-56K Modem speeds. Yeah, that’s slow (for you old skoolers who remember dialup!). The major point behind this is that when people hit the internet these days, they assume they are getting Broadband (cable companies call it trickle feeding!), but are receiving connections all over the place. And it’s really hard to figure out what’s happening.

HOTELS
I have no problem paying $10 a day to connect up in my room, but I do draw the line when my connection speeds hover in the Bytes range. The fastest performance I’m getting in Chicago (Ambassador Hotel) is 25 KBps, and that was for a short 2 to 3 second burst. The rest of the time, the speed monitor hugged the bottom of the speed chart. At my office, we see up to 1 MBps, 40 times the speed. Mind you, these are speed tests running out to major websites like CNN, Engadget and Slashdot.

My biggest observation so far is that the hotels that use Nomadix WiFi distribution points tend to have very poor connections. At first I thought Nomadix was the actual service provider (hey, it’s the only name that consistently shows up once the connection is made), but then realized that they provide hotel-grade versions of WiFi routers. It’s up to providers like WiFi Guys to provide the service… after sitting on the tech support line for 20 minutes, I gave up. To be fair, the hotel connection does work well in some floors and in the lobby. Just not our floor, which is all we care about.

Apparently, managing a hotel connection for hundreds of random guests doing skype or more “nighttime” activities is a really hard problem to solve. Skype seems to be really chatty, sending out tons of traffic which companies like Nomadix want to limit. I couldn’t connect up via iChat, so I figure that my hotel simply blocked that kind of connection.

OFFICES
Same thing is happening at recent office visits. Several clients have recently installed T3 lines, which cost thousands of dollars a month but provide 45 MB/s of up and down speeds. That’s 30 times faster than the standard 1.5 MB T1s many of us have “grown up with”. It’s also really noticeable on uploads, because standard cable or dsl connections really suck at upload speeds (356 KB is common).

On the flip side, I’ve seen a bunch of offices with saturated connections recently. That means 50 to 100 people sharing 1 connection, pulling down internet radio or YouTube or actual business related files. Each time, the IT guy tells me that they are working on the connection and a faster circuit is right around the corner. This is happening in about 30% of the offices I visit, so it’s fairly significant.

WIRELESS
So, if you are on the road, why not use a fancy new Wireless card and not worry about the connection issues from WiFI? Over the last 2 years, I’ve used an EVDO card from Verizon, an EVDO Treo 700p (also Verizon) and now an AT&T HSPDA Express Card for my MacBook Pro. First off, the wireless card is great for those times when you absolutely need to connect and have no other options. But not everything is perfect.

Like cell phones, wireless cards rely on cell towers for their connection. The weaker the connection, the slower the speed… until you are back to dialup sppeds (like Edge with AT&T). The Verizon card would burst up to 80 to 90 KBps with a strong connection, but would often disconnect from the network. The Treo 700p had the same general performance, except when a call would come in. Then the phone would lock up completely, not excepting the call and not downloading properly anymore. The only way to fix it was to pull the battery… Needless to say, I’m glad to be done with Treos.

The AT&T Card keeps a much more steady connection, but up until yesterday was confined to emergency connection situations. I’ve been using it for the last 2 days a lot in my hotel though, as it is many times faster than the hotel connection. Granted 26 KB/sec is not fast, but it’s consistent.

That’s it for now… Got some demos to do!

Regards,

Bill