The initiative is somewhat similar to the BBC’s “A History of the World in 100 Objects,” a very popular 2010 project that explored 100 objects in the British Museum in 15-minute episodes.

“82nd & Fifth is a project that speaks directly to my interest in using the Met’s collection to link historical art and culture to the real world,” Met CEO and director Thomas Campbell said in a statement. “In a sea of constant information, these two-minute, authoritative commentaries are a welcome way to get powerful and compelling content in quick doses.” The objects can be sorted on a timeline or viewed by location in Google Earth.

Each episode features a curator talking over a series of photographs, and then an interactive feature that lets viewers explore the work of art up close (rotating Antonio Rossellino’s “Madonna and Child with Angels,” for instance, or clicking through blueprints for Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Little House Living Room”).

The site is built using responsive design so that it works across devices, and there are some very basic features for sharing the episodes on social media. The Met notes this is its third major online initiative: “The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, launched in 2000, continues to evolve and expand, and receives more than one million visits per month. Connections (2011) offers personal perspectives on works of art from the collection by 100 Met staff members.”

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Captions for web video have been a bit of a hot button issue for some time: Disability advocates have been arguing that web video providers aren’t doing enough to make their clips accessible to disabled viewers, and have actually sued both CNN and Netflix over missing captions.

They also successfully pushed for the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which largely focuses on the way traditional TV networks and their online distribution partners present their fare on the internet. The law itself didn’t actually contain any firm deadlines for TV networks to adopt online captioning, but instead authorized the FCC to do so. The Commission set a September 30 deadline earlier this year, but the Digital Media Association, whose members include Amazon, Apple and YouTube, argued that the industry needed more time.

The FCC didn’t agree, and is sticking with the September 30 deadline – with one big exception: Distributors of TV content will have to render closed captions, but they won’t have to provide the raw captioning data to the web video player to allow for further customization. What does that mean? The original FCC rule included a mandate that would have allowed consumers to change the font size and color of captions to improve readability. These requirements now have been postponed for another 16 months. Starting September 30, deaf and hard-of-hearing consumers will have a right to access to basic captions, without these kinds of bells and whistles.

Of course, many sites already offer closed captioning for at least a part of their web video inventory, and that likely won’t change at the end of next month. The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act only covers programming that’s also shown on TV, and exempts any online-only programming. Even TV news clips that have been edited for the web don’t fall under the requirement – but that likely won’t stop disability advocates from going after providers of these kinds of video.

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To do so, users will need to download the TV Anytime desktop application — which unfortunately is Windows only for now. Once they have it, all it takes to prepare a DVD for transfer is to put it in the DVD drive with the application open. They enter a title and description of the DVD they’re ripping, and the app goes to work.

Like the earlier version of the TV Anytime application, which helped users record web videos and upload them as mobile-ready files to their phones or tablet devices, the DVD ripper works by playing the requested content and frame capturing it. That means that it takes the entire length of a film to be captured and transcoded before being transferred to the mobile device. You can watch it while waiting, or, if you’re busy or impatient, run it in the background. Once the video has been captured, it can be transferred to the mobile app via Wi-Fi or USB.

The TV Anytime app is a bit of a stopgap measure for those with lots of DVDs who might want to have remote access to them on the iPad or other mobile device. After all, the movie industry is trying to being its new UltraViolet digital rights locker to market, which could eventually let users add DVDs that they’ve previously purchased to their virtual movie library, making the app unnecessary. But that feature has yet to be rolled out.

With the addition of the DVD ripping functionality, TV Anytime has also added a fee for the app, which used to be free. Now, the purchase price on the Apple App Store or Android Market is $4.99. The app still lets users record the top 25 TV shows on the web for free, but those who want access to a larger catalog of web video can also pay $1.99 a month.

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To set up, Nowbox asks users to specify categories of entertainment that are of interest to them, then to link their YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Once that’s done, they’ll be shown a TV guide-like navigation pane that will look familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a cable channel guide. All of which is the point — Nowbox demystifies the online video experience by serving up channels in the same way most viewers are already used to seeing them.

It has a few other perks as well: for one thing, users are served up a continuous stream of videos, making online video viewing more akin to the type of non-stop stream they’re used to seeing when watching regular TV. Users can swipe back and forth through videos on a particular channel, and since Nowbox pre-caches those videos, they play pretty much instantaneously. Users can star videos as favorites, save them for later or share with friends and followers on social networks.

With more than half a million video views under its belt in less than two months since launch, Nowbox is expanding the app’s feature set to make it even easier to discover new content. For one thing, Nowbox has added a channel of video recommendations based on the categories of content that users signed up for. It’s also added an indicator to highlight new videos as they appear in a user’s channel lineup.

