The New York Times is hurting financially these days, and its online business doesn’t seem to be helping much, but at least it keeps pushing forward. One area where the NYTimes.com has put a lot of effort is in video, and it has just redesigned its video page around the new Brightcove 3 player.
Previously, the NYTimes was using the FeedRoom as its main video platform. (This swap doesn’t come out of the blue. The New York Times is an investor in Brightcove). I know of at least one more large video site that is going to announce it is switching to BrightCove 3 next week (more on that later). In the case of the NYTimes.com, one of the things Briightcove 3 will allow it to do is eventually stream HD-quality video and distribute that video elsewhere. As of now, the video is closer to DVD-quality at 1.5 megabits per second, but the site has standardized around the 16:9 landscape aspect ratio most HD video is shot in. (Brightcove 3 dynamically adjusts the resolution of the video stream to whatever the viewer can handle based on player size and bandwidth).
One thing the NYTimes needs to fix is video search. On the video page there is a box that says “Search Video,” but it brings up general results. Another flaw is that The NYTimes does not allow its videos to be embedded elsewhere, only shared via links. Lame.
I’ve embedded an interview with the NYT’s video and television director Ann Derry below from Beet.TV explaining the changes.