New tools and technologies make it easier to create professional-quality video and send it throughout your company
Alan Joch, Senior Editor
Digital video could be the next killer application if it weren't for the steep technical hurdles that have to be overcome to create, transport, and compress the medium. Nevertheless, some pioneering companies outside the professional video industry are using it to conduct business more efficiently and profitably.
New and less-expensive hardware and software for nonlinear editing brings professional-quality tools to within the budgets of the general-business community. Choices of ways to send video over networks are expanding. Lower-priced and higher-quality compression techniques make creating, storing, and sending massive video files practical. The stories that follow de
lve into each of these areas in detail.
But just solving technical problems isn't enough to solidify digital video's role for general business. Ten years ago, desktop publishing brought the graphics designer's tools to the masses, and ever since, we've been buffeted by the eye-boggling multitypeface memos created by design amateurs. As digital video moves into the mainstream, it will require the same learning curve as amateurs learn how to effectively use the medium. In its research into what attracts people to use interactive kiosks, IBM found that digital video can be both compelling and daunting: Video clips from 3 to 5 seconds long had a positive impact, but anything longer tended to lose kiosk users' interest.
Today's hottest video applications include video conferencing, distance learning, corporate training, and sales presentations, in addition to kiosks. However, expect it to be two to three years before digital video takes over most desktops. Emerging markets will remain key for now, be
cause, as Paul Callahan, director of networking strategy at Forrester Research, Inc. (Cambridge, MA), explains, while compelling, digital video isn't critical yet to doing business for most companies. For video to become ubiquitous, hardware vendors must seed the market. "You've got to give it away," says Callahan. That process has already begun. Graphics chips vendors are introducing accelerators with on-chip motion video capabilities that will make 30 fps (frames per second) a throw-in item for Windows systems.
Even so, is digital-video production ready for prime time? To find out, we rolled up our sleeves and created our own digital-video project. "BYTE's Video Workshop" recounts our experience and offers some surprising insights into what video nonprofessionals will need in terms of hardware, software, time, and expertise. Technology may soon bring video to a screen near you, but creating it remains an art.
Beyond Hollywood
