Back in August of 2006, Alice in Chains did a free show on the Del Mar fairgrounds infield. I was fortunate enough to be there armed with the first 3CCD Mini DV camera I ever bought… It was bottom of the line for triple chip cameras and I was definitely struggling to hold the camera above my head for so long, but in the end, I ended up with some pretty damn good footage. It’s been languishing on YouTube for the last year or so and “Nutshell” alone has about 100,000 hits on it. Small potatoes I know compared to the millions of hits others get for God-knows-what, but pretty respectable as far as I’m concerned…

So, as I mentioned previously, holding the camera above my head was a bit tedious to say the least. The camera had an electronic image stabilization feature (the good cameras have optical image stabilization) but I turned it off to conserve battery life. I was also using a small aftermarket telephoto lens, which, you really shouldn’t even use unless you’re on a tripod… Needless to say, some of the footage looks as if it were shot from the seat of a thrill ride on the midway. Especially when I tried to zoom in tight on someone; at times it was almost enough to make you go running for a bottle a Dramamine… Enter SHAKE…

Shake is a post production tool that can accomplish many of the same compositing tasks as programs like Adobe After Effects, or Apple Motion 3-D. It requires the user to adapt to what is known as a “node based” work flow but once you get the hang of it, it really is incredible what this software can do. I’m not going to go into the many zillions of features, or even the basics of node based editing because most will be bored to tears… Instead, I’ll just talk about one feature, and how it applies to my AIC videos…

I’ve got to believe that “Shake” is named as such because even if you ignored everything else it does, it is the single best piece of software I have ever scene for eliminating unwanted motion from your footage… No matter how bad it is. I recently dug up the original uncompressed footage of the AIC show at Del Mar and began “re-producing” them from scratch using all the latest software that I simply didn’t have access to two years ago… The results are really amazing… Check out the original videos posted on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/ZenBezier… After you’ve had a look at those, go to http://www.meetube.com/live and check out the first two AIC Secret Stash Videos… They’ve been graded in Apple Color and motion stabilized in (yep, you guessed it) Shake… What a difference… Can’t wait to see the DVD

Well, we did it… Sorta… Last night at The Temecula Wine and Beer Garden (I kept getting it backwards by putting Beer first in previous posts, guess it’s just a personal preference:b) we fired up our Mogulus Channel and attempted our first live Internet feed of a Trunkmonkey performance. What follows is the blow by blow…

So, the initial idea was to borrow a WiFi enabled laptop, slap a camera on it and just let it rip. With the right equipment, it really is that easy… with the right equipment. I have a Panasonic PVGS320 with a screwed up tape carriage that makes for an excellent web cam connected to a Mac via firewire. Much to my disgust, the same can’t be said of a USB 2.0 connection made to a Windows box… I discovered this maybe two hours before show time. So fucking typical that the only way this camera will communicate via USB 2 with Windows is through some bullshit Microsoft movie editing software you have to buy. Piss on them, and that. Still determined to use the laptop, I abandoned the PVGS320 for my HVX200 to see if that would make things any easier. It didn’t. I mean, I don’t know, I never tried to use the HVX200 as a web cam and I don’t know that it even has that capability but I had to at least try. Since I didn’t have time to do any reading I just fired everything up and hoped for some “plug ‘n play” love. The machine recognized the P2 cards in the camera as removable discs but that was about it. Shit…

Not wanting to have to explain another abandoned live feed attempt (like last week) I simply bit the bullet and decided to go with what I knew worked. I took my freakin’ iMac to the gig and set it up behind a hot dog counter and wired the 320 to it. My iMac picked up on Old Town’s WiFi immediately (Macs rule by the way… And I was born wired to a PC) and a quick network test claimed we had 570kbps on the upload. Mogulus recommends a minimum 400kbps so it was lookin pretty good. Unfortunately, it was too close to go time to get logged in and cue up the mogulus/meetube studio so I just had to wait until the first break to actually start web casting.

We played a set, as soon as the break came I went back to work on the computer. I logged in and cued everything up and at 8:33PM we went live for the first time! It was exciting to see everything actually working the way it was supposed to. Or at least so it appeared…

For some reason, the Mogulus software defaults to what it calls the “built in mic” (the computer) for audio when you hook up a web cam. I wanted to use the mic in my PVGS320 (the camera) because the mic in the computer is shitty and the computer was sitting behind a hot dog cart. Anyway, I didn’t realize the audio had to be set manually until the second break. Our team of viewers we had strategically located throughout the country were armed with their cell phones and the calls came in… They all were saying the same thing, “We see you guys, but we can’t hear anything…” Shit…

Okay, third set’s a charm, right? Well, not exactly… Apparently once the audio situation was corrected, it became obvious that there was considerable lag time from camera to cyberspace… After the third set when I went to look at the computer, I still saw myself on stage in the monitor… Huh??? What’s going on here? Sadly, I don’t have an answer… After a few phone calls we kept getting the same report, the audio sounded good but the video stuttered tremendously. The only thing I can guess is that the connection simply wasn’t holding steady at the 570kbps it tested out at.

Based on the fact that I’ve done short web casts from my living room that worked pretty darn good (with my machine hard wired to the network) I can only assume that WiFi is the issue. I’ve also read up on some of the issues with the current build of Mozilla Fire Fox leaking memory when processing video; next time, a different browser.

So that’s it I guess… Kinda disappointing considering all the effort but, at least now I think I have a firm grasp on what doesn’t work. Live Beta 2, the sequel will be in another couple weeks. The next test will be in a situation where we’re hard wired and I’ll probably run Safari just to see if it makes any difference. It will be great if it works out but I can’t help but feel that this “technology” won’t be all that it can be until you can whip out your laptop and “go live” on a moments notice the way the girl does on the Mogulus video. Our first experience in the field was that it just doesn’t quite work that way, yet…

Ahh, old school networking via The Internet… I mentioned a million times throughout various posts that meetube started out as the420channel. Anyway, the whole time we were experimenting with the420channel brand, there was another entity known as the420network lurking about watching our every move. Long story short, when I abandoned the420channel brand, I was contacted by DJ @ Merkaba Productions in New York (the 420 network) regarding key profiles I created with the420channel moniker… Primarily MySpace and YouTube (duh). Naturally, he was interested in these profiles so he asked me if he could have them. Of course my immediate reaction was, “Have them?”… You must be kidding…

After wading through a couple of… “tense” introductory e-mails (copyright infringement, etc.) I’m pleased to report that DJ and I both decided that we could do more damage working together rather than against. After all, we’re pretty much hitting on the same demographic here. Maybe not everyone’s down with the 420 but, you don’t have to be to be down with the 420 network. Granted, it helps though

What is The 420 Network? It’s a multi-media Internet/TV/Radio communication distribution platform with several divisions like, The 420 Channel, 420 Radio, 420 News, 420 Music and The 420 Gallery. They specialize in film, TV, video, animation, music, arts, humanities, environment, and socially, politically, and religiously conscious satire. The ultimate goal of The 420 Network is to migrate from The Internet to cable television on The 420 Channel, as well as 420 Radio on Sirius or XM. At least that’s what DJ tells people… We have it on good authority his real purpose is to ultimately make contact with aliens… And I don’t mean the kind from Mexico…

Anyway, the end result is that meetube.com now has contacts/promotional affiliates in New York, and Merkaba now has the same in California. And while we here at meetube focus on the Web, Merkaba is aiming for cable and satellite. Who knows? Maybe somewhere down the road, we’ll have the opportunity to conquer all three together but for right now, we’re content to not get involved with any litigation over names and have simply decided to swap some promotional space and pimp a little for each other.

Let this be a lesson to any newbs out there… If there’s something you want to accomplish and getting people’s attention will help, hang your junk out on The Internet as often, and in as many places as possible. Sure, you run the risk of collapsing under the sheer weight of spam build-up that you’ll likely experience but eventually, if you’re doing things right, like minds will come to your aid. If you’re insane, that could be dangerous, so watch out… ;b.

As work continues on code issues throughout the meetube.com site, we often use browsershots.org to check the consistency of the site’s appearance across every browser and platform imaginable. There are OS’s and browsers out there I’ve never even heard of (Yeah, hello tech support? I’m running Seamonkey 1.1 on BSD and my e-mail isn’t working…) but one browser in particular caught my attention because it showed up in my site statistics… That would be Flock…

Now before you get crazy and accuse me of being in someone’s pocket for mentioning another “product” in what is supposed to be an indie music video blog, just hear me out a second… First off, I can assure you I’m in no one’s “pocket”… If I was, I’d have some money and this site would be a lot different :b. Secondly, after spending just two days messing around with it, I can see that Flock really isn’t just a browser. It’s literally a social networking control center, the likes of which I’ve never seen.

Technically speaking, it’s a Mozilla based browser but it bears no similarity to any Mozilla products I’ve seen in the past. It certainly functions like any other browser and has been smooth and glitch free since install but that’s just the half of it. If you’re doing any social networking online (if you’re in a band, you damn well better be) this browser puts every social networking entity at your fingertips with the notable exception of MySpace. Why it’s not “plugged in” to MySpace I don’t know but everything else integrates right into the browser itself. Blogger, WordPress, Xanga, Twitter, Facebook, Flicker, YouTube… All of them, and many more have widgets and plugins that apparently let you control all of your social networking activities right from one customizable surface. Like I said, I’ve only been working with it for a couple of days so clearly i don’t know everything, but even if you don’t use this thing as your default browser you should give it a try. If you want to make the most of your time pimping the band online, Flock 1.0 puts all that social shit right in front of you…

With so many irons in the fire, sometimes finding time to mention them all can be a challenge. Finding an alternative to the YouTube embedded video player falls into that category. Quality control has always been an issue with YT and I’ve been searching for alternatives since day one. Alternatives that don’t require a dedicated server and a CMS (content management system) costing around $2400/mo. I live for the day that I can afford something like that, but it sure ain’t today. Enter Revver.

