Eddie.com

Drones | Video

Why I’m Giving up on Creative Commons on YouTube

I’ve been a long-time supporter of Creative Commons content licensing, which facilitates the proliferation of art and culture through sharing. On Flickr, I license the majority of my photos CC BY-NC-SA. It’s a good implementation and I’m happy to support people using my stuff non-commercially as I have other artists’ works.

Not so on YouTube. I recently came across this opportunistic individual who took my drone video of Burning Man 2013 and reposted it in its entirety to YouTube under the inaccurate and misleading title “Drone’s Eye View of Burning Man 2014.” A few issues here.

1. It’s not a video from 2014. This guy just reposted my 2013 video using a very SEO friendly title, as apparently a lot of people are searching for Burning Man 2014 drone videos. Google is happy to send people his way.

2. He’s monetized my video, I have not. I explicitly chose not to monetize the video as I was abiding by Burning Man’s noncommercial ethos. At almost 100k views, this guy is surely profiting.

3. There’s not much I can do about it.

The reason I can’t do anything about is I originally licensed my video CC BY, YouTube’s only Creative Commons license option. CC BY means that a user can do whatever they want with it, just as long as they give proper attribution to the creator (more on that later). Commercial use is allowed, which YouTube makes very easy by letting the resulting video be monetized with ads. Combine that with an SEO friendly, yet inaccurate and misleading title, and PROFIT!

YT Licenses

I never expected that someone would repost the video in its entirety and monetize tons of views from it, or that YouTube would make this so easy.

The intention of CC licenses, as I’ve always believed, is to grease the wheels of culture. To create a repository of creative work that can be drawn upon to make new creative works. There are a handful of different Creative Commons license options that allow a creator to decide how they wish their works to be used. I generally go with CC BY-NC-SA which stands for “By Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike.” By using this license I’m stating that you are welcome to use my works non-commercially in your own work as long as you properly attribute it to me and share the resulting work in the same manner. If you want to use my works commercially, you are welcome to contact me and see if I’m open to a deal. Otherwise, there is no need to get my permission as long as you adhere to these terms.

The real issue is YouTube’s remix tool is horribly broken. Of the 68 videos that users have “remixed” from my video, 36 are wholesale reposts of my entire video (many of which are monetized with ads). 28 are by accounts that have since been deleted by YouTube for various TOS violations and a whopping THREE are actual original new works in which a sample of my video appears.

YouTube Videos Using This Content

How YouTube fulfills CC’s attribution requirement is also broken. CC BY license stipulates, “If supplied, you must provide the name of the creator and attribution parties, a copyright notice, a license notice, a disclaimer notice, and a link to the material.” To find this info on YouTube, you must go a video’s landing page and first click the “SHOW MORE” text in the description below the video. Here the Creative Commons Attribution license with link is clearly displayed. Below this, there’s a “View attributions” link which needs to be clicked to discover the original author’s credit and source video link. There’s no way the average YouTube user is going to go through these steps to learn what they are viewing was partially or wholly created by someone else.

Drone_s_eye_view_of_Burning_Man_2014_-_YouTube_1

2nd click

It’s really unfortunate that YouTube doesn’t offer different flavors of CC licenses like Flickr has been doing for years. Had BY NC been an option, monetization could be prevented. I guess it’s not in YouTube’s interest to offer video hosting for videos that can never be monetized.

As long as YouTube’s CC implementation is broken, I will not participate in it. I’ve rolled back the CC licenses on 35 of my videos to YouTube’s Standard license. Not ideal, but at least I have some recourse if someone now tries to profit from my videos.

It’s a real bummer as Creative Commons is a great resource for source material for making art and furthering remix culture. I really hope YouTube cares enough to get it right.

Live Streaming | NAB

New Livestream Hardware at NAB 2014

At this year’s annual NAB Show in Las Vegas, there was a lot to be excited about in the world of live Internet broadcasting.

Livestream at NAB

Livestream, the live Internet broadcast platform, had quite a large footprint this year to show off their new wares. Livestream is best known for their live streaming service, but increasingly is becoming a full professional end-to-end broadcast solution. This mean the introduction of a bundle of new beautifully designed video switching and encoding hardware this year.

Livestream has introduced new models of their Livestream Studio live production switcher. When Studio was introduced last year, the Studio HD500 was released as a portable PC-based plug-n-play switcher/encoder. This was followed by a software only version that anyone can run on their own off-the-shelf PC reference hardware with capture cards.

