New Ad Technology Links Users to Brands, Products Inside Web Video

A new ad technology for video games offers an alternative to ad interruptions endured by online video viewers and gamers.

GET Interactive is launching a new opt-in platform called Ad Venture 1.0, which links users with brands and products featured inside the content.

GET works with music labels, TV producers, movie studios and game developers “to facilitate product placement and promotions with brands,” according to information from the company. And instead of stuffing ads into already graphic-rich games, the firm nurtures intuitive relationships, both within the game and offline, between advertisers and gaming brands.

Streaming Flash Video Will Go HD, Says Adobe

Streaming video will get a little sharper and a little richer soon, as Adobe announced today that the next release version of its Flash Player 9 will support the H.264 standard.

Codenamed “Moviestar,” the update will also support High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio, hardware acceleration, and multi-core enhanced full-screen video. While the final release version of the player won’t be available until the fall, a beta version of the update is currently downloadable from Adobe Labs.

This improvement will let video creators shooting in HD bring that footage directly to the Web, without converting their work to standard definition video. As the latest version of Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects support H.264 encoding, Adobe is now offering a complete workflow for online HD.

Currently, over 98 percent of Internet-connected computers support Flash, so there won’t be a problem with users not having the software to view the H.264 Flash video. Viewers who don’t upgrade on their own will simply be prompted to upgrade their software the first time they attempt to view video made with the H.264 codec.

An Adobe representative couldn’t comment on the bit rate of streaming H.264 Flash, since the rate depends on the resolution of the particular clip. So the bandwidth required to play the higher-resolution video remains to be seen. Viewers will need to have a newer computer to get the full benefits of the H.264-supported Flash Player, though: Adobe suggests that viewers have a 3.0-GHz Windows computer or a 2.0-GHz Macintosh computer to view 720p or 1080p hi-def content.

Likewise, the Adobe representative couldn’t comment on how much greater video quality the average user would see with the new Flash Player, since that will depend on how the material is encocded. While the rep thought people would notice the difference in quality, he couldn’t say by how much.

It will be interesting to see how H.264 support broadens high-definition video on the Web. For example, YouTube has already encoded all of its files into streaming H.264 MOV files for Apple TV and iPhone playback. Those same files will play on the new Flash Player, although YouTube hasn’t announced if it will broadly distribute them.

Casio Exilim Announced With YouTube Movie Capture Mode

Casio has announced two new digital cameras – the Exilim EX-S880 and Exilim EX-Z77 – and an agreement with YouTube to make it easy for users to make movies and upload them to the popular video-sharing service. Similar to their arrangement with ebay last year, the agreement with YouTube will utilize the MPEG-4 H.264 movie capturing ability of the cameras to take “YouTube ready” movies. Additional bundled software will make it easy for users to upload and share their movies as quickly as possible.

The YouTube Capture mode on the new S880 and Z77 will record movies at a resolution of 640×480 at frame rates up to 30 frames per second. The H.264 compression scheme is “ideal” for recording longer movies without losing quality. The bundled software provides ideal settings for YouTube and allows easy storage and upload of movies to YouTube, even multiple movies at one time. The software is supposed to make it easy with three quick steps: “connect, upload, and click”.

iBar

iBar is a system for the interactive design of any bar-counter. Integrated video-projectors can project any content on the milky bar-surface. The intelligent tracking system of iBar detects all objects touching the surface. This input is used to let the projected content interact dynamically with the movements on the counter. Objects can be illuminated at their position or virtual objects can be “touched” with the fingers.

New high definition video camera recorder format

The “AVCHD” is a brand new high definition (HD) digital video camera recorder format recording 1080i and 720p signals onto certain media by using highly efficient codec technologies. The “AVCHD” is jointly established by Panasonic, the brand name for which Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. is known and Sony Corporation.

The following companies have expressed support for the AVCHD format as of September 27th, 2006: Adobe Systems Incorporated
CANON INC., CyberLink Corporation, InterVideo, Inc., MainConcept AG, Nero AG, PIONEER CORPORATION, PIXELA CORPORATION, SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO.,LTD., SHARP CORPORATION, Sonic Solutions, Ulead Systems, Inc.