As part of the Streaming Media East conference in New York, Adobe has unveiled "Strobe," the "open framework" for its Flash video player that the company first announced last month. It's expected to be available in the third quarter of this year.
Since you were probably wondering: No, Adobe is not tweaking the pronunciation of "Strobe" so that it rhymes. Thank goodness.
But here's what it is: Strobe is a product and architecture for accompanying plug-ins based on Adobe's Flash technology that lets a company build a custom video player more easily, should it want to host online videos in-house rather than relying on YouTube or its ilk.
While Adobe's ActionScript language is "very flexible," explained Jennifer Taylor, director of product management for Flash distribution, "everybody's sort of had to recreate that from scratch, and as a result it's taken people longer than they've wanted to to to get their video players up to get their video online."
The meat of Tuesday's announcement at Streaming Media East is that a host of big new partners are on board, from content delivery networks to analytics firms. The full list of supporters is Adap.tv, Akamai, Blip.tv, Brightcove, CDNetworks, Digital Smiths, Eyewonder, GlanceGuide, Grab Media, Incited Media, iStreamplanet, KickApps, Level3, Limelight Networks, Multicast, Nielsen, Omniture, Panache, PointRoll, ScanScout, Thumbplay, Visible Measures, and YuMe.
Strobe is "taking the mystery out of creating video players, and also streamlining and simplifying that process, so people can do it much faster than they could before," Taylor said. She added that ComScore statistics have said that Flash is used to serve up 80 percent of all online videos.
Adobe is calling Strobe an "open framework" and is inviting developers to contribute, but has not finalized the way that it will be licensed. There may, for example, be an open source version that developers are invited to try out, test, and build on, but the version that will be downloadable at Adobe.com may haev a different license. This, Adobe representatives said in an e-mail to CNET News, would "take all the best pieces of the open source code, bundled with plug-ins," but that it would be protected to "prevent modifications, breaking plug-ins and prevent competing branding."
Company representatives followed up later on Tuesday to clarify that "the intent is to work with a license that allows for liberal use and innovation."
But regardless of license, the Strobe framework will be free, and Adobe does not have plans to charge for it. "Our intent is to not monetize Strobe directly," Taylor said. "Obviously, we anticipate and hope that Strobe will help accelerate the adoption of Flash video, and the rising tide helps all boats: it's going to help our partners and those who provide plug-ins for the framework."
This post was updated at 1:43 p.m. PT to clarify the use of open source technology in Strobe.
Muziic, the service that acts as a media player for YouTube music videos, has agreed to make changes asked for by YouTube managers, and the service's 15-year-old co-founder saw nothing else standing in Muziic's way.
Last week, YouTube managers raised objections to the size of Muziic's video player and said it violated the company's API terms of use, said David Nelson, Muziic's teenage co-founder. After discussions that occurred over several days, Nelson agreed to increase the size of the player, which has been postage-stamp size since launch.
On Tuesday, Nelson told CNET News that changes have satisfied YouTube managers and they have raised no other objections to the service or asked for any other changes. YouTube representatives did not respond to an interview request.
"We're very excited about the future of Muziic," Nelson said. "We're happy to be working with YouTube and Google to fine-tune the player."
Since launching, Muziic has received lots of attention, mostly due to Nelson's age. But Muziic has also won favorable reviews for simplifying YouTube's music experience. The service enables users to handle music videos as if they were MP3s. It also raises questions about whether the music licenses acquired by YouTube will cover piggyback services like Muziic.
David Nelson, 15, is celebrating the deal he worked out with YouTube that will allow his site to stay in business.
(Credit: Mark Nelson)I was among those who wondered whether Muziic's tiny video player, which appeared to be included to do little more than satisfy YouTube's terms of service, would be acceptable to Google's video site. It wasn't.
But YouTube has shown some flexibility, said the Nelsons. The new player, which will be distributed to users in a software update, isn't as large as YouTube's traditional player.
"We actually think this will help improve the service," said Mark Nelson, David's father and Muziic's co-founder.
To be sure, Muziic still faces plenty of uncertainty. The major music labels, which are now very aware of the site, according to music industry sources, have not weighed in yet. The Nelsons say they want to deal with the labels in good faith and haven't hired a lawyer.
In addition to getting good news from YouTube, the Nelsons said they have been approached by people who wish to invest in their company, including a "larger Midwestern venture capital firm," said Mark Nelson.
Amazon and Netflix will be getting some company.
(Credit: Roku)The Roku Digital Video Player may be getting as many as 10 new Internet video-on-demand channels by the end of 2009. So says Roku vice president Tim Twerdahl in an interview with U.S. News & World Report.
The Roku Player was originally a Netflix-only device, but it recently added Amazon Video On Demand. The U.S. News story reports Roku has "quietly distributed a development kit to what Twerdahl calls a few 'close, big-name' partners." More info is expected to be revealed this summer, at which time the development kit would be made available to additional programmers.
Providers weren't named, but tech blogger Dave Zatz points out that YouTube support on the Roku has been hinted at in the past, and that Blip.tv has outed itself as a Roku developer as well. If those are 2 of the 10, that still leaves 8 more.
Obviously, any of the existing video content aggregators (Hulu, Sling.com, and CNET sister-site TV.com) would be huge attractions to the Roku, as would individual network-video sites. I'd also like to see some music services (Pandora was just added to Roku rival Vudu, and will also be on most Samsung Blu-ray players and home theater systems shipping in 2009).
Which providers would you like to see added to the Roku box? And do you think that Roku is starting to steal some of Boxee's thunder? Share your opinions below.
The White House has denied that it has "abandoned YouTube as the provider of the embedded videos on the president's official home page."
In the report written by Chris Soghoian, a contributor to CNET's Blog Network, the author correctly noted that President Obama's weekly video address was distributed via a Flash player from Akamai instead of YouTube. But the author also wrote that the White House was bowing to pressure from privacy activists. White House officials acknowledged switching players but denied making any permanent decisions about them, or that they were motivated by privacy concerns.
"This week we tested a new way of presenting the President's weekly address by using a player developed in-house," Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman, wrote in an e-mail. "This decision is more about better understanding our internal capabilities than it is a position on third-party solutions or a policy. The weekly address was also published in third-party video hosting communities and we will likely continue to embed videos from these services on WhiteHouse.gov in the future."
Those "third-party solutions" Shapiro is talking about include YouTube. The Web's largest video site continues to see video contributions to the White House channel, according to Scott Rubin, a YouTube spokesman.
"The White House hasn't ditched us at all," Rubin said. "If you look at the White House's YouTube channel, you'll see videos are being posted. We're just really excited that there are channels on YouTube that help us see what's going on with the federal government."
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