The video long tail is an important factor when deciding what
sort of content to provide to give yourself the best chance of exposure.
It can also play a big factor in how many people will view
your video,
and the chances that someone will take something useful away from it.
In a recent Mashable post by Mark Hopkins,
he discusses the intrinsic value of the video long tail, in particular
the difference between current event and news-based video versus video
produced for enjoyment.
A Unique Challenge
When you talk about video long tail content, it’s
important to
understand the unique challenge to content creators, aggregators and
network operators striving to expand their video distribution by
offering support for a greater number of devices extending their reach
to the “3 screens” – Internet, mobile and
IPTV.
Each device supporting video playback maintains one or
multiple
media profiles defining what types of content is
supported.
These
media profiles are differentiated by many variables including
resolution size, codec implementation, aspect ratio, scan method, and
network protocol.
So it’s no longer just about making long tail video
available for viewing on a PC, but to any video enabled
device.
Pre-Transcoding Options
Pre-transcoding video can be a practical approach when working
with
smaller video libraries supporting a limited number of supported
profiles; however, it becomes problematic for content aggregators who
have large libraries and ingest a high volume of content on a daily
basis.
As the size of a video library and number of supported
profiles
grow, so does the data storage requirements.
Transcoding On Demand
As discussed on the Ripcode website,
by transcoding video on-demand, content creators can realize value from
not just the most popular and widely viewed video, but from the video
long tail as well.
Until now, it was deemed too resource intensive to
pre-transcode and store less widely viewed titles in multiple file
formats – like the news-based video that Mark talks about in
his blog.
But by changing the nature of transcoding from a
“pre-transcode”
methodology to one where video is transcoded only when a customer
requests it, this opens the door for less popular content, enabling
content creators and syndicators to monetize their entire video library.
Originally written by Brendon Mills of the RipCode Blog. RipCode offers on-demand video transcoding solutions to ease the process of re-purposing video into multiple viewing formats.
