Why video should be a native data type

I want to revisit an idea I blogged about awhile back. I’d like to see video sharing/broadcasting/recording become an integral part of the OS experience–not just for computers, but for cameras, cell phones, and other digital devices.

A bit of background first. I was at a conference awhile back when I decided to take a picture of a session listing that was being displayed on some monitors. Simple enough right? Well sometimes the little things spawn ideas–and this one did.

As I was adjusting my position left and right to get the display in the field of view of my digital camera as well as to minimize glare, I realized I was going the long way around to capture something that was already digital. What was I doing? And it wasn’t just me. There were others standing next to me doing much the same. Silly, I realized.

I thought: Why can’t I receive a live, digital broadcast of what’s on the display, right within my WiFi-based camera? Why am I capturing “over the air,” if you will, rather than going direct?

The more I thought about this, the more I began to see that our graphics chips are throwing away a lot of opportunities for digital sharing of its content.

Now it’s true, that there are apps, such as SharedView, VNC, and the like which are designed to share the desktop, but what if the broadcasting experience was provided as a standard in the OS? Camtasia, WebcamMax/Superwebcam, and on and on would essentially be built in with a complementary broadcasting and recording feature built into computers, MIDs, digital cameras, cell phones, and the like.

First, back to the camera capture issue. Record directly is my mantra. In this digital world, there’s no reason to go over the visual spectrum.

So let’s say I want to capture what’s on my friend’s computer. Right now you have to adjust all over the place to get the lighting just right–all along trying to avoid seeing yourself in the reflection. When you’re recording on the go, this is silly.

What if instead, the person could (for instance), right click on their desktop and select from the context menu “Share Desktop” (or window or region or whatever). With this single click the OS would then appear as a thumbnail overlay on my camera (computer or whatever) which I could then select and record. I could record picture in picture or record to the whole frame, capture a single frame, capture a sequence of frames, or….or….or. Lots of possibilities here.

As I mentioned earlier, there are desktop sharing apps today, but what I’m advocating is that they become more “video” like with embedded content/command-and-control signals–with a two way option. With a common standard–not just a desktop standard–all manner of devices and apps could record the content–directly.

And once the content can be broadcast digitally, there’s the whole world that you can broadcast to. Imagine.

So what I’d like to see is an open sharing and broadcasting standard that makes its way into connected devices.

Flash is already starting to show the value of a “video” standard on the Internet. Now we just need to have the recording part opened up. The reasons for locking down the content are holding back a natural evolution of devices that can share, broadcast and record live, interactive streams. It’s not just the major studios that want to “broadcast.” In fact, I’d argue that they are a small subset of all broadcasting that would take place.

So imagine you’re at your next conference and someone is projecting a demo playing on their desktop up on one of several large screens. No more do you have to get just the right seat to get just the right shot of what the person is showing. Instead, they just have to share their desktop and broadcast its contents live directly to your camera or OneNote or whatever. Same goes for the doctor showing you your ultrasound of your unborn child or you MRI. Yes, you can share the files, but you can also share the playback experience with all the interaction…the sound….the movement of the pointer…and the content itself–all to your cell phone, MID, or laptop.