Sony’s media business, Sony Pictures Entertainment, will be using the types of production techniques that it puts into movies and TV to resemble other online programming by staying short, often no more than five minutes long, reports Reuters. Crackle’s season begins December 1.

Last August, Sony Pictures partnered up with Rocketboom, acquiring the worldwide distribution rights to Rocketboom.com in all media, putting the daily show on Crackle.com, presenting the show with a Crackle player on the Rocketboom.com website and distributing it over its syndication network. See RocketBoom founder Andrew Baron’s take on the upcoming announcement here.

Crackle used to be Grouper, before Sony bought the startup for a reported $65 million in the Summer of 2006. The Reuters report cites 2.4 million visitors in October, according to research firm The Nielsen Online Co., while Compete shows higher number and a nice growth pattern.

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Schroter estimates there are 15,000 roles being cast at any given time by about 400 studios and networks, and 85 percent of those are for non-scripted parts. Yet the casting industry today, says Schroter, “is built for scripted talent,” not the everyday Joes and Suzies required to make reality TV believable. “Casting directors are going to YouTube and MySpace to find this talent,” says Schroter, “but there is not an organized way to do it.” That’s why he built GotCast specifically to find and surface talent for shows, both on TV and in emerging mediums like cell phones and the Web. Casting directors and talent agents can set up casting calls, and aspiring actors can upload images and videos of themselves onto a profile page, along with a bio and crucial stats like age, height, and weight. Anyone who visits the site can sign up to vote other members up or down. The top ten for each casting then go to a group of judges made up of real talent agents and casting directors. The finalist is flown to Hollywood for a shot at the part.

The site is all about self-promotion. You are encouraged to recruit your friends to vote for you through blast e-mails, and posting GotCast widgets on your MySpace or Facebook pages, or uploading your video to YouTube. Schroter’s business plan calls for 250 castings the first year, which he hopes will attract five million registered users (1.25 million contestants and 3.75 million voters). He thinks he can get that up to 750 castings by 2010 and attract 30 million registered users (7.5 million contestants and 22.5 million voters). He might have stars in his own eyes there. As I said, these are the numbers in the business plan, so they don’t mean anything. But it does illuminate the business logic behind the site, even if the actual numbers come in to be much less.

The two casting calls on the site right now are for Young Hollywood, which is looking for a fresh face to do red-carpet interviews of celebrities, and Get Out, an adventure travel show that will be on HDNet. Schroter has lined up future castings for G4 (the videogame network), SiTV (a Latino TV network), Ripe TV (on-demand channel that’s like Skinemax on steroids), and GoTV (mobile TV). These are all pretty niche, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

So far he’s bootstrapped the site with about $500,000 of his own cash, but he is looking to raise an angel round of $3 million or so in the coming weeks. He plans to make money primarily with regular ads, but also with sponsorship castings, and a $10 subscription for members who want to be able to contact other members in a HotorNot double-blind fashion. The sponsorship castings would be promotional in nature. For instance, an upcoming movie like Transformers 2 could run a contest to play a bit role in the film, which would attract all the fanboys and get buzz going about the movie. (A sponsorship like that would cost between $50,000 to $250,000). The dating part seems a little off target–is GotCast a celebrity wannabe site or a hookup site?

Whether this succeeds or not will depend on one thing: the quality of the talent it attracts. Right now the profiles seem a little cheesy, and there are other sites that look for talent through video uploads, like Crackle (which is owned by Sony, mind you). But GotCast is a sign of the times. The Internet obliterates search costs, for talent as well as for anything else. And in the Age of American Idol, everyone wants to be a star.

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Time for another roundup, and this one coincides with a notable first-year anniversary: that of Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube, confirmed on October 9th, 2006.

Since then, the name “YouTube” has become virtually synonymous with “online video sharing”. According to Comscore, the website maintains a sizable lead over competitors with 205,593,000 unique visitors per month. Second-place Yahoo Video trails with 48,026,000 visitors. But must YouTube remain the clear winner in the online video space? While they have certainly captured the largest audience – which may in the end be all they had needed to do to secure their position – we shouldn’t underestimate the many other companies vying for mindshare.

