Xine is a free multimedia player. It plays back CDs, DVDs, and VCDs. It also decodes multimedia files like AVI, MOV, WMV, and MP3 from local disk drives, and displays multimedia streamed over the Internet. It interprets many of the most common multimedia formats available - and some of the most uncommon formats, too.

Xine is a free (gpl-licensed) high-performance, portable and reusable multimedia playback engine. Xine itself is a shared library with an easy to use, yet powerful API which is used by many applications for smooth video playback and video processing purposes.

Supported platforms include:

• GNU/Linux (x86, alpha, sparc, ppc, …)

• FreeBSD (x86)

• Solaris (sparc and x86)

• Irix (mips)

• Darwin/MacOS X (ppc) via the fink project

• Support for the following platforms is in progress (help is always appreciated):

• MS Windows (partially working and committed to CVS)

• HPUX (patches received)

• OpenBSD (patches received)

• OS/2 (external site)

Source.

Technorati Tags: multimedia player, playback engine, free,  AVI, MOV, WMV, MP3, formats

Not long ago the NBA signed a short-term agreement with YouTube. According to this pact, basketball fans now have the oppotrunity of watching and uploading unforgettable sport tricks and videos directly from the site’s database. Haunter-viewers, who are intensely addicted to the video-sharing site known as YouTube, also won’t be disappointed. It turns on. I hope it won’t make you a couch potato.

Sportsbusiness Journal, JOHN LOMBARDO

In addition to the YouTube agreement, the NBA is in negotiations for deals with social-networking sites FaceBook, MySpace and Second Life, a fast-growing “virtual world” in which users assume and manage an online identity.

The NBA Channel on YouTube will debut this month and run through this year’s NBA Finals.

“We are trying to figure out the digital landscape,” said NBA Commissioner David Stern. “We are looking for ways to extend our partnerships in many ways.”The NBA and Google aren’t strangers. In January 2006, the two parties signed a deal that allowed fans to view online videos of league games 24 hours after the games ended for $3.95 per game. The deal was not extended for the 2006-07 season, and buy rates were not disclosed.The NHL has a similar content deal with Google placing tape-delayed games on that site for free viewing.

Technorati Tags: nba, basketball, videos, sport, video-sharing site, video 

There are myriads of video search tools, which provide you with a comfort and confidence in the finding just what you are craving for: TV shows, TV news, videos, clips etc. I can make you change your mind, if you are the people, who are interested in the getting useful information of this industry.

This is going to be a really good discovery. I love exploring new web places. What I can say for sure is that you will necessarily find at least a scintilla of valuable information.

Video search engines and video directories are the following:

AlltheWeb: Find videos all over the Web with AlltheWeb.

The Open Video Project: And quotation from the site: “The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities.”

AltaVista Video: You are in trouble, it’s easy to improve with this stuff. When you come across good video search tool, you inevitably start searching for a variety of video formats like avi, MPEG, Quicktime, swf and etc.

SingingFish: quite a specific audio and video search engine.

Tapeitofftheinternet: It’s a perfect web resource, which indexes 2,000 + TV shows - 90,000 + episodes - and we matches iTunes, AOL and Amazon Unbox - with more to come. You can find a new world here, as they suggest.

Peekvid: “Peekvid does not contain any content on its site, but is merely an index of available links on the Internet. Peekvid is committed to an industry solution that will provide a mechanism to compensate artists that create the work you enjoy watching. Peekvid would like to be part of the long term solution.” Movies, cartoons, TV shows is available to find via this site. Watch your favorite TV shows, music videos, and more here. Over 13,000 videos at the time of this writing.

Yahoo Video Search: Yahoo’s video search is pretty mammoth.

Google Video Search: Google’s immense database is opened for video searching.

Viidoo: Please select a channel and time zone, click GO button to view the schedule!

Wwitv: World Wide Internet TeleVision – that’s it! In 5 languages.

Democracynow: Democracy Now! - radio and TV news.

Blinkx Video Search: Only for high speed Internet access users, who will find an extremely cool video clip montage on the front page and any video you want here. Cool tool.

