Family Home Videos Online
October 3rd, 2006Paul Allen blogged today about the importance of rushing into online video. He linked to an article he recently wrote for Connect magazine. He wrote of the importance of skating to where the puck will be, and not where it is.
At FamilyLearn, our focus is on preserving life’s stories. We’ve primarily done this through written stories, memories, and journals all supplemented by photos. Paul’s post helped me realize that many families’ stories are in home video format.
We need YouTube style video sharing and storage, but focused on families. How many families record events just to put the tape in a drawer and never see it again? What family wouldn’t want that drawer organized, accessible, and shareable?
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:06 pm
While that’s a good extension of the idea of iMemoryBook, there are a few logistical obstacles. First, it takes LOTS of time to convert family home videos to a web format, as well as a significant amount of software, hardware and computer know-how. The latter is a bigger problem than the last because most of the people with interest in posting family movies lack the skills and the equipment to make the conversion. The second obstacle is that of quality. While the format used for sites like youtube is fine for watching peoples make fools of themselves, people usally want better quality for family stuff. The problem is that if you double your resolution, teh file size quadruples. Since sites like youtube are already require large amounts of bandwidth, a family oriented video site would require equal or even greater amounts of bandwidth in order to serve fewer users. This doesn’t mean that it can’t be done, just that these obstacles will need to be overcome first.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:24 am
Derek, do you see these problems being surmountable in the near future? I imagine the movie industry will soon find ways to solve the bandwidth problem, but what about the average user being enabled to post video?