Today, SublimeVideo, a cloud-based HTML5 video player service, is launching commercially with plans starting at under $10 per month. Developers will also have access to a free, unlimited plan which they can use for testing purposes. The service, developed by Switzerland-based development and design firm Jilion, allows Web publishers to easily deploy HTML5 video on their websites, without needing to understand the complexities of different browsers versions and their associated specifications.
Instead, with the SublimeVideo service, a plugin-free Web player is provided that uses HTML5 to display the embedded videos Web publishers want to host online. When a user visits a site using an older browser, a "fall back to Flash" mode switches the player to use Adobe Flash technology for more universal compatibility.
The video-sharing website Vimeo has finally released an iPhone app (iTunes link). And it's totally worth the wait. The new app doesn't just allow you to watch videos on your iPhone and share them to various social networks, but lets you actually edit the video as well.
The app is well-designed and easy-to-use. It includes a video recording interface that should make your mobile videos better, letting you capture video with focus control and grid alignment. Then, once recorded, you can edit and trim your videos, adding transitions, titles, special effects and music. Finished videos can be uploaded to Vimeo from within the app as well.
Earlier this month, Warner Bros announced that it would become the first Hollywood studio to make its movies available for sale or rental via Facebook. Its first offering: The Dark Knight. Now Warner Bros has added five more blockbuster titles to its Facebook rental catalog: Inception, Life as We Know It, Yogi Bear, and the first two Harry Potter movies.
The new films will cost between 30 and 40 Facebook credits (between $3 and $4) for a 48-hour rental period. During that time period, you'll have unlimited streaming access to the movie, meaning you can pause, rewind, watch on different computers, and watch numerous times. The movies are purchased and streamed within the Facebook page, meaning you won't have to leave the site in order to watch. You'll still be able to update your status and chat with friends. However, as the video player is Flash, you won't be able to watch your Facebook movies on your Apple devices.
Teenage musician Justin Bieber will see his music video Baby surpass 500 million views on YouTube today or tomorrow, making it the first video ever to do so. Bieber's Baby is now far ahead of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, which is #2 at 360 million. Only 4 other videos on the site have been viewed even half as much as Baby.
Where Bieber dominates the most, however, is in how much his videos are disliked by YouTube viewers. YouTube doesn't provide the option of viewing by most disliked but we analyzed the 150 most viewed videos and here's the harsh truth: Bieber stars in 5 of the top 6 most disliked videos on the site. The #1 most disliked video on YouTube is Baby, with 1.1 million dislikes. That's an incredible amount of dislike! In fact, it's 1 million more dislikes that the #2 most disliked video on the site - Bieber's Never Say Never, which has just under 100 thousand dislikes. We've posted a chart below of the top 10 most disliked videos on YouTube, which you can ponder while listening to Justin Bieber's Baby. UPDATE! There has been a disruption in the force and Rebecca Black's Friday has soared past all other challengers and will likely top Bieber as the most disliked video on the site any day or hour now. Update Again: It's officially over - Rebecca Black has won, or lost, depending on how you look at it.
Once a competitor of Skype, the video-streaming company Qik was acquired by the VOIP giant in January. But it appears this hasn't ended the development of Qik's live-streaming software, as Qik is launching a new iPhone app today.
Qik Video Connect offers video streaming and video calling - available for real-time viewing or recorded and sent as a video message. The app will also allow you to post live video links to Facebook and Twitter.
If you're an independent film lover, than big name online movie sites like Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand and Hulu Plus probably don't do it for you. They're full of blockbuster hits, mainstream movies and TV shows.
If, however, you're into cult classics, film noir, international hits and more, Fandor, the "online service for indie film fans," is for you.
There are already plenty of places to get licensed content streamed online - from Netflix to Amazon Video On Demand - and equally as many to stream video live. So where can YouTube go next with user-created online video?
YouTube's next step is just that - YouTube Next. The Google-owned video network acquired NextNewNetworks, a video network with more than 2 billion views and 6 million subscribers.
Sharing video with friends can be a pain. I can't count the number of times I've waited for minutes on end just to have Facebook tell me the upload failed for some unknown reason or another. And while it's easy to upload to YouTube, it isn't connected to my social graph and the videos just float out there in the void.
Justin.tv, the live streaming video site, has taken a crack at socially sharing video with Socialcam, an app that could quickly become as popular for sharing video as Instagram became for sharing pictures.
I just watched a few minutes of Zach Galifianakis mock-interviewing Tila Tequila and Jennifer Anniston on a faux TV interview show online. Now I'm that many minutes closer to my inevitable death.
Clicker.com, the website that brought me this experience, worthless but for the 15 second pre-roll commercial now buried somewhere in the part of my brain that might buy things, has been acquired by CBS this morning and its leader will now run the Interactive division (the future) of one of the biggest media companies in the world.
Netflix, the streaming movie and DVD subscription service, has continued on its march to a streaming-only future by removing the option to quickly and easily queue DVDs from yet another device.
The company announced in January that it would begin removing the option from "streaming devices," but we wonder if users - who were outraged at the idea - realized that the move would extend to devices like the iPad.