WebSEEK: From Columbia University. Browse videos by subject or topic.

PBS Online NewsHour: This site will allow you to search anything from NewsHour after February 7, 2000.

Ourmedia.org: The “global home for grassroots media. “Ourmedia allows you to upload and download your own video clips, search different types of funny videos through their rapidly growing database.

Open Media Network: “OMN is a free public service designed to help you enjoy a broad selection of movies, public TV and radio, video blogs and podcasts while protecting producer’s copyrights.” Requires a free download.

C-SPAN: is a public service that allows anyone who wants to free viewing access of the United States government. You can search through C-SPAN’s archive of video content here.

KeepVid: Watch your favorite TV shows, music videos, and more here. Very useful tool for everyone who wanna have access to sharing video websites’ database like YouTube.

Bear for action!

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: TV, WEB, video, clips, find video, tool, database, shows, funny videos, mpeg, avi, swf, digital video, TV news, video search engines, video directories 

The 79th Academy Awards ceremony on ABC seemed to be too long and too long-drawn. The show seemed to go on an on, may be cause it was the first telebroadcast in five years to run past midnight. The 2007 Oscars show appears to be the third-longest broadcast in history. Some specialists and amateurs predict the next year show length. Doubt it’ll be possible to watch next time. Most reviewers seem to agree it was extremely dull.

Tom Shales, The Washington Post

“Alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) a bore and a horror, the 79th annual Academy Awards, televised live from Los Angeles on ABC, had a few bright spots to keep weary viewers propping their eyes open as midnight approached - even if they had never heard of, much less seen, many of the nominated films.

“The number of big, emotionally rewarding moments was infinitesimal - but one had real oomph: Jennifer Hudson winning for Best Supporting Actress for her acting and singing in the hit musical ‘Dreamgirls.’ …

“Next year: the 80th annual Academy Awards. Imagine how long that one will be.

After this year’s ratings come in, though, maybe it will move to cable.”

Alessandra Stanley, The New York Times

“It took quite a while to get to the meatier categories, and Ms. DeGeneres’s aisle routine got a little old. Martin Scorsese received a standing ovation for winning his Oscar, but there were few surprises among the winners. Helen Mirren predictably showed sang-froid; Jennifer Hudson managed to look surprised and tearful, naming her grandmother as her inspiration. …

“The ritual is so universal that even rival networks festoon the event with lavish coverage. But by the time the event finally begins, viewers and even participants seem a little jaded and tired.”

Technorati Tags: oscar nominations, oscar,  nominations,  award,  abc,  broadcast,  telebroadcats,  show,  academy awards 

Financial Times’ reporter Tom Foremski writes, that the capital of the media and video world is moving to Silicon Valley from New York. That’s an interesting event. For some people it will be a stunning blow, but don’t be so nervous. Media industry is growing with great strides, media companies are in captivity, they try are finding new places for work.Some of Silicon Valley’s largest companies are media companies: Google, Yahoo, EBay, for example are media companies - they publish pages of content and advertising around it.

Some of the most interesting and most valuable new Silicon Valley companies, such as Youtube, Facebook are based here in Northern California. Craigslist, the seventh largest online media company in the English language world (in terms of traffic).

Google, Yahoo, Ebay, etc, are keen to portray themselves as technology companies rather than media companies - it is much more conductive to establishing partnerships and ad network deals in which they benefit far more than their old school media partners. If they were seen as more media company than technology company.

Five basic rules for media company success:

- Tomorrow’s media industry is all about being technology-enabled and community-powered.

- Get your content as near-to-free as you can with machine harvesters such as spiders and searchbots.

- Use algorithms and community-power to organize the content.

- Publish it widely and in many forms (video, podcasts, etc) through the amazing scale that the global internet provides and media technologies (RSS, media platforms, TCP/IP, etc) provide.

- Content is infinitely scalable.

Source.

Technorati Tags: silicon valley, RSS, videp, media, new york, ad, google, yahoo, ebay,  youtube