mflix
-
Posts
12 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by mflix
-
-
Hi, Beau.
Thanks for keeping us informed about the progress of Flix.
Any chance of providing interactive content also? I can imagine using the Flix format in an entertaining way to introduce and fill out characters and set the scene for a follow up with the same characters in interactive experiences such as multi-player mobile phone games or Flash-like movies.
Just curious.
Thanks
Paul Forwood
We're not yet at a place where interactive content is interactive, aside from games. But games have another distribution channel and audience. someday they will converge, it seems to me. but we're not there yet.
-
Hello everyone, and thanks to those of you who have submitted films and animations to mFlix (www.mflix.com) for the first real national streaming of films on telephones in America. This is an update, to give you all some feedback on how things are going in the real world of media streaming to mobile (cell) phones on the Sprint 3g Network.
We went 'live' on August 13 as one of 7 content providers to Sprint, as many of you know. The others include E!, ABC, CNN etc - mostly repurposed TV shows shown to phone viewers.
We have shown all of the films submitted, except for one, which had some sort of technical issue making it impossible for us to encode. When we get our first data from Sprint, in November, we will update your mFlix accounts with data about how it was viewed along with credit ($) for the use of the films.
From our log files, here is what we know:
1) titles matter. Viewers select a film based on its title, so make it count. Titles cannot exceed 18 characters
2) For mobile, don't waste time with rolling credits at the end, unless they are huge and brief. why? because the screen size is 176x128 pixels and no one will be able to read them. Much better to have a splash screen saying 'a film by John Woo' lasting 1-2 seconds.
3) Briight works translate better than dark moody pieces with rich detail
4) Closeups work better than panoramas
5) remember: sound is mono, and ambient noise is a reality, so pieces with subtle sound effects or whispering characters won't work well.
The biggest driver of eyeballs is the title.
Please keep the films coming. As our subscribers grow, then those films we use will earn more money (note that we make money only on subscribers, not on film views). I have to tell you that the quality of animation from the AM crowd is excellent and I am proud to be working with Ken and the Hash Team, so you are - in my view - in great company!
Remember to visit and upload your films to: www.mflix.com
/Beau
-
Hi everyone,
We recently added a direct-to-mFlix upload process at www.mflix.com, under the filmmaker's link. Up until now (and still) filmmakers would upload films to mFlix via our 'World's Smallest Festival' upload area. The new upload link can be found at http://www.mflix.com/filmmaker/login.php. Please let me know if you experience any problems uploading.
Thanks to Ken and those who have been so supportive and who have submitted films.
Beau Buck
mFlix.com
-
If I might ask, what other sources of content do you envisage will contribute? It's not just going to be 3D people right? Perhaps traditional animation too?
Hi. It won't be 3d. It will be animation and it's best with some sort of sound. working in a 30-sec to 3-min range to tell a story is not easy, but it's possible.
If you have characters that the audience might learn to follow, that would be a great way to start.
The audience, as described by Sprint, is high-net worth, male, gadget-geeks, early adopters.
-
This is indeed awsome!
those 3G phones have been arround in Sweden/europe for a while now and peolple are using them more and more and the content are constantley increasing. Thanks for sharing Ken!
lets give it a try!
When is this about to lunch or is it already up and running?
If I get this correctly, its possible to in the future make some small amount of money out of this. but I cant find any info either on the site or elswere how this is handled.
In the FAQ there is a line saying they pay royalties "based on the net we receive back to the content makers"
but How will I know as a film maker how much my content has been downloaded or viewed?
Cheers!
/a.
Hi,
Sprint announced the service on August 13. mFlix is live now. As I write, people are watching short films and animations on their new Samsung A700s.
The information on the website about how much we will pay content makers is deliberately ambiguous. The answer is, we don't yet know how much, because we don't yet know how much we will receive or what our actual costs to provide the service will be. So rather than make a blind promise of paying either a certain amount or a certain percentage, we're taking the approach that you see. When we go through our first cycle and can know how popular the service was, and what it has cost us in terms of streaming servers, bandwidth, encoding, etc etc., then we can get more specific because we can make forecasts about how much we will see from Sprint (and other carriers. Many are interested).
We will be able to tell you how popular your film was or was not when we get the data dump from Sprint, as detailed in a previous post here. At that point, with whatever it is that we have paid you as a content provider, you are free to decide whether it was worth it or not.
It's worth noting that we do not put all films submitted to us into mFlix. If your films have been accepted into mFlix, you can take them out of rotation if you feel it's not fair.
-
You may have said, but what format do you accept? Quicktime, mpeg, avi? Also is there a colour number limit?
For submitting, the best formats for us are AVI or MOV. TMpeg can work. Even some Flash can work. We end up turning it all into AVI and encoding from there, So there are some exceptions. See http://www.bigdigit.com/submit.htm for more info.
Incidentally, our upload service is in the shop for another day or maybe 2. You can still contact me if you want to submit content.
There is no limit to the number of colors, but once we encode for mobile the colors and resolution and significantly less than the original. I encoded a 151 gb file the other day and when it popped out as 3gp is was 1.2 megs. All that stuff went somewhere!
-
This is deffinatley an oportunity worth thinking about. It' a kick in the butt for aspiring animators, like me, to get going and produce something. I think a series would be fun. Maybe even a colab effort.
Beau, I am wondering if the content will be veiwable on the website. This would be good because I won't have one of these phones any time soon, and I'd like to see what other content is being submitted.
Yes, please go to
http://www.bigdigit.com/ctiasplash.htm
http://www.bigdigit.com/natpe.htm
http://207.36.180.163/london/home.html
or
http://www.bigdigit.com/splash/
for examples of what we call a 'viewing site'. We put these sites up when we hold our 'World's Smallest Film Festivals', the next one being in London next month. One of the ways we acquire content is through these sponsor-driven events. People can also submit their works directly to mFlix.
