Video’s Place in the Memory Mix

Video’s Place in the Memory Mix

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If you, the photo retailer, are also a typical consumer of Internet content in 2008, you spend at least as much time absorbed in slide show montages (e.g., T-Magazine at the New York Times Web site) or video clips as you do glancing at digital stills or actually reading.

Models prancing, reality show “stars” emoting, youngsters cavorting, goofballs of all ages making Johnny Knoxville look, well, magisterial by comparison—it’s all out there and much of it is video.

No surprise, really, for the Internet never really functioned as a book or magazine. It’s always been more like television with captions.

This is only more the case with Web 2.0, where the move from static, mostly corporate material to freewheeling social network has jumped two or three iterations in a condensed timeline of about 18 months—and, changed consumption patterns in the media in the transition. As the Online Publishers Association recently noted, 24% of Internet users look at video at least once a week, while 46% do so once monthly.

News, OPA said, is most frequently viewed online, with 27% of viewers watching at least once a week. Twenty six percent reported watching funny videos that often. Much of the latter content is amateur or mash-ups with ample amateur content. (If you want something gross and amusing, for instance, Google “Neti Pot” and learn more about the fine art of nasal cleansing.) In case you’ve been locked out in the cold you may have noticed: the era of video blogging and video clip uploading is firmly upon us.

The equipment’s out there

In some ways, the barrage of video clips available for Internet viewing makes nothing but common sense. They are the natural collision of an estimated 600 million plus mobile camera phones sold worldwide in 2007 (plus the wider sale of smaller, easier-to-handle digital videocams) and sufficient bandwidth for presentation. Call it, the “YouTube-ification” of America.

With the tools and equipment to record anything from the sublime to the really, really off but giggle- inducing, well, why not?

Still, there is some substance at play, too.

“Particularly for the Millennials, the Internet is a place to share memories with friends. It’s how they create communities and cultivate friendships,” notes Lisa Walker, president, i3A, who referenced findings from a recent consumer panel discussion that she took part in on the subject of digital camera use.

“In some ways, this group is a bit too trusting of the technology,” says Walker. “The youngest video camera users haven’t thought through preservation issues and shifting formats—that sort of thing. But the point is, they are very enthusiastic about keeping content online.”

Part of the memory business?

Yet, you might not surf all that much or have considered any of this, beyond the notion that “being online” is a habit keeping your 12-year-old silently tapping on a keyboard for what seems like a dog’s age.

Maybe you should. After all, retailers are in the memory preservation business as much as they are in the photography business, points out Alexis Gerard, founder and president of Future Image, Monteray, Calif., which hosts the 6Sight: The Future of Imaging conference, slated for November 18-20, in Monteray, California.

Gerard goes on to say that, sure, there are photo and video enthusiasts who collect equipment, knowledge, and techniques merely for the pleasure of artistry. (A friend of mine, for instance, was moved during a Saturday afternoon stroll to shoot pictures of garbage piling up near the East River behind a housing project in Astoria, part of Queens.)

However, for most amateur videographers, images are collected to remind them of a few of their favorite things.

Or, as research in social uses of personal media has shown, according to Nancy Van House, School of Information, University of California at Berkeley, preservation of personal and group memories is up there with personal expression and self-portraiture (what some call self branding) in driving use of video blogging, the placement of digital video clips on blog sites. While it may be less of a factor on YouTube, some performers do use the medium as a kind of archive of performance footage as well as a way to get their act known.

The Ability to Relive Key Moments

While it’s not clear statistically what demographic groups are actively making and posting video clips, anecdotal evidence suggests that using the video digital camera as an informal but deliberate archival instrument is beginning to gain traction among a broader demographic of consumers who happen to share the trait of being early adopters.

The proud Mom, the Uncle, the friend who loves your kids almost as much as you do, is capturing moments with videocams, digital still camera video clips or camera mobiles because, at some point, it will let them re-live key moments or build narratives that become part of an “official” family story: think of it as the favorite family tale about Uncle Harry and the Lampshade that gets mentioned every Thanksgiving, only increasingly, these tales will have pics/video to “go with” them. And increasingly, consumers may come packing real heat: a feature-rich high-end camera for special occasions and an everyday camera good enough to pick up something random but picture-worthy on an ordinary day. While YouTube videographers are fine with hacking it out on their own to find ways to edit things, mash content up, and post it, consumers in other groups will need services, and/or guidance on what to do with these clips. (For instance, PMA recently announced the availability of a guide, The Camera Phone Print Guide, for retailers who are promoting non-standard photo products to present to their customers).

True, early sites like Flickr and FlipClips are providing this “memory preservation” group a forum to family, friends, and the broader world of surfers. And, there are other consumer-oriented sites starting to gain popularity, adds Andy Marken, a Santa Clara-based publicist with many video industry clients. Pinnacle’s VideoSpin is a free offering that supports editing, authoring, and uploading to the Web. RealAllusion’s Crazy Talk5, just introduced, lets users take stills and animate them, adding voices. Cyberlink’s new DVD Suite is a 10.1 product that gives users many editing features as well as back-up.

“In the past, photo editing software was difficult to use, so it never gained broad adoption beyond photo enthusiasts,” notes Paul Worthington, a senior analyst at Future Image who follows software and devices making the grade online and off. “Now, simpler software programs like DaVinci from Chroma Software is making posting images more popular.”

Worthington points out that the ongoing popularity of cameras like Pure Digital’s Flip and the increased quality of the video feature in digital still cameras have made cameras more accessible and consumers more interested in generating more content. As easy-to-use editing environments gain adoption, the lines between content producer and consumer will get even more blurred, Worthington indicates.

Some are going with it. As a way to reach into the emerging markets represented by social networking sites, Mitch Goldstone, owner of 30 Minute Photos and ScanMyPhotos.com recently offered a promotion offering to scan up to 1,000 4×6” snapshots, a $49.95 value, for free, to FaceBook, MySpace, Blogger or Flickr members. While Goldstone admitted that he saw videoclips as very much an Internet-only phenomenon, he also said that services to blend and transfer video clips to DVD might catch on.

Making a Memory

When it comes to the memories themselves, says Gerard, the challenge has always been capturing them at appropriate lengths and saving them in a way that is easily retrievable—and it’s here that experts might be able to lend a hand to amateurs, finding ways to help the amateur zero in on a home movie masterpiece. At the very least, help them get organized! Look in the closet of the average person’s home and see what’s stockpiled, or as Mitch Goldstone puts it, “there are 3.5 trillion treasured analog photo snapshots hiding in shoeboxes.” The problem with video is only amplified. Think of it: in your urge to capture your adorable 5-year-old blowing out the candles or in your desire to get the 10 minutes of your 7-year-old ripping through birthday or Christmas wrappings, you might be stuck with lots of bad cake takes or two hours of party footage that didn’t really frame “family moments of wonder,” probably you’re original intention.

Same challenge with that trip to Thailand, Rome, or Peru. Did you as the consumer or producer of those memories use the device to capture what you wanted, or did the device dictate the terms of the capture?

“Increasingly, we’ll have capture devices that will be flexible enough, mobile enough, to let us take the images that we want and easily tag and organize them,” says Gerard.

As a retailer, such airy questions have an underside that’s about cold, hard cash. You can help that consumer plot their next move with archival and presentation: ever more sophisticated slideshows that are just as long as they need to be, and properly themed, to cement a memory. After all, the advent of “universal capture” devices, ones that can take stills and videos equally well, will only mean more content and more opportunity…for you. yy

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