Blogs

Once you have kids, you can no longer post your own accomplishments on the refrigerator door for the world to see; it’s too crowded, and the kids don’t really care. So I thought I would post a lovely note I got from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) here. Five out of five for engineers, which usually are a pretty …

I recently signed up for Comcast broadband and just got my first invoice-in the form of a custom video. Pretty cool idea given that broadband users run the gamut from tech-savvy to technology laggards, and the bill lays the charges out in a very clear manner. If you’re a Comcast user, this is probably old hat; if not, have a …

Encoding.com just published a best practices article entitled, The Current State of Android and Video, A Full Overview & Best Practices of Android Video. The article first outlines the issues relating to encoding for Android delivery, and then discusses different alternatives for distributing to these devices, including Encoding.com’s own Vid.ly service. Topics covered include captioning, digital rights management (DRM), compatibility …

There have been a lot of quick hit articles both praising and bashing DASH, but few scholarly articles that take a deep look at the technology, its promise and limited progress to date. In a new article up on the Streaming Media website, entitled MPEG-DASH: Making Tracks Toward Widespread Adoption, Adrian Pennington takes a long hard look at DASH, with …

I’ve long been a DASH skeptic, for multiple reasons, including the fact that the standard was so broad so as to be almost unusable. That is, since DASH supports multiple codecs and container formats, there’s no mechanism to ensure compatibility. So, if Mozilla adds DASH playback support that decodes WebM encoded video in an MPEG-2 transport stream, and Elemental produces …

I’ll be teaching a webinar for the Poynter News University on Thurday, July 18 at 2:00 PM EST. The title is How to Make Video Play Across Multiple Screens, and that describes the content. The course is entry level by design, so won’t get bogged down in technical details. Here’s the description from the sign-up page. Video engages viewers, expands …

During the first few months of 2013, I had to privilege to write the Adobe Premiere Pro CC Visual QuickStart Guide (VQS) with Shawn Lam, who penned three of the fifteen chapters. I’ve always liked the VQS format, which features quick hit, detailed answers, rather than the start to finish tutorials provided by the Classroom in a Book series. This …

Just a quick note to let you know that Producing Streaming Video for Multiple Screen Delivery is now available in the iBookstore for $19.99, a savings of $20 over the paper book version. Ever since I saw iBooks Author, I’ve wanted to convert a book over to the rich format, where pictures are in full color and scalable to full …

Doug Dixon is an independent technology consultant, contributing editor to Interent Video Magazine, and contributor to Conde Nast Traveler Magazine who makes his work available on his Manifest Technology website. He’s written multiple technologically-oriented books, so he knows technology and how hard it is to write a book on fast changing technologies. He’s one of several technology writers that I …

Continuing education vendor Suncam charged $50 for DVDs, and offered the same video for free via streaming. Which cost more? The DVDs, even after the $50. SunCam is a Florida company and consulting client that provides continuing education courses and related certification tests in a range of disciplines, including engineering, construction, surveying, project management and others. Some courses are taught …