The Internet has evolved from 1950s electronic
computers to the ARPANET in the 1960s to the 1982 World Wide Web. Using this
technology people have become connected all over the globe with the use of near
instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, blogs, social
networking and YouTube. With this kind of technology people’s lives have
changed drastically in a good way and when YouTube was launched in 2005 people
have become empowered to make a stand and be heard and everyday people have
become famous. The Internet gives people a voice; anyone can now be seen and
heard by thousands, even millions by posting a video on YouTube or a blog on a
popular website. Site people use to talk and connect to people around the world
and friends are:
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Facebook
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Twitter
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Tumbler
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Bebo
The website that has had the most drastic impact on
culture, commerce and entertainment for the lives of millions is YouTube.
Before YouTube, normal everyday people would not be heard or seen by the masses
without using more unconventional methods such as holding signs at busy roads
but now they can use a camera, make a YouTube account and post a video for free
on the Internet for everyone in the world to see. Normal people can become Internet celebrities
and have millions of fans without ever having to be on television or be in any
other form of advertisement.
Many businesses struggle to be know and seen in the
media but now they can by having their adverts places on YouTube videos. If
someone has over a million people watching their videos that means a million
people will see that advert. It can be highly beneficial for a company to
sponsor a ‘YouTube star’ to advertise for them. Before the Internet and websites
like YouTube it was very hard for the media to get seen and thousands of jobs
have been created online.
Many people have chosen the Internet and YouTube over
newspapers or television because anyone and everyone can give instant feedback
and give their own views on the subject at hand in comment sections or they can
upload their own videos and blogs talking about subjects that are on the news.
On TV or in newspapers the people take in the news and have to accept it. The
trouble with this is the owners of such newspapers are very powerful and they
can control what people are told only what they allow and we only hear the
viewpoint on the papers or new stations take on the subject. “I believe in censorship. I made a fortune
out of it.” -Mae West. The media is very easy to control, except the
Internet. On the Internet everyone can discuss their own views and talk to
other people around the world, talk about their views and their knowledge on
the subject. On the whole, Internet sites like YouTube and BBC News make the
world much more interactive and offers real time response from people paying
attention to the subject at hand.
Many people are now opting for YouTube over Television
as a source of entertainment because you can choose exactly what you want to
watch and watch it immediately whereas television has adverts or commercial
breaks and its on a schedule so you would have to wait for what you want. There
is now Netflix and many sites like it where you can download entire TV series
and watch it on your computer, tablet, phone and even entertainment system. YouTube
offers a huge variety of entertainment from YouTube celebrities and standard
videos and there are now exciting new high budget series’ that are exclusive to
YouTube. Many famous ‘YouTubers’ choose to stay on YouTube rather that getting
on Television as YouTube offers them a better pay for making videos.
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Picture from Google images
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YouTube has also given everyone his or her own voice.
In many countries the Government don’t like outsiders to know exactly what goes
on inside, like China for example. The Chinese Government tries to stop all
media from filming and talking about the Earthquake that happened this year but
the locals used hand held cameras and their own mobile phones to film
everything going on and despite Government efforts it was all on YouTube and
social networking sites for anyone to see in only a few hours. Anyone can now share their videos and stories
and higher powers can do nothing to stop this. Even if videos are taken down
there is re-blogging, re-posting, re-uploading, there is no possible way to
‘control’ the Internet, despite many powers trying to like SOPA and ACTA acts. There
are no laws and no restrictions, which is why people are being heard who
normally would not have a chance to even cry for help without access to the
Internet.
The ability to film anything at anytime means that it
is no longer necessary to have a large expensive camera with you whereas a
camera phone is practical and people will generally have it on them at all
times. This also means governments are going to have a hard time trying to keep
information confidential, such as wars that go on in third world countries and
dictatorships in which the local governments will try to keep under covers and
censor everything, because people can film everything that goes on with their
mobile phone and upload it onto the Internet where people will find it. Despite
governments banning and blocking websites, people still find ways around this through
other web sites and URLs. It really shows how powerful technology and the
Internet is when we see entire forums, websites and videos from countries in
trouble. “The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.”-John Perry Barlow. It is true, however,
that this would mean nothing if nobody would look it up. “You affect the world by what you browse”.- Tim Berners-Lee. Recent
videos have shocked the world like the video of Dictator Colonel Gaddafi being
finally found and killed by Libyan rebels and filmed on a small camera phone on
October 20, 2011, Sirte – Dates from Google search. Despite higher powers trying to keep the
video hidden the video was leaked and was posted onto many websites which
inevitably lead to news stations posting footage of the colonel in a bloodied
state being dragged by rebels, but still censored anything too graphic.