Beau
-
How is money or profit made from this?
I was thinking of cool trailers then sell the movie off DVD, the full feature, is that something acceptable?
Just wondering how we can turn this into profit.
Thanks
Shawn
The way to think about this medium is to consider it a new paradigm: short complete stories and short episodes. It is entirely possible to develop characters and a story and a following, then upsell this into a movie deal or a script. mFlix will have a kind of cult following and is the ONLY place on a mobile phone where you will see independent content like what we show. Everything else is repurposed TV and, frankly, I would sooner turn on my TV than watch TV on my phone, unless of course there is breaking news and I am nowhere near the tube.
The opportunity to make money is one of the most exciting things about mFlix. It is the first tru mass market for independent filmmakers. Here is how it works:
1) We have the channel on Sprint. Our job is to keep interesting content in it;
2) Viewers subscribe to the service just like you would add HBO to your basic cable service. mFlix is called a 'premium channel'.
3) When a viewer subscribes, a charge shows up on their phone bill. It costs them 4.95/mo in addition to the necessary underlying subscription to Sprint's multimedia service, which is a bundle of content like basic cable. Once a viewer subscribes, they can watch mFlix all day long if they want. The price gives them access for a month.
4) Sprint pays us a portion of the $4.95 90 days in arrears, after the first billing cycle (30 days). So, we see no money for 120 days at first.
5) We allocate some of the money Sprint pays us to PAY content makers.
6) We then do a complicated weighted average based on whose films were available for what portion of the period; which ones were watched more (and which were watched less); and so on. We then pay content providers.
The first time out - ie the first time we get a data dump from Sprint - there will be an obvious learning curve. We actually do not know what to expect nor do we know what exactly what it will cost in terms of servers and bandwidth and licensing, to support the service. As you can imagine, it is quite complicated. What we do know is that we need to compensate content providers with as much money as we can, so we can provide proper incentive. We also need to make it worth our own while to be in business, so we have to cover costs etc. Once we go through a cycle, we will be able to give much more accurate and detailed numbers. This is all brand new, so I am sharing with you what I can.
I will tell you that this will be a big market, eventually. It is certainly an exciting market. Those content makers who we have begun wih, and those who follow, can rightly claim to have 'been there' when mobile media becomes commonplace. For now the numbers aren't huge, but Sprint is just the first of what will be many operators in a global market. There are currently more than 1.3 billion phones out there in use, and within a few years a measurable percentage of them will be in use as video phones.
For the really forward thinking among you, I would also add that in my opinion, as the market matures the demand for content will broaden to include not only novelty, fun, silly stuff; to include instructional, informative, even educational content that is personalized to specific users at the point of phone sale.
-
Technically it is possible to have an animation or video triggered by an event, such as an incoming call. It's all phone dependent: some models will allow you to assign images to events. But the distribution of the animations would still not be addressed since somehow you'd want (presumably) a way for all your great stuff to show up on everyone's phones.
On a per-phone basis however, you could synch your phone to your computer, load images, and assign them to events.
-
Other mFlix info that you might find interesting:
1) Currently, one telephone works with this service: the Samsung A700. by EOY 2004, 4 phones will support the service. By EOY 2005, 22 phones are in queue to support the service.
2) Everything we put on mFlix becomes video, which we then encode to 3gpp or 3gp2 which are the streaming formats. In other words, if you submit you must send us either a .mov or an AVI. These are the most reliable base formats for us.
3) The ideal length is under 3 minutes.
4) Tempting as it may be, don't have tons of rolling credits at the end or beginning. They are illegible, and this medium is short and to the point. You can put text as a title or endcap, but please limit it and put it right in the middle of the screen in a large font. 176x144 is not big.
More info as people request it.
Thanks!
Beau
-
Hi all,
This is Beau Buck from mFlix writing. mFlix is the service Ken has been describing.
mFlix is very exciting and we are fortunate to be one of 7 content providers to Sprint. Ken and I were talking at SIGGRAPH the other day and we both concluded that mFlix was a perfect opportunity for animators at AM Films, because it provides exposure, a market for the animations, and it showcases the capabilities of Animation Master. I encourage you to submit your films at www.mflix.com.
Incidentally, we do not request an exclusive distribution license: you can still do whatever you want with your films even after sending them to us. But, you must have the rights to authorize use of the films, and if you have other people's images or brand names embedded in them, you have to have permission to use them.
Read the Sprint press release here: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories....+2004,+04:55+PM
So, if I can answer answer any questions, please feel free to post them here on this forum.
Beau Buck
What works on Mobile Phones
in (2003-2004)
Posted
Great questions.
Yes, if you create at 10 FPS, you will approximate the FPS when we encode for mobile. We usually encode at 8 FPS. more is possible, but it causes the phones to have to fetch the data mid-movie more frequently (this causes the movie to pause, which is annoying).
We keep the films available for viewing indefinitely. We replace one of the 25 films on at any time at least 2x weekly, sometimes 3x weekly. We almost always replace the films that have been in there the longest. We have 5 folders (each with 5 films). We also have a 'favorites' folder, and there is no schedule for replacing these. To make it to 'favorites' your film must be really popular.
After we receive a film from you, if we accept it (we don't accept all submissions for a variety of reasons), we usually get it up on mFlix in the next 30 days. It's hard to say. We get films from a number of submitters and sources. We program the mFlix offering llike a DJ would run playlists for a dance floor. In other words, we watch the users to see what seems to be working, and we try to play more of 'that'.
We do not publish a 'top 10' list, but we may at some point.
We're working on a system - which I am told will be done soon - to update usage stats on your mFlix.com account, so when you log in you can see what's going on.
Hope that is helpful.
Beau