Even if YouTube remains the destination of choice for the vast majority of consumers, producers ought to take a serious look at the alternative services. They often support more file types, bigger uploads, and higher resolutions. They also place fewer restrictions and provide an array of features simply overlooked by YouTube. That said, a few of these services are mere YouTube clones and hope to follow in YouTube’s footsteps by providing very basic features.

These are the services we looked at: blip.tv, Brightcove.tv, ClipShack, Crackle, DailyMotion, Sony eyeVio, Google Video, Megavideo, Metacafe, Motionbox, Revver, Spike (ifilm), Stage6, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo, Yahoo Video, and YouTube.

Since they are all about 80% the same, I’m not going to go through each of them one-by-one at length. However, there are some overall trends that ought to be pointed out, as well as some key differentiators. To get into the details as to how all of these websites differ, check out the comparison chart we’ve provided above. You’ll notice that there are some gaps, so please email me if you can help us fill in the holes.

First of all, only YouTube, DailyMotion, and Metacafe appear to place any hard restrictions on video length. With the rest, video lengths are determined indirectly by file size restrictions. While YouTube and several of these sites place the file size cap at 100mb per upload, others place it higher at 250mb, 500mb, or 2000mb. Veoh places no limitations on file size, but they recommend you use their desktop player for files over 100mb. If you’re willing to fork over some cash for a premium membership, Brightcove.tv and Motionbox will also let you upload files of any size.

While YouTube allows users to upload files only formatted as .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, or .MPG, other services accept a much greater range of file types. If you want to make your life easier, however, get into the habit of encoding in .MOV (Quicktime) and you’ll be welcome at almost all of these sites.

When it comes to video quality/resolution, it’s not perfectly clear how these services compare, because most of them don’t state their video bit rates or explain their transcoding processes. However, several of them clearly blow YouTube out of the water. Stage6, a DivX-based service, and Sony’s eyeVio, a Japanese-only service, support the most stunning video quality. Videos hosted by Veoh and Crackle also look very sharp.

Out of all these alternative services, blip.tv stands out as the most professional video sharing solution. The website and player are cleanly designed, they accept perhaps the widest range of file formats, they will automatically syndicate your videos to many other websites, and you can choose to place midroll, postroll, adjacent, and overlay advertisements in your uploads. Additionally, you can track your shows’ statistics quite closely and allow users to download your videos. I could go on and on about blip.tv’s useful features. The only major bummer with blip.tv is that you can’t seek ahead to points in a video using their Flash player.

It’s no surprise that shows like Rocketboom have decided to migrate over to blip.tv. We even decided to use them for our TechCrunch40 conference. And PC World agrees with us that blip.tv tops them all.

While we have a strong preference for blip.tv, the others have their own peculiarities that may make them more attractive to you. ClipShack, while mostly a YouTube clone, has an area where you can use a webcam to add movie, book, video game, and TV show reviews directly to the site. Crackle serves as a talent discovery system through which amateur producers can win a chance to pitch ideas to Sony and other media executives.

Dailymotion, Metacafe, and Megavideo support a wide range of languages. Sony eyeVio, which unfortunately doesn’t plan to roll out an English version, enables users to download videos straight to their PSPs, Walkmans, iPods, and mobile phones. Metacafe and Megavideo both have programs with which they pay content creators according to how many people view their videos. Motionbox, the most private of the services, has a video player with a unique filmstrip that can be used to visually locate segments in a video (they also provide a simple online video editor).

Revver provides a WordPress plugin so that video bloggers can upload and manage their content more efficiently. Veoh lets you both upload videos to other sharing sites and watch videos from all over the Web in its download client. Vimeo sports the best-designed website and a strong community feel. And Viddler’s player packs in a bunch of features, including the ability to leave comments in videos at particular points.

Since embeddable video players are the faces of these services, we have placed screenshots of them below (click to enlarge). We are also in the process of uploading a sample video to each of these websites so you can compare their video qualities. Links to these videos can be found in the comparison chart.