YouTube has brought people together
as many people who make videos end up talking to each other online and becoming
good friends, like a group on YouTube who go by the name of ‘the creatures’.
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Picture from Google images
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It is a growing
concern that powerful companies like Apple
and Google that have maps of the
entire world, phone numbers and personal details on millions of people are
becoming too powerful. But in today’s modern day society we cannot simply put
down our phones, stop using technological communication and avoid computers.
Our society has adapted too easily into using all this technology so fast that
new generations don’t even know what it is like to not have the ability to
phone your friends in a seconds notice, or talk to someone across the world on
applications like Skype which is an
online video chat application. “People
are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans.”-Ralph
Nader.
Technology now allows anyone with a camera on their
phone to film low budget, anytime and anywhere because mobile phones are so
portable. Users can now compete and distribute their own videos online with
ease. It is ridiculous how much
technology has advanced over the last few decades. Now anyone with a camera can
film and compress their videos on their computers, even on their mobile phones
now, edit them in software such as adobe
premier pro or windows moviemaker
and upload them onto website such as YouTube. These videos can be uploaded in
formats such as mpg,
.mp4, .mov, .avi, .wmv, .flv, .swf, .3GP and .ASF.
The best video formats for YouTube are MP4, MPEG, MOV
or FLV. The first video ever to be posted on YouTube was a video called ‘me at
the zoo’ and it is the third creator of YouTube in an 18 second video
explaining what he Is seeing at the zoo. The video is only in the resolution
240p which is very poor quality, however over the last few years HD has been
introduced and YouTube has adapted to 360p, 460p and in HD 720p and 1080p
resolutions. This allows anyone to make their own movies, show the world
exactly who they are and show everyone what their life is like. There are more
and more ways being made to make your videos in better quality visually and in
audio for virtually no cost at all. Camera quality is improving drastically as
we can now film in full HD 1080p with professional cameras and on certain
smartphones and then upload these videos onto free to use websites.
Ways of recording can be:
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Video
camera
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Phone
·
Web
camera
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Capture
card
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Recording
software
There are three main frame rate standards in the TV and
movie-making business: 24p, 25p, and 30p (as progressive formats). However,
there are many variations on these as well as newer emerging standards. This video
is a split comparison of 30fps and 60fps (frames per second):
In gaming the
frame rate only affects the game itself in tow ways, one being low FPS does not
give the game the illusion of smooth motion and this may effect the players
interaction with the game, the other way being that animation is uneven and
choppy. Most games keep their frame rate around 30FPS where it can hold a
consistently smooth animation.
In the film industry amazing advancements have been
made. Before digital storage and filming people had to manually ‘cut and paste’
the film reel together to edit parts. Now they can edit and use software such
as:
·
Adobe
premier pro
·
Adobe
after effects
·
Windows
Moviemaker
·
iMovie
·
Final
cut pro
·
Sony
Vegas
They can easily
edit digital videos with ease and then make multiple copies in seconds. These movies
can then be sent out digitally or stored on a memory stick or burnt onto a DVD,
saved onto a phone or removable hard drive. Films are now being shot with HD
and 3D cameras; we can use motion capture and digital editing to create amazing
visual effects like the film Avatar.
Many TV series today use the same technology as movie making companies do and
they can add filters and special effects to the series to really give it the
desired atmosphere, like the bleak gray scale feel of the walking dead.
But it isn’t easy to make such good quality videos and
use large files, let alone many copies of them.
In order to run such software users will have to have a good fast
processor and lots of RAM otherwise you would be stuck on a very frustratingly
slow computer. Over the last few decades our digital storage has gone up from
something using a gigabytes of RAM being considered a ‘supercomputer’ to a
computer in today’s modern media using several gigabytes of RAM as a
requirement to run a lot of files. Today we can carry around vast amounts of
data in our pockets, on USB memory sticks or even smart phones.
Bit rate is a lot like download speed. It is the bits
per second using kilo, mega, giga or
tera as measurements. Bit rate is the number of bits processed per certain unit
of time
While compressing a video the compression can be lossy
or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating
statistical redundancy which should always be done when uploading a video to a
website such as YouTube. No information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy
compression reduces bits by identifying marginally important information and
removing it. The process of reducing the size of a data file is popularly
referred to as data compression, although its formal name is source coding
(coding done at the source of the data, before it is stored or transmitted). It
is optional to use lossless compression so no vital parts of the video are
removed which is possible in lossy. –information
gathered from Wikipedia.
Overall technology advancements in the interactive
media have changed the way the world works and working with digital videos much
faster and easier.
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