US indie film festival the Cinema Eye Honors presented by Indiepix has announced that it is to add a new audience award that will utalise both online distribution and voting process. The festival have chosen the BroadRamp platform to distribute the films and is requesting that viewers cast their vote online after watching. Indiepix are said to have chosen BroadRamp’s Content Distribution System because it does not require the user to download a third party browser plugin. However, this is a claim that confuses me slightly because taking a look at BroadRamp’s site they seem to be very much utalising flash video in their player which of course uses the “third party plugin” Shockwave. Soooo… unless I’m missing a trick and I they’ve some swanky technology they’re not showing off on their website… you still need a plugin folks.
BroadRamp seem to be best known for their work in the field of interactive e-commerce video. What’s interactive e-commerce video I hear you cry. Well, the basic concept is that you’re sitting watching a video online, or wherever, and you see a t-shirt you really like. You hover your mouse over that t-shirt and a pop-up appears giving you information, price and an option to buy the shirt. An idea then that seems to be genius and utterly horrific all at the same time.S o the cynic in me is thinking, will the content from this film festival be used as a film testbed for this evil genius video creation? Or am I turning into a internet conspiracy theorist? Either way, I am delighted to see that festivals are recognising the problems in the industry and making steps to rectify it. It does however seem bizarre to me that they would not use a more well known platform, such as blip.tv, vimeo or even the big daddy YouTube. My jaded mind is still mulling over the marketing potential of the BroadRamp system in festivals to come – you’ve been warned!
Anyway, the festival selections have been made and announced, more information can be found at the Indiepix and Cinema Eye Honors websites and voting commences on March 1st.
Right, that’s enough from me. Good night Finger Lickers, I will see you in the morning.
K
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February 29, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Jack Hall
In your recent Blog you stated, “IndiePix are said to have chosen BroadRamp’s Content Distribution System because it does not require the user to download a third party browser plugin.” The actual press release states, “Viewers are not required to download a third-party player, a common source for viruses.”
BroadRamp has never claimed that plugins were not required. We take full advantage of plugins in order to reduce the size of our applications.
As you are probably aware a plugin is a computer program that interacts with a host application to provide a very specific function. Applications support plugins for many reasons. BroadRamp uses plugins to create a launch capability, thus reducing the size of our applications. We do not necessarily use FMS, though we can when it is to our clients advantage. To the unknowing, our applications appear to be Flash, but they are not. In answer to your comment, we do have proprietary “swanky” technology we are not disclosing.
As to our claims of no requirement of a third party player download, this is absolutely true. We have our own application for the playback that an end user does not have to download prior to playing a video. It is delivered along with the video and then leaves no residual application when the video is finished.
When we mention players we mean media players or applications designed to play back video or multimedia files. Most players support a variety of media formats including audio and video files. As to the alternatives you mentioned, if they require a user to download a player, then they may be opening up the user’s system to viruses. We have not checked all players in the market, but have found that to be a common flaw in those players we have examined.
Finally, you stated that BroadRamp seems to be best known for their work in the field of interactive e-commerce video. Thank you for pointing out that one feature we offer through our vidCommerce applications. But I must point out that BroadRamp’s MCDS platform has much more to offer and e-commerce is a small, but robust application we make available.
BroadRamp has the very best compression available and have exceeded 99% compression in some third party tests. When we deliver a video, it retains all the quality of the original file, up to HD quality. We support Dolby Surround Sound and can compress audio files with the same efficiency. We welcome anyone to do a comparison of CDS, our core technology, alongside any other content delivery or compression program on the planet.
MCDS has deployed managed hosting worldwide, a global CDN footprint with optional P2P capabilities, a media server for Flash applications, our monetization applications (more than you mentioned), our own digital rights management application and nine levels of security offerings.
Thanks for keeping us on our toes. We welcome challenges. Feel free to contact me or anyone at BroadRamp if you have questions.
Jack Hall
Vice President, BroadRamp
February 29, 2008 at 10:20 pm
K
Hi Jack,
Thanks for your extremely detailed reply, seems like you’ve got some very interesting things going on over at BroadRamp. And thank you for enlightening us on some of the underlying systems. I did spend some time reading your website in search of more information about how you’re video technology works, however couldn’t find any specifics. I’m keen to see how things go with the Indiepix audience award as I’m very interested in how festivals are utalising digital technologies in the exhibition and voting process. Can you give us any insight as to whether this is a service that BroadRamp would like to expand upon? Perhaps you’d like to encourage other festivals to do the same?
Thanks for reading and commenting,
K
February 29, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Jack Hall
The next version of the website will hit the net at the end of March and I have taken a personal interest in seeing that it is much more robust, provides more information and opportunity for an individual to learn about all we are able to do.
We are interested in how well this goes with this competition. We do have an interest in more programs of this nature. BroadRamp has the MCDS platform built on top of our code and it lends itself to serving a multitude of vertical markets easily and efficiently. It is a departure from a typical business model.
As we place more focus on one vertical, the entertainment industry (a natural given our video delivery capabilities), we are also looking at all the aspects of that space, including the awards competitions.
As to how the technology works, I have been in presentations with teams from all around the world and with the leading technologists in this space. They all ask that same question. We have even been asked if it was magic. The answer is that it is math.
We are very protective of the code and the concept and it has many patents filed to protect the IP. I have been in this space since 1999 with patents of my own and have yet to see a more elegant solution. We have heard many similar comments from everyone that has had a chance to take this for a test drive.