Video on monroenews.com
The age of video on the Internet has reached monroenews.com
Our news staff, led by chief photographer Bryan Bosch, has begun experimenting with adding video news coverage to our Web site.
Today is a good example: a short video that also includes some still photos of yesterday’s snow storm is available from the home page of monroenews.com. Click here to see video.
The increasing number of households with high-speed computer access has opened a world of possibilities, including adding video to our arsenal for telling stories.
The popularity of youtube.com has dramatized the potential of video on the Internet, and news organizations across the country are scrambling to figure out where it fits in.
For half-a-century, television has dominated the “moving-picture-and-sound” medium. Now anyone with an inexpensive video camera and a computer can enter the fray.
Today’s snow video was our third in the last couple weeks. Others covered a Carleton fire and the levies along Lake Erie.
We’re not sure where this is taking us - but then no one is very sure where new technology is taking media in general.
One thing I’m sure of: You can look for more videos in the future on monroenews.com.
p.s. We’re also interested in your videos. On today’s monroenews.com home page is an invitation to send home snow movies to me, to be posted on our Web site.
February 15th, 2007 at 7:02 am
Looks good, Dan! I think Bryan has an excellent future ahead of him in video reporting …
One suggestion I do have is that of the format used on the site. While a majority of web site visitors are likely getting to it via Microsoft Windows, there may still be some who are using Mac or Linux systems. These will probably have problems viewing a WMV file, as I do at the moment with the Mac OS X machine I have on my right. The Windows Media Player is available for this OS X machine, but not for Linux. It’s also very dependent on which browser is being used, even from within Windows.
The more commonly-used video format for all of these seems to be QuickTime. Of course, in the end, stats from your server will show what people are looking at the site with, and whether or not this is actually a concern at all. It may be that the WMV format will work just fine.
February 15th, 2007 at 7:27 am
Dave:
Thanks for the suggestions. We’re engaged in an ongoing discussion about the best format to use, and likely will do some experimenting over the next few weeks/months.
Thoughts, comments, suggestions, etc., are appreciated.