video on the web

For as long as I've been working on the web, there's been talk of "convergence" of the broadband future in which video will stream into our computers as seamlessly and beautifully as it does into our television sets, but with the added perks of interactivity.

Don't hold your breath.

Like so many futures, this one's been a long time coming. The basic problem is bandwidth. Video files are huge, and hard to deliver over Internet connections. We just don't have the infrastructure to support it.

But thanks to improvements in compression rates and the growing number of Americans with high-bandwidth connections, online video is finding its legs. As of December 2002, 33.6 million Americans had broadband connections at home (Nielsen NetRatings). And while that's still less than 1/3 of online users, it's a start.

"The quality of video that can be shown on the Web is so much higher than it was a few years ago," says Jasin Wishnow, founder of the New Venue (www.newvenue.com), the first site to showcase online film. "The film companies are now putting out really lush, high-bandwidth, 20-Mg video files, which look great."

This is a big change from just a few years ago, when web movies were primitive, postage-stamp sized productions. "When I started the New Venue, my requirement for showing a film was that it be no more than 5 MB in size," Wishow said.

And as video has become more sophisticated on the Web loking more and more like TV new outlets, like cell phones and hand-held computers, have emerged for "micro-movies," as Wishnow calls them.

The micro-movies we're now seeing on handheld computers are not so different from the types of movies you saw on the web five years ago, or on any computer 10 years ago, or in a kinetoscope 100 years ago," Wishnow said. "The micro-movie has always been the same type of movie."

Movies have come a long way since W.K.L. Dickson shot "Record of a Sneeze" in 1894. And web video has come a long way since the tiny QuickTimes we watched in the '90s. Top: "Record of a Sneeze" from the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov). Bottom: "Coin Laundry" by Jerome Oliver, shown on NewVenue (www.newvenue.com).

Uses for online video:

• Distance learning which lets "virtual" students attend classes.

• "Webinars" (web-based seminars) aimed at the corporate audience.

• Video clips of news events or news stories, often accompanied by video ads.

• Trailers for feature films distributed to promote the movie or video online.

• Short independent films distributed online, as well as through other venues.

• Webcasting of concerts and corporate events (for employees in other regions).