Nowbox is just one of many apps focused on improving discovery of streaming video on the iPad. Other competitors include apps like Showyou, Squrl and the Boxee iPad app. The hope is that Nowbox’s unique channel guide approach, as well as its new features, will extend the play time that users spend with the app. Those users are already showing pretty strong engagement, however: Nowbox founder Thomas Pun told me that users spend 18 minutes with the app per session on average.

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Last month, Jonathan Nail, the writer, creator and star of the independently produced Solo, announced that he and his team would not be producing anymore episodes of the sci-fi comedy series. The blog post announcing the decision is a heartfelt thank-you letter to everyone who was involved in the show’s production, but it doesn’t go into detail about the reasons behind Nail’s decision. However, those reasons, as Nail explained during a phone interview, aren’t hard to guess: Like many who bet their time and money on creating an original series, Nail was dissatisfied with producing his own content and receiving minimal reward, and as a result he has decided to move on.

Nail was inspired to create Solo in early 2009, after seeing the success of The Guild and then discovering some of the other content being produced independently at that time. “I didn’t think it was going to be my Sling Blade,” he said (referring to the 1996 film that made Billy Bob Thornton a star), “but the concept hit me pretty strongly, and I realized I either had to put up or shut up.”

After several months of preproduction, three episodes of Solo were shot in the fall of 2009, then released in July 2010. After a second round of production, the remaining six episodes were released beginning on April 15. The total price tag, according to Nail? Approximately $20,000.

Part of that amount, $7,300, came from a crowd-sourcing campaign to fund the second round of production, and in addition, a sponsorship deal with DataDirect Networks provided funds for the show to give away five Apple TVs and an iPad. But Nail bore no small percentage of the budget, including an initial investment of $3,000, $2,500 for set construction and $2,000 for merchandise that, as of writing, remains unsold. Even Nail’s parents chipped in some cash.

Nail attempted to cut as many corners as possible. For example, he and his wife lowered the catering budget by personally cooking meals for the crew, most of whom were donating their time. But factors like travel expenses (when Solo was screened at the New York Television Festival) and paying for equipment rentals, post-production work and on-set sound guys (there is no such thing as a sound guy who works for free, at least in Los Angeles) worked against him.

Did Nail expect to make that money back? “I knew there was going to be some loss, but I was only looking at the success that The Guild was having — I wasn’t paying attention to the fact that no one is really making money in this space,” he said. “Naively, I thought that this could get picked up somewhere like SyFy and I would make some of that money back, or that the audience would support it so I wouldn’t have to invest any more of my money.” As mentioned before, the Solo audience did contribute financially to the show’s production — but the audience, despite being extremely loyal, wasn’t large enough to make that sustainable in the long term.

There were burdens beyond the financial cost, as well. One of Nail’s main reasons for creating Solo was to give him a spotlight for his acting talents (his credits include appearances on ER, Criminal Minds and Mad Men); however, he found that acting was less than 10 percent of the work involved and that producing duties were beyond what he’d anticipated.

“You have to be aware that you will be biting off more than you can chew at first,” he said. “If you want to be an actor, act. If you want to be a producer, produce. I don’t want to discourage anyone, but there’s a lot more work than you’ll expect there to be.”

One element that proved difficult was the search for sponsorship. The DataDirect deal came about through a friend who worked there and knew that the company was looking to sponsor an online series; but other efforts to find a sponsor were unsuccessful.

“Here’s the thing most people don’t understand about sponsors — they don’t deal with budgets that small, and if you can’t show them that you’ve got 100,000 views, they’re not interested in talking to you,” Nail said. “You pretty much have to have proven yourself already.”

Looking back, Nail acknowledged several issues that might have affected Solo‘s ability to reach an audience, including the gap between the first three and final six episodes that slowed the show’s momentum. But he also considered the current state of web content to be a factor.

“Web series are kind of the 99-seat theater of the entertainment world. We’re all promoting to ourselves,” he said. “It takes a lot of time and money to break out of the atmosphere of this world we’ve created.”

That said, when Nail announced the end of Solo, he was happily surprised by the outpouring of support from the web series community, much of which came from producers “who knew how hard this is.” As one producer told him, “It’s always going to be [online]. You’ll always have something to be proud of.” And he looks forward to acting in future web content — just not producing any of it himself.

One positive consequence of moving on: The Nails now have a place to park their car. Over the course of five months in 2009, Nail and his crew built the show’s primary set — the spaceship’s control room — in Nail’s garage, and it remained there until two weeks ago, when Nail and three friends finally took it down. A standing set company in Anaheim, Calif., was at one point interested in buying it, but the deal fell through; instead, Nail now has approximately $600 worth of good quality wood to use on another project. “I can use it to build a shed, or a playhouse for my girls,” he said.

“Taking down the set was very cathartic,” he added. “I had a smile on my face the whole time.”