For 2014, Livestream has expanded their lineup with the HD51, HD510 and the HD1710 Studio models. All models are multi-channel HD live production switchers that squarely take aim at Newtek’s Tricaster. The HD51 and HD510 can take up to five HD-SDI or HDMI sources, with the HD510 including a touch-screen monitor built in to its portable form factor. The HD51, and more expansive HD1710, require external monitors. The HD1710 can take in up to a whopping 17 HD-SDI video sources that all can be displayed across four multi-view monitors and switched live. All models allow for multiple channel ISO recording in AVI MJPEG format. Not the best if your workflow is editing in Final Cut Pro 7, but plenty fine if you’re using Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro X. A Livestream rep told me Quicktime format support will be forthcoming.

Livestream Studio™ Tech Specs

The new awesome hardware doesn’t end there. Taking a cue from Apple’s industrial design department, Livestream has introduced a new hardware control surface simply called Surface. This control surface gives you an intuitive and customizable interface to all the controls of the Studio software interface. Every slider, knob and toggle of Surface is mapped directly to their software functions in Studio. Surface is actually composed of two modules, Core and Track. Core is the main switching control surface that works with up to 5 source channels. Track is the add-on module that gives you 15 more source channels to control, something you’ll want if you have a Studio HD1710.

Livestream Studio HD1710

Livestream Studio combined with Surface looks to be a formidable competitor to Newtek’s Tricaster line. Features such as multiple program outputs, graphic overlays and titles, downstream keying are all native to Studio. One thing I’d like to see better support for is expanded audio input connections. Livestream’s switchers have one or two 1/8″ mini jacks for audio, otherwise audio is expected to come in embedded over the HDMI and HD-SDI inputs. The specs on the HD500 and HD1710 do claim they can take up to four 1/4″ RTS analog audio inputs, though it looks like you’ll need to have a nest of breakout cable snakes to pull this off as these models use Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink Studio capture card for this. Tricaster does have the advantage here in that XLR and TRS analog audio input connections are natively hardware mounted across their line.

Livestream Surface

Another standout feature for Studio is the ability to mix in a variety of remote camera sources. Smartphones running the Livestream app, Teradek and Broadcaster wireless camera-top encoders and even Google Glass are all supported live sources.

As an encoder, Livestream Studio supports all major streaming platforms and RTMP destinations. YouTube and Ustream profiles are populated in the destinations menu. Though Livestream does include a year of their broadcast Platform service with their hardware, using it is by no means required. I’ve written about Livestream’s service offerings previously.

All told, Livestream is firmly carving out a beautifully designed, intuitive, end-to-end live broadcast ecosystem. We’ll be keeping our eyes on them as they grow.

Drones | Video

Aerial Footage from Burning Man 2013

I’ve been really getting into shooting aerial drone video lately. I took my rig to Burning Man recently and here’s the results. This was shot using a DJI Phantom with an Arris CM2000 gimbal and a GoPro Hero3:Black in 1080p60. Be sure to watch in HD at full screen. Enjoy!

Drone’s eye view of Burning Man 2013 from ekai on Vimeo.

Projects | Self Promotion | Video

The DEFCON Documentary

DEFCON: The Documentary, the film I helped shoot last year for intrepid nerd documentarian Jason Scott, is complete and ready for viewing. This doc chronicles the history of the world’s largest computer hacking conference, on its 20th anniversary as it took place in Las Vegas. There is so much packed into this. Even if you’ve never been to or heard of DEFCON, you’ll find this film to be quite accessible. Hundreds of hours of footage went into the making of this as did thousands of hours of Jason’s time directing and editing the thing. I’m quite proud of the results and am honored to have taken part in its creation.

You can watch the whole thing below, or grab the legal 720p torrent and download it. It’s also on YouTube. You can also find it on the Internet Archive, complete with subtitles.

DEFCON: The Documentary from Jason Scott on Vimeo.

Live Streaming

YouTube Live Threshold Lowered to 100 Subscribers

YouTube Live

This is a bit of great news for those looking to live stream inexpensively (FREE) an event without annoying pre-roll or overlay advertising. YouTube, which has been experimenting with live streaming in various stages since 2008, has lowered the threshold to qualify to use their YouTube Live streaming service. As of Friday, YouTube account holders only need to have 100 subscribers to their channel and be in good standing to use the new live streaming features. If you can’t get 100 subscribers, then you should be probably just leave the Internet.

A quick rundown of the features that make YouTube Live so compelling:

Completely free live streaming with no advertising (unless you want it, then you can opt-in to revenue share)
Supports up to 1080p HD streams at 6Mb/s
Multi-bitrate transcoding – encode one HD stream and other bitrates are automatically generated and offered in player (1080, 720, 480, 360, 240)
Mobile/tablet support (Android & iOS)
DVR feature – automatically rewind to an earlier part of a live broadcast
Automatic recording of live event (up to 4 hours in length)
Detailed real-time analytics
Free desktop encoder software – Wirecast for YouTube

To get started, log into your YouTube account. Go to Channel Settings -> Features. Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see a line that says Live events. Click the button that says Enable next to it. If you don’t see Enable, keep checking back as YouTube is rolling out Live gradually to handle the expected load. See the YouTube Live Streaming Guide for more info. Happy streaming!

