Startup Uses Military Tech to Fix Low Res Video

Motion DSP is creating a simple web based interface that will significantly enhance low resolution camera phone video into surprisingly high quality stuff. It started off in 1998 as a U.S. military funded project at UC Santa Cruz. In January 2005, Professor Peyman Milanfar, the primary researcher behind the technology, co-founded Motion DSP.

The company compares multiple frames in a video to find and replace lost pixels in a given frame, significantly enhancing the experience with little increase in overall file size after compression. The service works best when a video is not moving rapidly or in a jerking fashion, but tends to improve just about any low quality video.

To see a demonstration, check out this page on the site that contains three different before and after video shots.

The service will go into consumer beta sometime this year, CEO and co-founder Sean Varah told us. The service will be free and will allow users to upload a video and download an enhanced version. But he also stressed that the focus will be on getting deals done with the large online video sites, such as YouTube, to enhance user-uploaded videos.

More at TechCrunch

Tags: youtube videocamera+phone improve+quality user+generated+content

Wheatley takes on Tesco

Tomboy Virals director Ben Wheatley has shot this sinister satirical short showing the world domination plans of British supermarket giant Tesco.

Shown initially as part of a programme created by satirist and broadcaster Armando Iannucci called Time Trumpet, the viral depicts a not-too-distant future in which Tesco has taken over.

"I got a brief asking me to think about how Tesco might attack Denmark, I pitched back with a load of ideas and then some were chosen some were rejected. Luckily they didn't go for the B52s carpet bombing with deli wraps and the amphibious stores storming the beaches was rejected due to budget," says Wheatley.



The spot took two weeks to film. The plates were shot in Denmark with compositing and 3D help from freelancer Alex Mallinson, who also helped Wheatley on his gold cyber lion winning AMBX spot.

Source: Shots.net

Tags: tomboy virals viral video tesco time+trumpet ben+wheatley

YouTube launches video ads

YouTube, the website that broadcasts 100m videos a day, is to expand the advertising it carries to include video ads, starting with a campaign for Paris Hilton's album.

Warner Bros has taken the first homepage video ad spot with a film inviting users to visit a channel dedicated to Paris Hilton, featuring behind-the-scenes footage of the heiress making her album, 'Paris'.

There is also an ad for the Fox television series 'Prison Break'.

According to The Wall Street Journal today, advertisers who pay to have their videos displayed on the YouTube homepage will be charged based on the number of visitors, regardless of how many plays the videos receive. As with other videos on the site, users will have to click on them to play.

More at Brand Republic

Tags: youtube advertising video paris+hilton prison+break

Coke: Game On

Another musical epic from Grrr directors Smith & Foulkes through Wieden + Kennedy Portland for Coca-Cola.

Videogame is the latest in a rash of creatively interesting new work to emerge from Coke over the past few months that includes Nagi Noda's What Goes Around, Happiness Factory from Pysop and Inspiration from Transistor Studios that has reversed the brand's previously anodyne advertising approach.

In a wonderful balancing trick by directors and creatives, the spot successfully splices the unlikely combination of Grand Theft Auto-style computer game graphics with Coke's saccharine message.

Click here to view

More at: Shots.net

Tags: coke gta Wieden+Kennedy advertising

YouTube plans music video archive supported by ads

Video-sharing website YouTube is in talks with major record companies including EMI and Warner Music about hosting old and current music videos for its users to view for free.

The discussions are believed to centre on the nature of the business model and how it will balance free viewing with ad revenue and revenue for the labels and their artists.

YouTube's ambition is to have "every music video ever created" up on the site, according to its co-founder Steve Chen.

He said: "Right now we're trying to very quickly determine how and what the model is to distribute this content and we're very aggressive in assisting the labels in trying to get the content onto YouTube."

YouTube plans to allow its community of users to add videos to their own profiles and write reviews about them, believing this will differentiate its site from Apple's iTunes store and Yahoo! and AOL's music features.

More at: Brand Republic

Links: youtube emi warner music video itunes free

Streetbroadcast joins race to be first digital network

Lamppost advertising contractor Streetbroadcast is joining the race to create the first national digital outdoor ad network, beginning with 100 panels in October.

The first digital units will appear in retail parks around the UK and on the streets of Liverpool and Coventry. Within five years, Streetbroadcast hopes to have converted all of its 2,500 sites.

The company is pitching itself against Viacom Outdoor, which is digitising the London Underground over the next 18 months, and JCDecaux, which is installing digital units in airports.

The LED screens supported on columns are designed to show either static or moving images, which are fed to the units from a central server, allowing almost instant campaigns.

Source: Mediaweek

More info at Street TV

Tags: street tv led screens broadcast advertising

Rushes Soho Shorts film festival winners

Terry Christian hosted the celebrity packed awards ceremony last week.

