Wednesday: YouTube Killer in the Works? ... InDplay Licensing Market ... Final Cut Pro Meeting in January

Flying back today from Boston to San Francisco after a really fun productive four-day stay there... And it was just my luck that a Forrester analyst I needed to interview for a piece, Josh Bernoff, happened to be scheduled on my flight -- so we did an interview in the rear galley, until the flight attendants evicted us for getting in their way.

Some recent stories worth reading:

- Great piece by BusinessWeek's Jon Fine about YouTube's licensing talks with big media companies. (Via Reel Pop.) This is the first I've heard mention of media companies working together to create a `YouTube killer.' It's a great idea -- if the media companies could get it up and running by, say, January -- and if it was as easy to use as YouTube. Those are two big ifs for any consortium of large companies. Fine writes:

"The theory is that if you were to aggregate enough exclusive content in one place, you could actually change viewing patterns," says an executive familiar with the cross-company talks. Perhaps anticipating my jumping all over the fallacy of "exclusive" in an open online ecosystem, he concedes "it's really tough," though not impossible.

- Another piece in BusinessWeek, by Elizabeth Woyke, looks at InDplay, a nascent rights marketplace for film and video. (There's a brief quote from me in it.) She writes:

Despite early interest from buyers at broadcast, cable, and Internet companies, inDplay faces the challenge of pioneering a new type of online marketplace. Its vitality will turn on whether it can enlist quality buyers, sellers, and merchandise. The site currently boasts around 30 buyers, several hundred sellers, and 300 video properties. A recent deal with Allied Artists Corp. will add thousands more titles, and inDplay hopes to close deals with three other film libraries soon. After opening the service to buyers two months ago, inDplay has closed several sales, including those for documentaries on Timothy Leary and Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus.

I'm surprised that InDPlay takes "about an 8% commission, equivalent to a traditional sales agent's fee," in each deal, according to Woyke. Didn't eBay succeed, in part, because its commission structure was much lower than an old-school auction house?

- Michael Horton of the LA Final Cut Pro User Group sends word of the upcoming January 10th meeting, in San Francisco, and it looks like a good one. (It's being held alongside Macworld, which Apple has stupidly and arrogantly scheduled this year to conflict with the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas.) From Michael:

Scheduled to appear on the agenda will be Associate Editor Sean Cullen who
is currently working with legendary film editor Walter Murch on Francis
Coppola's new film, "Youth without Youth."


This movie, (edited using FCP) is being filmed using the Sony HDC F950 HD
Cam, and marks the first time both Walter Murch and Francis Coppola are going
"filmless." Sean will discuss the digital workflow they have developed.



Also scheduled to appear will be film editor Angus Wall, who just completed
“Zodiac” for director David Fincher. Angus will discuss the all tapeless
workflow they developed for Zodiac. The film, (edited using FCP) was shot
using the Grass Valley Viper Film Stream camera and Angus will be joined on
stage by tech consultant, Andreas Wacker.

Tix are $10, and the event is usually a sell-out.