WorldTV

One of the lesser-known features of WorldTV’s highly flexible video platform is that you can create a playlist of videos out of FLV files, and generate an embeddable player, just as easily as creating a player for say YouTube or Vimeo videos.

If you have content in FLV format (or any format that is supported by Flash 10 – eg MP4 or M4V) and can host those video files on a webserver, you can easily string together those files into a playlist within the WorldTV system, and generate an embeddable player that you can host on your own website. WorldTV makes this extremely easy to do. Here’s how you do it.

Step 1 – Create the FLV files
Take your video content and convert it to FLV format. There are lots of programs that will let you do this. A good (paid) option is the Flix range of encoders. These are used by many professionals. For a free option, check out this easy-to-follow guide on our Founder’s blog.

Step 2 – Host the FLV files on a webserver
WorldTV does not typically offer hosting of FLV files although we do have a hosting solution for large customers. There are many excellent hosts out there and if you are reading this you probably know the options already or have your own hosting. If you don’t, we recommend establishing a hosting account with someone like Servint (we use them) or exploring cloud based hosting using Amazon S3. A low cost host we recommend is Gearhost who have packages starting at under $10 a month for 100GB of monthly transfer. Simply upload your FLV (or MP4/MV4/H264) files to your webserver, and write down the URL for each file.

Step 3 – Paste the URL’s into the WorldTV Editor
This step couldn’t be easier. Assuming you have already established a channel (account) on WorldTV, simply paste the URL’s for each FLV file into the ‘Add by URL’ box within the WorldTV Editor. An example of a URL might be http://www.somedomain.com/mycoolvideo.flv. Each video will immediately appear within your library, complete with a thumbnail, and you can double click it right away to preview it!

Step 4 – Arrange the videos into a Playlist
Simply drag and drop your videos into the desired order within the Playlist section of the Editor

Step 5 – Generate an Embeddable Player
Using the Promote tab within the Editor choose from a range of widgets and players. Grab the embed code and put it on your site.

WorldTV really is the easiest and best method yet to create a playlist out of FLV files to embed on your website. With full H264 support, and an expanding range of player skins and options, there really is no excuse not to have video on your website!

Last Friday we ventured into somewhat unfamiliar territory, having agreed to produce and direct a Live, two hour fly-on-the-wall documentary from one of London’s finest restaurants.

The idea was to film a special ‘tasting’ event for top London food critics and broadcast it to people around the world via the web. This is the story of how we did it, and what it might mean for WorldTV in future… Read the rest of this entry »

The issue of copyright infringement is something that most people are aware of. It’s pretty obvious that if you take a recent movie or TV show and rebroadcast it or distribute it online in its entirety, that is copyright infringement. But are you aware that a legal principle of ‘fair use’ exists, and has done so for more than 150 years? And that ‘fair use’ means that much of the current trend for mashups and parodies of copyrighted content is, in fact, totally allowed?

The US based ‘Center for Social Media‘ is an organization with a good track record of educating everyday people about the law, and establishing guidelines that people within the legal world actually follow. They’ve just released a ‘Code of Best Practices for Online Video‘ which we think will be of interest to many WorldTV producers.

In the spirit of fair use itself, we’ve reproduced the main points below. Do read the whole document if you intend to make use of these provisions.

What is Fair Use of copyright material?

Here are the main principles of ‘fair use’.

• Commenting on or critiquing of copyrighted material
• Using copyrighted material for illustration or example
• Capturing copyrighted material incidentally or accidentally
• Reproducing, reposting or quoting in order to memorialize, preserve, or rescue an experience, an event, or a cultural phenomenon
• Copying, reposting, and recirculating a work or part of a work for purposes of launching a discussion
• Quoting in order to recombine elements to make a new work that depends for its meaning on (often unlikely) relationships between the elements

A PDF of the guidelines can be found here, an online version is here.

