Video in the iTunes Music Store

Everyone was talking about video on mobile devices and streaming video over the web 7 years ago, but no one really provided a compelling solution or a real attractive reason to bother…it was the connecting of the technological dots that has made both streaming and on-demand video something appetizing both on the computer desktop and portable devices.

Some of the dots that were connected, for review, include:

The iTunes Music (and now video) Store
The iPod Video
The Sony PlayStation Portable
Faster CPUs
Broadband Internet and WiFi connections
Better audio/video compression/decompression (codec)
GRPS
RSS 2.0
Oh and weblogs (blogs)

Now, with RSS feeds of audio and video files multiplying like rabbits, and integrated search technology, people can quickly find reasonably sized audio and video of interest.  Seven years ago, there wasn’t a library of easily searchable encoded goodies, nor was there a reasonably priced portable device smaller than an encyclopedia that would play them all.

So now with Apple encoding everything that sings or moves into The iTunes Music Store (ITMS), which now offers a few dozen TV shows, a bunch of music videos, in addition to its extensive audio catalog, we have the library…oh right and the iPod…we have that too…and instead of re-inventing the wheel…Apple just adds video as an iPod feature…genius.  So with the obligatory praise for Steve Jobs and Co. out of the way, I’d like to talk about the video part for a moment…

I first noticed the little TV icon in the IMTS sometime around Adam Curry’s 250th Daily Source Code…about 2 or so months ago…it was next to a podcast feed, which turned out to be a video Adam had taken and if I recall correctly, it was a pan around his newly rented penthouse in San Francisco…that guy was born under the right sign.  I digress…

The video played back in the album art window.  I clicked it,  and up popped a separate video window!  Awesome.  No instructions, no mystery…intuitive to the observant…exactly what you would expect from the Angels at Apple…(ok, I’m laying it on too thick now…)

And now, here are some observations about video playback in iTunes.

The video playback is pretty sweet, and the ability to control click and convert the chosen video for use with the iPod is something I’m dying to try…just need the new iPod, but at least now I know how when I get it.  There are still some kinks in the decompression of longer files it would seem, particularly if you’re trying to do other things and have video run in the background…but once you stop trying to find the place in the video you were looking for, resizing and positioning the window and just letting the damn thing play…the beach ball will stop spinning and all will be well…until you try and browse the library again.  At least this was the case on my iMac G5/1.8 with the 1GB of RAM.

I’ve only purchased one item, the U2 “Original of the Species” video, and the quality of the audio is very good…better than the album single version FM radio started to cough up after Apple used the live track in its ads…(can’t someone rip an MP3 file of the live version already?)  The video playback at the ~ 320x240 sizing looks damn good…go to 2x size and it’s still pretty good…go to full screen…and it’s VHS…but what do you want for a 2 minute download and $1.99?

My only complaint beyond the long file thing is the disappearance of the video window when you switch applications…there should be an option to keep the video window on top of the desktop.  As a feature request, it would also be nice to either rip a DRM version of the song or audio from the video or simultaneously download one…for those paupers who can’t afford a video yet or may simply have the older iPod, want to watch video on their desktops but would also like the audio on the go.

Most of the video I watch is from the Podcast section of the ITMS, videos like:
The Suicide Girls – The Playboy Magazine of the 21st Century; Inside Mac Radio – good summary content on the Mac scene; KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic – Man, Nic just had Kate Earl on…Never heard of her and she blew me away.

All this crazy stuff, most of which is pretty low-fidelity, but that’s the cool thing. The selection is KING. I don’t care if Scott Shepherd isn’t quite as refined as Ed Murrow, he’s talking about stuff I want to hear! 

This my friends, is the start of something big, and while there are dollars to be made in the process (via advertising) there are walls falling as you read this…bigger I think than the desktop revolution of the late 80’s, producing audio and video media is becoming a real way to talk to others who are interested, or maybe those who just didn’t know they were.

Some notes:

I believe Real Media is based on a flavor of the MPEG 1 specification. MPEG are the guys behind DVD and broadcast TV transmission standards.  http://www.real.com or http://www.mpeg.org

RSS: Really Simple Syndication, Really Simple Subscriptions or Rich Site Summary.  Info can be found here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer