Does the World Need Another Media Player? (Cont.)

What About Audio Playback?
Notably lacking from Adobe Media Player 1.0 is support for audio podcasts and radio programming. Audio content is a staple of both the iTunes Store and the Zune Marketplace.

“The first version is focused on the video side. It’s called Adobe Media Player because you recognize there are other media types,” said Cooley. “Audio, pictures, slideshows—other kinds of media are certainly on our roadmap. We think the Adobe Media Player can be a great aggregator for a lot of different media sites. That said, it won’t support an MP3 podcast in the version 1.0.”

Converting the MP3 audio file will not be that much work according to Cooley. He suggested that content creators could create a still image track to accompany the audio and save the file in a compatible MPEG-4 format. Cooley said that this conversion of audio to video might better serve consumers.

“I am hearing from the field that people are interested in being able to turn on some media on their computer while they pack, or cook, or do some other things, but they still want to have something visual going on that they can check in on and look at,” said Cooley. “I think it’s going to take some time and experience for us to see how much video needs to be there to make it compelling over an audio experience.”

Universal Formats
As expected, the Adobe Media Player handles Flash Video files with the quality and performance you’d expect (after all Adobe does own the technology). The Adobe Media Player is designed to allow for easy playback of Flash Video, even when the computer is not connected to the Internet (such as on an Airplane). Adobe made an important decision to support H.264 video, both in Flash and the Media Player.

“With support for H264...that puts us into an ever-growing camp of companies supporting that standard codec, both on the computer and on all those devices,” said Cooley. “So from a content creator’s point of view, you can now pick H264 and know that it’s going to play on Mac and Windows, as well as all these other devices.”

The media player is powered by standard RSS feeds. The use of RSS is important. It allows the media player to access the content of several video podcasters (provided the shows use the newer H.264 video format.) With minimal tweaks, an iTunes and Zune compatible feed can be converted to work with the Adobe Media Player.

“We chose standards like RSS because it is an emerging standard,” said Cooley. “It’s like HTML. People might know what it is, but they don’t ever see it. They just go to websites and it works. We think RSS is going to be the same thing. It’s the underlying plumbing that end users never see, but it’ll deliver that great value.”

Old Media Meets New Media
The Adobe Media Player tries to strike a balance between the needs of traditional TV networks and new media producers. It contains several important features that protect content owners without impacting viewers, and it offers different types of Digital Rights Management to protect content.

“We actually have two forms [of content protection]. One is specifically for the ad support content, where the user can add a show as a favorite. It pulls down the episode. It has the ads. The user doesn’t have to sign in to do anything, but they can’t replace or remove the ads. And if they find any of the local bits, they can’t open them up in any other application,” said Cooley. “If you want to do an à la carte sale or a paid subscription for a rental model, you can still deliver the content using that RSS, but the user has to authenticate at least once, and then policies are sent down for how long to keep the media.”

These types of controls are not new, but haven’t been readily available for RSS-delivered video. The ruling objective is making the video easy to deliver and use without sacrificing the creator’s intellectual property.

“For example, we’ve got a number of videos that Adobe produces internally, and we’re looking to set up integration with a content protection site—it’s explicitly assigned to everybody with an Adobe login. So even if the bytes escape our buildings, nobody can play it,” said Cooley. “We have to sign in. I have to sign in with my Adobe login to watch that.”

Additionally, Adobe will offer customizable one-click installers that will let new customers install the Adobe Media Player and subscribe to a new show at the same time. It’s extra touches like this that Adobe hopes will attract major content creators who were not being served by iTunes or the Zune Marketplace.

Not Very Social—Yet
One area where the Adobe Media Player lacks is the social media aspect. Virtually every online video site or aggregator offers the ability to recommend videos to friends as well as apply ratings. The Adobe Media Player lacks all social media aspects; a victim of being a version 1.0 product. Cooley said the social media aspects are on the horizon.

“Our 1.0, we had to pull back from a lot of the social experiences. One of the key things we learned as we went out into the field to validate the concept was that it didn’t make sense for us to create yet another social circle,” said Cooley. “The Adobe Media Player had to do for video what an email client does for email accounts in that when I’ve got five favorite shows, when I put three stars on one show, it goes back to that show and I’m communicating with the audience around that show. If I put four stars on another show, it goes back to that show and to that audience.”

Cooley emphasized that these features and more options to connect with the audience will be released soon. At the National Association of Broadcasters conference, advanced options like overlays and additional interactivity were shown.

“We wanted to step back and make sure that we did this right, so there aren’t actually tags and ratings in the 1.0 product, but it’s very high on the list for subsequent releases,” said Cooley. “The challenge is working with an industry that doesn’t understand what the API set is that a client like Adobe Media Player can use to communicate with that audience around each show.”

Leave us a comment

• Digg This!
• Del.icio.us
• Blinklist
• Back to Top