Big news in WorldTV land. Starting today, you can now broadcast LIVE to your WorldTV channel from your mobile phone.

We’ve partnered with the hottest name in mobile phone broadcasting, Qik, to allow for a whole range of new functionality that is really very cool.

Basically how it works is that you can now use your mobile phone as a live video camera for WorldTV, which can ‘take over’ your WorldTV channel whenever you feel like it. If someone is watching your channel when you start recording video using your phone, the ‘regularly scheduled programming’ (your playlist) is paused, and the live signal from your phone begins. As soon as you stop using your phone, the regular programming resumes from the point you left off. Simple!

All the live recordings that you make with your phone are automatically archived as clips in your Library. This means you can capture video of events that you’re at, safe in the knowledge that you’ll have a copy of them stored in your WorldTV Library. You can then download them to your hard drive by right-clicking on the file in your Library. You can do this for any file in your Library actually.

A range of useful options let you customize the functionality as you wish. For example, you can choose not to have your phone recordings go live on your WorldTV channel as you’re making them, but be archived straight to your Library instead.

You can choose sound effects and text that play when a live broadcast begins. At the moment, around 40 phones are supported, all from Nokia. More are on the way. If you’re in the market for a new phone we recommend the Nokia N95 or the Nokia E51 (with camera). Both phones work great with WorldTV and Qik.

There’s a number of ways you can use this new functionality.

• As a simple means to record things while you’re out and about, knowing they will be safely archived in your WorldTV library without you having to do anything else. No messy cables or confusing software to deal with.
• Live broadcasts from concerts or events for your friends. Simply tell your friends to go to your WorldTV channel and when you start broadcasting live, the channel will automatically switch to the live stream. If you use Twitter, Qik can notify your Twitter followers whenever you are broadcasting live.
• Become a Lifecaster. Basically you can now broadcast any interesting (or not so interesting!) happenings in your life to friends, family and indeed the World. Walking down the street, going for a drive, on the beach, at a party.
• Add live content to your WorldTV channel from other Qik broadcasters. If you find someone who regularly broadcasts on the Qik.com site, you can add them as a ’source’ without having to own a supported phone yourself. Simply add their Qik username as a source.

Qik will guide you through the process of setting up your phone for live streaming. The instructions are not terribly complicated, but you should set aside 30 mins or so to get it right. This is cutting edge stuff.

The basic process is this…

1. You sign up for an account on Qik.com (Use this link and you’ll be approved for a Qik account right away)
2. They send you an SMS with a link to install the Qik live broadcasting software on your phone
3. Play around with the software and phone, make sure your videos are appearing in your Qik account (on Qik.com). If you get a ‘certificate error’ issue upon installation, see this solution.
4. Create a custom Qik username for your Qik profile. In other words… change your Qik username to something more memorable. This part is important. Use the ‘Edit my profile’ link when logged into Qik and select ‘Change your username’.
5. Add your new Qik username to your existing WorldTV channel in the Editor (on the ‘Phone’ tab)
6. Configure any options you want using our handy wizard, or simply use the defaults
7. Start broadcasting live from your mobile phone to WorldTV

Like everything on WorldTV at the moment, this service is in ‘beta’, meaning there may still be quirks while we iron out the wrinkles. We really value your feedback, so please make use of the new feedback tab on the left of these pages to tell us what you think, or how it could be improved. If you have any difficulties getting it set up, feel free to comment directly on this post below and we can then respond publicly so everyone can benefit from the advice.

Qik are a cool company that launched the same time as WorldTV. We’ll be working with them to bring you many more cool features in future.

N.B. If you’re an existing Qik user coming to WorldTV for the first time, you can import all your existing Qik videos into WorldTV simply by pasting in your Qik URL (eg qik.com/smashing) into the ‘Add Clip by URL’ tab on WorldTV. You’ll need to create a channel on WorldTV first which takes no time at all. Simply use our very easy-to-use channel creation wizard.