The winners are:

THE ASCENT MEDIA SHORT FILM AWARD
Winner: Cubs
Director: Tom Harper at Free Range

THE VUE ANIMATION AWARD
Winner – Rabbit
Director: Run Wrake at Sclah

THE ARRI/ARRI MEDIA NEWCOMER AWARD
Winner – Goodbye Mr Snuggles
Director: Jonathan Hopkins at Between the Eyes

THE SONY MEDIA MUSIC VIDEO AWARD
Winner – White Stripes "The Denial Twist"
Director: Michel Gondry at Partizan

THE ADOBE TITLES & IDENTS AWARD
Winner - Come Home to the Simpsons
Director: Chris Palmer at Gorgeous

View the Winning Films

Tags: rushes soho shorts film festival video simpsons michel+gondry

Mentos launches first cinema campaign

Mentos is launching its first cinema campaign in the UK, weeks after it received millions of pounds in free media coverage following the global craze of creating a soda fountain by putting the chewy sweets in a bottle of Coke.

The Mentos/Coke soda fountain craze, which began in the US, spread worldwide last month with countless clips appearing on websites such as YouTube.

Mentos' new ad campaign, created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, breaks this weekend in cinemas and is being rolled out across Europe later this month.

More details at: Media Guardian

Tags: mentos coke viral cinema video advertising

Viacom partners with Google for online content deal

Viacom is partnering with Google to provide programming from MTV and Nickelodeon to thousands of internet sites and blogs affiliated with the search engine.

Viacom's exclusive deal with Google marks the first time MTV will syndicate its shows across the internet beyond the company's own websites.

The deal will begin as a test run at the end of the month via the insertion of video into Google's targeted advertising system, AdSense, including content from MTV's hit reality show 'Laguna Beach: The Real O.C.', 'The MTV Video Music Awards', and Nickelodeon's 'SpongeBob SquarePants'.

More at: Brand Republic/Revolution

Tags: mtv viacom nickelodeon google video advertising

Cunningham Makes a Move

Chris Cunningham has left RSA and is in the process of setting up a new production company with former FilmFour executive producer Jim Wilson.

Chris's first music promo for seven years, Sheena Is A Parasite for The Horrors, was the first job produced by the as yet unnamed new company.

"The new company will be an outlet for all of Chris's work," Wilson told shots.net. "His promos, short films, the original music videos that he produces as well as the purely music projects he is currently working on. There's no definitive plan at the moment and the company doesn't even have a name but hopefully there'll be more news in the coming weeks and months."

Source: Shots.net

Tags: chris+cunningham video music rsa production+company

MTV's record-breaking longest music video ever

Further to last week's post about MTV's record-breaking longest music video ever, here is have the promo - called Deluded In My Mind - directed by Partizan's Alistair Siddons, in all its 20-minute glory. Longest Music Video Ever

Coca-Cola Tries the UGC Side of Life

The Coca-Cola Company has morphed its longtime corporate Web site at Coca-Cola.com into an international brand portal with user-generated content in mind.

The new site, designed by AKQA, marks the first global integration of the company's digital presence.

The site launch is part of the company's global "Coke Side of Life" campaign. A series of monthly challenges will encourage people around the world to create videos in response to a theme. The first challenge on the site, "The Essence of You," is drawn from Wieden + Kennedy's advertising for the client. "If you could bottle the essence of you and share it with the world, what story would you tell?" asks the site.

Site visitors will be able to vote on each other's work, and a winner of each challenge will get video equipment and editing software worth around $5,000, wherever they may be in the 26 countries.

Source: ClickZ Network

Tags: coca-cola coke akqa website portal competition advertising user+generated+content

Agency.com ‘viral’ pitch video

Agency.com, in an attempt to win the Subway business, decided to do something a little different.

They created a video of themselves preparing for the pitch and put it online. According to the video, they wanted to show the Subway how "immersed" they get in understanding the client's business.



Source: Random Culture

More blog comments at Crackunit.com

YouTube: Going to Work for SUBWAY: Part 1

del.icio.us links

UPDATE: http://www.whenwerollwerollbig.com/

Tags: agency.com viral subway pitch

iStockphoto adds User-generated Video

Canadian company iStockphoto, which describes itself as the world's leading community-powered marketplace for stock photography and illustrations, is widening its business base to include user-generated video licensed from $5 a 30-second clip upwards.

The new business centers on contributed stock video, film and animation clips and, beginning in September, iStock will license broadcast-quality footage, with a focus on digital formats, including HD video.

It publishes the following royalty free pricelist: Small, 320x240, $5; Medium, 640x480, $10; Large, 720x486 (NTSC/PAL), $20; HD 720, 1280x720, $35; HD 1080, 1920x1080, $50.

Web: video.istockphoto.com

Tags: istockphoto istockvideo video user+generated film getty+images