YouTube Live enable

Live Streaming | San Francisco | Self Promotion

Kicking off the Inaugural Meetup of SF Bay Area Webcasters and Live Streamers

SF Bay Area Webcaster Meetup

I started a Meetup group for webcasters and live streamers in the San Francisco bay area. We’re having our first meetup event this Tuesday, June 4th at 7pm. Check the Meetup event page for details. This is the first of what I’m intending to be a monthly series. Each meetup will have two or three presenters covering the gamut of live streaming.

For this first one, I’ll do a quick slideshow presentation of my experiences producing events for Ustream and Eddie.com. Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent, will also give a high-level overview of BitTorrent Live, his latest creation. BitTorrent Live is a new peer-to-peer live streaming protocol that leverages peer connections to scale large live Internet broadcasts, potentially saving broadcasters a ton of money in distribution costs, while maintaining high reliability.

Since this is a meetup about streaming, we’ll of course stream the meetup. We’ll push to Ustream and BitTorrent Live. I’ll post the channel info here and in the group, check back or just come down and join the fun!

NAB | Video

Evertz Dreamcatcher Instant Replay System at NAB 2013

Ok, this is beyond the scope of what most live stream producers would ever need in their workflow, but the Evertz Dreamcatcher is pretty damn cool.

The Dreamcatcher is a 48-channel 4k instant replay system that you might find in use at say, the Super Bowl. As you can see in this video, an editor can easily scrub to a point in live captured footage and then select a portion of the frame as your edited output. If you’re shooting with 4k cameras, you can output that selection as full resolution 1080 HD. Not a bad trick, if you can afford it. No idea how much these go for, but you can bet a fully kitted system is in the 6 to 7 figures.

Live Streaming | NAB | Video

Sony Anycast Touch All-in-One Live Video Switcher, Recorder, Encoder and Streamer at NAB 2013

In the all-in-one live production switcher and streamer category comes the Sony Anycast Touch. This looks to be a convenient portable solution, especially if you’ve already invested in Sony PTZ cameras.

What’s unique about this guy is that it’s all about the touch screen. Everything is driven by either selecting shots and elements on the primary multi-view touch screen or the secondary smaller “settings” touchscreen.

The Anycast Touch can take up to six HD inputs (4 HD-SDI, 2 HDMI). The HDMI inputs can be substituted for RGB inputs from VGA computer sources. It can also take 4 separate audio sources over XLR or 1/4″ TRS.

Program mix outputs include 2 HD-SDI, an HDMI and a VGA RGB connection. There’s also an HDMI port for duplicating your multi-view primary touch screen on a separate monitor. Also included are several USB 3.0 ports for importing content or exporting recorded video from the Touch’s internal 192GB SSD storage.

The built-in streaming encoder will encode your program output in H.264/AAC and stream to any RTMP based CDN or your favorite live streaming platform.

The Touch has CG titling capabilities, graphic overlay layers, transitions and the ability to create templates with these elements and camera picture-in-picture.

Probably the most compelling, if you already own Sony PTZ robocams, is that the Touch will control them. You can create scenes that lock in camera positions for easy dynamic switching.

At an expected retail cost of $20k, this unit will likely challenge Newtek’s TriCaster in some key markets such as schools, churches, corporate communications and amateur sports.

Engadget has a video of a Sony rep giving the rundown.

Live Streaming | NAB

Newtek TriCaster 8000 at NAB 2013

Newtek’s TriCaster is the current gold standard for a portable, live broadcast video switcher with all the bells and whistles that a live production might require. I use a TriCaster 455 and 855 for many events I produce and really have few complaints.

The relatively new TriCaster 8000 (retail $40,000) expands on the feature sets of Newtek’s previous models. Like the 855, the 8000 can handle eight HD-SDI video sources simultaneously and record each ISO separately. The 8000 expands on their virtual sets, transitions, animations, media players and live streaming integration.

I asked a Newtek rep what his favorite feature of the 8000 is and his response was the social media integration. You can apparently make quick clips of video or stills and push them out to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter all from within the TriCaster control interface. I suppose if you’re a lean operation and you’ve got one guy doing everything, then I guess this makes sense. From my experience, anyone who is directing and switching a live event, will have his hands full just doing that.