My buddy Joel at AMP works with me shooting and producing many of the videos found here on meetube. He recommended Revver to me while I was still on a quest to set up my own delivery platform so I put it aside. When I found out the actual dollar amount attached to setting up my “dream platform”, I conducted a hasty retreat and dialed Revver up on my browser. I dug the look of the player and it had all the expected features, including the full screen capability. Normally full screen capability is something I don’t even care about because videos on YouTube are encoded at 320×240. You blow that up full screen and the pixels start congealing into hunks as big as a kid’s wooden building block. It looks like crap. Not so on Revver… Hmm, this was getting interesting. I came to find out, a real live person previews every video before it goes up online. I was impressed but wondering what that did to processing time. I mean, how long was it going to take for a video to go live after upload? As it turned out, not long at all. Granted, not as fast as YouTube but the video was still up the same day despite the fact that since I was a brand new account, I real person e-mailed me for a copyright statement. I was liking them more and more all the time.

So anyway, I uploaded a copy of Soundescape’s Volume as my test case. I must admit, I was a little reluctant because I just didn’t like the idea of “commercials” getting injected into the videos. You see, thats where the name comes from… Rev is short for revenue… They put a short ad in the beginning of your video and you get paid after a certain number of views. It’s actually one of the reasons I wasn’t interested in them in the beginning… I mean, I’m constantly looking to make something here and there to cover bandwidth and production costs but commercials? My conscience started mocking me the minute I hit the upload button. After all, wasn’t the Internet about not having to deal with commercials? I was having second thoughts and they must have known it because they sent me a perfectly timed e-mail letting me know that they loved the video and it had been approved. So I looked at it… Then I looked at it in full screen mode… Really f’ing nice right out of the gate. Not only that, the little ad that came first was actually funny. Suddenly my conscience wasn’t so loud…

Okay, now the downside because you know there had to be at least one. Revver’s embeded player works off the script tag as opposed to the object and embed tags used by YouTube and some others. What does that mean? No Revver on MySpace… MySpace doesn’t allow script tags so as of right now, I don’t know if the Revver player is going to work there. I’m going to look at the documentation and see if there’s mention of it and get back to ya in another post… In the meantime, you might want to check it out for yourself at Revver.com.

I know, you’re sitting there saying, “Wait a minute, I thought this site was about independent music videos… I don’t give a crap about this.” Easy there, Tex. Just hang in there a sec and let me give ya the big picture.

For those who don’t know, SEO is Search Engine Optimization. Good SEO is what puts your site consistently in the top 10 on Google, Yahoo, MSN and any other search engine you might be using. It’s not a code in and of itself like XHTML or CSS but rather a philosophy behind how you write and design your XHTML and CSS. A philosophy that I am quickly becoming a disciple of, here’s why…

I mentioned in the previous post that I spent some time with the index page implementing some very basic SEO techniques that I’ve recently delved into. Nothing fancy, in hindsight it’s a lot of common sense that’s easily missed unless somebody points it out for you. I spent probably an hour and a half massaging the code and was a little skeptical as to exactly how much impact it would have on traffic, nor did I know how long it would take to notice a difference, if any. Damn, my eyes have been opened. The first full day with the new code, MeeTube.com had 3x’s the normal number of hits and it’s best day ever in the history of the site. Naturally I have to let a few more days go by to determine if it was coincidence or an actual trend developing but, I don’t know… I’m pretty optimistic.

So now, the $64 question is, “Why do I even give a rat’s ass about any of this?” How about, because I told you so??? j/k… In a word, it’s about visibility. I mean, think about it… The content on this site is created locally by musicians who come to, and perform in, San Diego and surrounding areas. And while the site is about San Diego music, the domain name itself makes it a global entity by default because of the hard work put in by YouTube… When I bought the MeeTube.com and .net domains, all of the other meetube domains were still available… .org, .tv, .biz, .mobi… Guess what? I was a fool for not buying them all because there ain’t a damn one of them left.

What I’m trying to get at in a very verbose way is that MeeTube.com is going to become the “jewel” of San Diego as far as independent music video sites go… The strength of the domain name combined with SEO is basically going to give San Diego music a “Web Pipeline” to the world… Already this site enjoys an unusually high amount of traffic from China, The Czech Republic (what???) and Germany. Don’t know why, I just go by the stats…

My efforts are going to help but regardless of what I do, MeeTube.com is here to stay and as far as I’m concerned, no matter who’s curious about it anywhere in the world, the content will always be San Diego-grown…