Web 2.0 is not just articles recommendation; Web 2.0 is first and foremost a new way to publish multimedia content. This article compares the two encoding and publishing formats which aim to control the video coding and publishing industry: Adobe's flash and Microsoft's WMV.
When selecting the encoding and publishing format for a new Web 2.0 service one should consider the following technical aspects:
Market positioning – What did my peers selected?
Install base – how many clients and subscribers devices like PC, mobile handsets and personal players supports the format
Coding quality – Compare the bitrate required for each format in order to achieve the same quality
Tools and features – DRM, scripts and 3rd party tools
Review of subjects 2-4 will be done in the next postings while this posting reviews only the market positioning of Adobe and Microsoft in three main internet video publishing categories:
- UGC video services
- Social Networks
- Content selling services
UGC video services
UGC video services like YouTube and Metacafe have selected flash as their coding format. Revver, Grouper, iFilm, Brightcove and Veho also uses flash.
The only large UGC web site I found that don’t use flash is DivX Stage6 which obviously uses DivX for the coding. This however could affect the user experience and cause users to drop while trying to view their first video since viewing those video requires installation of the DivX codec, a process that might deter many viewers.
By the look of Microsft's UGC site, SoapBox, it seems that even Microsoft, adopted flash as its format for UGC video content.
Social Networks
Social Networks services are gaining high popularity in the last years. The most known social network is MySpace owned by News corp.
MySpace enables embedding of flash coded videos from UGC web sites like YouTube.
Another popular social network which started at Korea and now gains supporters in the US and Europe is CyWorld.
CyWorld enables uploading of all kind of content including WMV but streams video only in flash format.
Content Selling sites
Guba is one of the leading independent content selling sites offering TV series at 49c and movies starting from 99c. Guba is also using flash
Summary
It seems that flash video won the battle over Internet based video coding. Flash video position in the IPTV market is still not clear since it will have hard competition with H264 and Microsoft's backed WMV9.