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Apple explains that in addition to it video editing features, Final Cut Pro X now also contains the key sound editing and color grading components once found in Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5, allowing you to “use a single application for the entire post-production workflow.” Motion and Compressor remain distinct apps because of their unique functions, and basic DVD and Blu-ray authoring abilities are now contained in the main Final Cut product.

$300 may seem steep for a single program, but the revamped Final Cut Pro X actually does the work of about four programs from the original suite, which sold for $1,000. Final Cut Pro X also brings a lot of great new features, as shown off at NAB, an industry event for digital video audio and film professionals in April, including background rendering, which will allow editors to continue editing while video rendering takes place in the background. Other noteworthy new features include the new Magnetic Timeline, which lets you drag and drop clips wherever without breaking up existing elements, Smart Collections that analyze and scan your clip library and group like elements together (like close shots or group shots, for example).

Motion 5 brings new smart templates that allow you to use effects, transitions titles and more as you edit, and the interface is redesigned to make it easier to spot subtle color variations and effects in your content. Compressor 4 brings boosted export options, including HTTP live streaming support, and one-step streaming web playback output options designed for iOS device compatibility.

At $400 total for Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4, this represents a steep price drop from Final Cut Studio 3. Apple may have simplified its video editing product, but it doesn’t look like it cut too many corners in doing so, and it brings some exciting new features. Video editors: will you be taking the plunge or waiting to see how this new approach pans out?

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Such a prediction is a complete turnaround from just a handful of years ago, when web-connected televisions were just a fuzzy vision and the video industry was filled with competing media formats. To be sure, various codecs and formats still exist, but broadcasters and content creators are now deciding on just a few methods, the top two being H.264 and Adobe Flash. Formats are only part of the story, however, and the industry hasn’t yet completely standardized on any one such format.

Broadband and consumer devices that can leverage a standard format, on the other hand, has moved consumers forward when it comes to online video. Fast Internet connections to the home and to wireless mobile computers have eroded the challenge of distribution. At the same time, wireless and graphics capabilities of devices have improved, allowing content place shifting. This combination is breaking the traditional chains of sitting in front of a television and opening content consumption “[I]n a myriad of ways over a plethora of devices,” says Keith Nissen, principal analyst at In-Stat.

A few other key data points from In-Stat’s research illustrate that broadband-enabled screens will bring far greater choice for where to watch online entertainment:

• The number of devices capable of supporting online video is expected to grow faster than the amount of available video content. That’s an incredible growth rate given how much consumer video is created each day: YouTube recently said users are uploading 35 hours of content per minute, for example.
• Shipments of web-capable televisions in the U.S. are increasing at a 94 percent annual growth rate.
• 45 percent of households with broadband want to use it for at least some online video services, and why not, when speeds are increasing even as prices are trending down?

Growing up as a child of the cable industry in the 1980s, I used to wonder what to watch out of the many channels available. Thanks to maturing devices and fast web connections, my children are more apt to ask where to watch the content, not what to watch.

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But now there are signs that web video could be displacing traditional TV viewing during prime time. A piece in the Wall Street Journal highlights the shift in consumer behavior, noting that web video distributors are finding that their shows are increasingly being watched at the same time that TV programmers broadcast their hottest shows.

According to the WSJ, in just a year the peak viewing hours for shows distributed by Blip.tv have shifted to the prime-time hours of 8-11 p.m from 12-3 p.m. Meanwhile Nielsen found that the number of viewers who watched online video during prime time hours in March increased 14 percent to 62.4 million over the course of a year. Meanwhile, online viewership during the day grew only 1 percent, to 45.4 million.

And it appears that the growth in online video viewing during prime time is not just due to people “snacking” on web videos from YouTube during commercial breaks. Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback told the WSJ that 40 percent of its video plays happen through devices that are connected to the TV set, which means that users are watching web videos instead of tuning into broadcast and cable programming.

With more consumer electronics devices with Internet connections and web video services built in due to hit the market, it’s easier than ever for consumers to access web video content in their living rooms. And services like Google TV — which aims to combine live, linear TV programming with video and other content from the web — could spell trouble for traditional programmers.

Is there any hope for TV programmers to hold onto their ratings as more and more web content finds its way to the TV? Most have launched online video initiatives of their own — but most have also shied away from making IP-delivered video content available through connected devices. In fact, some, like Hulu, have been antagonistic to companies like Boxee and Kylo that try to make it easier for consumers to view its videos on the TV.

However, even if Hulu and other aggregators of broadcast TV content on the web are able to find their way onto the TV, it still won’t help fight what is becoming an increasingly fragmented market. With infinite choice of broadcast, cable and web content on the TV, we can expect the ratings for traditional programmers to continue to drop — which could lead IP video to eclipse broadcast TV viewing in 10 years, as one research firm suggests.

Photo courtesy of (CC-BY-SA) Flickr user tnarik.

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