ITV Feature: User-Generated 2.0

--YouTube Meets Wikipedia in a New, Free Web App
by Chris Davison, davison@intellcap.com  Guest News Blogger on [itvt]

What would user-generated video be like if anyone and everyone could not only view the creations of others but also interact with them, edit and change them into their own personalized versions? What would YouTube be like if the group-editing capabilities of Wikipedia were added to it? Picture, if you will, a new interactive application that allows anyone to quickly and easily create, edit and share professional-quality video. You unlock this free app with the key of imagination: once you are online, it empowers you and a million of your closest friends to interact with one another's videos anytime, anywhere and via pretty much any medium. Have you entered the Twilight Zone? Nope, you're in Vancouver, British Columbia. More specifically, you're at a brand new tradeshow called FTX, experiencing a demonstration of the new application's professional version, FORscene, and its consumer-friendly sibling, Clesh.

VIDEO: For 5 short video interviews with Stephen Streater, click here

FTX is short for Film and Television Expo, and the weekend of October 13th/14th saw its inauguration. While strolling the FTX tradeshow floor, I chanced to encounter Stephen Streater, a Cambridge-educated entrepreneur who founded Forbidden Technologies ( http://www.forbidden.co.uk) in 1998 and who is the prime mover behind his company's creation of FORscene and Clesh. As you can see in the accompanying video interview segments, Stephen is a very personable fellow and, more importantly, has created a Web-based video platform that is like Google in that it's free and easy to use, does not require any software to be installed, and can be accessed from any computer anywhere in the world, running at any   connection speed from dial-up to broadband. If this is the first you've heard of Forbidden Technologies then you'll be interested to know that, while its early adopters include a number of major TV broadcasters in Europe (such as GMTV, Granada and BBC News 24), its offerings are brand new on this side of the pond. Stephen says that Forbidden recently opened its first North American office up in Toronto and that it is planning a broad-based US roll-out in the near future. In other words, you are reading about the roll-out of what I for one feel is an amazing new interactive technology as it is happening.

I love YouTube. There's no denying it: I like to pretend that it's really MeTube. I like that I don't have to sit back and passively watch linear TV when I could be uploading, sharing and otherwise commenting on high-concept videos such as someone being kicked in the tuckus by his strangely humanoid Lhasa Apso… Well, Shakespeare it isn't, but I still love that it is MeTube--though it would be so much better if only the production quality of the average video was a little bit higher, and if only I as a novice had the tools to create professional-looking videos of my own. These tools would have to be easy to learn and use, since I hate reading through help files; they would have to be powerful enough for me to be able to do some really cool stuff with my moving images; and, of course, they would have to be free since, as we all know, everything on the Web should be free at all times.

Enter Clesh. Since I am not a professional working in film post-production, and since I am not on the clock as a broadcast television editor, I don't really need some of the more advanced functions that FORscene offers: all I really need is the suite of functions available in Clesh. I visit http://www.clesh.com, create a free account, watch the brief how-to video, and am on my way. Uploading, starting, stopping, editing, all major functions are activated and deactivated with a single click, and so I find the interface to be quite intuitive. The source window for my video is blue and the editing window right next to it is red--easy enough for me to follow. If I use   the zoom tool, I find that I can even go right down to frame-by-frame selection and editing: I am happy to discover that Clesh is frame-accurate, negating the need for me to figure out exactly how to get that certain image from one place to another. If I decide that I'm simply too busy to bother going frame-by-frame, then I can use the drag-and-drop interface to quickly select as much or as little as I feel like working with at the moment. When I inevitably mess something up or otherwise change my mind, I can click on the Undo button and try it again; clicking on this button twice will take me back two steps, etc., ad infinitum. If I then suddenly realize that I shouldn't have changed my mind in the first place, I simply right-click on the Undo button and my original step is restored--it's a nice touch that you can undo the Undo button. Once I am ready to share my sparkling new creation, I can single-click easily recognizable icons to publish to the Web, and   my videos will be viewable in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. If I'd rather go mobile, I can also publish to an iPod or even to a cell phone. I am duly impressed at the cross-platform capabilities of Clesh, since I can now share my high-quality production of "Deathmatch: Muppets vs. Predator" with my friends, whether they are at home, at work or on vacation. Best of all, my friends are not merely passive viewers of my magnum opus, since they can get their own Clesh and change my video at will, and then send a new version back to me or to one another for further collaboration and improvement. YouTube, meet Wikipedia.

In the end, we witness a man who went to Vancouver for a brand new tech show, not knowing what to expect. He came back a changed man, transformed by the realization that he too could create, edit, publish, share and collaborate on professional-looking videos without having to pay a fee, install software or read a help file. He has realized that, since this fascinating new application is Web-based, he could use it at home on his computer, on a business trip in an airport cybercafé--or, for that matter, on a tropical beach on his cell phone. He has also begun to think that, if YouTube or another of the myriad video-sharing sites now springing up all over the Web were to adopt a technology like this, user-generated video could make a quantum leap forward into the interactive space…all the way to the Twilight Zone.

***Long-time [itvt] reader, Chris Davison, is a Los Angeles-based writer and consultant who has written for the American Film Institute (AFI), the Hollywood Radio and Television Society (HRTS) and others, and who grew up basking in the reflected glow of September 7th, 1927.

Originally Published: October 27, 2006  in [itvt] Issue 7.01

Click: http://www.itvt.com to subscribe to our free email newsletter, which contains all the news stories you see on this Web site, and additional breaking news and scoops, in-depth features, interviews, screenshots, videos, and other exclusive content you will not find anywhere else.