YouTube Adds Auto-Captioning Feature

YouTube announced a new automatic captioning (Auto-Caps) function today for English language videos on the service. The site will now be able to automatically generate subtitles using speech recognition technology.  It will also allow video owners and publishers to upload transcript texts for their videos.  The uploaded text will not require any timing data, as the Auto-Caps function will figure out when the words are spoken in the video and display the captions at the correct time. Cl...

Facebook Now Number Three Video Site

Facebook is now the number 3 video site on the web, according to Nielsen Research [via NewTeevee.com]. This is an incredible gain, as the social networking site was number 10 on the list just last month. As of now, Facebook is just behind YouTube and Hulu in number of videos watched. Top 10 Online Web Brands Ranked by Total Streams Video Brand Total Streams (000) Unique Viewers (000) YouTube 6,632,964 105,923 Hulu 632,662 13,472 Facebook 217,765 31,594 ...

New Flip Camcorder Model To Have Wi-Fi, Larger Screen

Rumor is that the next model of Flip camcorder will be released in the first half of 2010. This will be the first new model to be released since Cisco bought Flip maker Pure Digital earlier this year. Probaly thanks to that new parentage, the new model will be wi-fi enabled, and will be able to upload video directly to the Internet from both private and public wi-fi spots.  The new model will also have a larger screen that slides out of the way to reveal the record and menu buttons.  N...

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta Released

Adobe's latest Flash Player release allows hardware decoding of H.264 Flash video.  This means that computer's  with supported graphics cards can watch HD flash video without straining their CPU by offloading the work to their GPU. Unfortunatley, most Atom based netbooks can't take part yet, as the Intel 945 GSE chipset doesn''t take advantage of the improvements.  If you have one that uses the NVIDIA ION platform, though, you should see great improvement when streaming 1080p video from sites...

LayeredBrain Brings Easy Affiliate Marketing To Video Ads

LayeredBrain, a new video advertising platform still in beta, promises to allow users to easily embed affiliate links into videos using its online tools. The web app is aiming to differentiate itself from competitors ( such as Innovid, Quick.tv and Veeple) by playing nice with your favorite video CMS (it works with its own API as well as Vimeo and Brightcove), and by focusing on affiliate marketing. The app works like this - if you have a product in your video, you can define an area o...

Hallods F43 Portable Media Player Has True HD

It looks like Hallods new portable media player is doing a great job of giving people what they want - true portable HD.  The unit is half an inch thick, has a a 4.3  inch screen with 1280 x 720 resolution, 8GB internal flash memory and a microSDHC memory card expansion slot for another 4 to 32GB.  It plays MPEG4, FLV, H.263, AVI, RM, RMVB and Divx-WVGA video formats; and MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC and APE audio formats.  Basically everything you need for audiovisual nirvana. Japan only for now,...

Better Than Hulu? Clicker.com Launches Comprehensive Web TV and Movie Aggregator Service

Clicker.com officially launched its Web video programming guide today after a two month testing period.  The site provides a single location for listings of all free and legally available TV episodes available for viewing on the web, as well as lists for-pay streaming movies available from Netflix and Amazon's video on demand.   The company has compiled over 400,000 TV episodes from over 1,200 sources and is currently listing 30,000 movies from Netflix and Amazon's catalogs. The site also...

Logitech Acquires LifeSize Communications For $405 Million

Logitech made a decisive move into the high-end corporate video conferencing space today with it's $405 million acquisition of LifeSize Communications. LifeSize, which currently has over 9,000 customers in more than 80 countries, provides high-definition video-conferencing systems in the $8,000 to $12,000 range. Logitech is best known for it's mass market brand of reasonably priced peripherals such as webcams, mice and keyboards.  With the LifeSize acquisition, the company is both gaining ...

Creative’s Zii Released: The World’s First 1080p Blu-ray Quality Handheld Media Processor

Creative spinoff ZiiLABS has cooked up a new system-on-a-chip architecture for high-demand, low-power, mobile media applications. Expect to see this chip in portable media players, e-book readers, smart phones and netbooks in the near future. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW9rUfejLss] The Press Release: ZiiLABS Introduces ZMS-08: The World's First 1080p Blu-ray Quality Handheld Media Processor New ZMS-08 StemCell Processor Offers Faster, Lower-Power Single Chip Solut...

New Viewsonic VMP70 Media Player beats WD TV in Price and Features

  We love Western Digital's WD TV "direct connect" media player.  The simplicity of a tiny (two cigarette case size) box packed with every imaginable video codec, with USB connections for connecting an external hard drive and HDMI, component and S-video outs to connect to your tv,  all controllable from a cool little remote via a nifty menu system  - and ALL for around $100, is just super cool. Today, life got a little cooler.  Enter Viewsonic's VMP70 1080p media player.  What do we get...

Cowon iAudio 9 and iAudio E2 Media Players Released in US

    Cowon is releasing two of its slim media players on the US market.  The iAudio9 will be available with 8GB and 16GB versions.  It supports most media formats (MP3, FLAC, Ogg, WAV, APE, WME, XviD, and WMV videos), as well as has a composite video out. The 8GB version is $129, the 16GB is $169. The miniscule iAudio E2 is also available. This iPod shuffle competitor doesn't have video out, but has excellent sound, including 8 JetEffect audio enhancement presets (BBE, BBE VIVA, BB...