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The company will be putting the investment into finding and financing novel digital entertainment web properties. Deca, however, will not serve as a destination for these properties, but rather invest in them and distribute them through their partner’s channels. They’re being rather tight lipped about what properties they will focus their money on, but they will be announcing their first 3 projects soon. Web video shows are definitely in the cards, with non-video properties on the horizon as well.

The model is indicative of how the web is changing the production of entertainment. As Allen Morgan of Mayfield notes, “The separation between content, the audience, and the advertiser has now completely disintegrated”. Studios now have the ability to access and filter through more talent better than ever before, case in point, Crackle’s user generated web shows. The internet’s “fame machine” is getting better, and we’re all sure to benefit.

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The new property will be a destination video site, consisting of 12 branded channels for different show concepts such as comedy, music news, and animation. The site consists of a channel guide and high quality 16 x 9 embeddable video player. Advertisers will be able to place 5 to 15 second ads between the videos and banner units on the site.

Crackle’s Branded Channels

Crackle will seed the channels 1000 of their own professionally produced videos. They will add the top user generated content following the channel’s show concept (comedy, music, etc.) as selected by the community and their team of editors.

In return, Crackle will reward the producers in varying degrees, ranging from revenue shares to mid seven figure production deals. All winners will recieve distribution across Sony’s network of hardware and film properties. Sony’s distribution network and 60 person advertising team really pushes this open studio model beyond anything other video startups can currently offer.

The site is launching with 4 of the 12 user supported channels. Judgment Day is a channel where the hosts will “judge” other people in the public and then find out if their judgments are right. Scrambler is a video music magazine for indie rock. High Wire is a virtual stage for stand up comedy. Wet Paint is an animation channel. They also have a channel devoted to America’s Firehouses, whose content will be paired with Sony’s “Rescue Me” series. Finally, Moving Targets is a sketch variety channel coming soon.

Rewarding Producers

Crackle will allow users to climb the “fame pyramid” as pictured on the right. Anyone will be able to submit a video to the channels, which will be put into a general video library. Viewers will vote for the best videos and during contest periods for special deals, the two top user selected videos will join the editors picks to be chosen for production deals.

The possible rewards for producers will vary based on the channel. All the chosen content will be distributed across their network of embedded video players, along with Sony PSP, Bravia, and Sony Vaio. Crackle claims an audience of 25 million unique visitors per month.

Quarterly winners of their Shorts and Moving Targets channels will get a pitch meeting with Columbia Pictures about deals produce more videos. Winners on the comedy channels will get the chance to perform on stage at the IMPROV comedy clubs in LA, NY, or Chicago and pitch their shorts to IMPROV Comedy Lab. Animation winners will get a cash prize, the chance to pitch the studio on a theatrical release of their short, and tickets to Siggraph 2008.

Their first example is Mr. Deity, a comedy show produced by Brian Dalton, which Grouper lured from YouTube with the promise of greater distribution. Since March, the show’s 10 episodes have received over 5.7 million views. Sony has picked up the show for an additional 10 episodes to premiere on their Moving Targets channel.

How Does it Stack Up

Crackle is a big shift from the plans originally announced after Grouper turned down a $10 million second round and sold to Sony last August. We reported Sony would use Grouper’s technology to share lower quality Sony videos online, distribute DVD quality video by P2P and allow users to create mashups of select Sony media properties. Both of these ideas were very similar to what Veoh and Eyespot are already doing.

YouTube can still drive more traffic to your videos (this one did over 1 million in a day) and make you famous. However, Crackle has what no other video network has, Sony, which means they can offers top producers access to fatter budgets along with Hollywood style fame.

It is a model that can be reproduced with some effort by other sites. iFilm, with it’s parent Viacom, could similarly strike deals with top producers and distribute across their properties. Other social video sites like Veoh, with their P2P player, Joost and Babelgum, while lacking Sony’s clout, could also step into the ring. Increased competition for top content from all of these sites spells good news for the burgeoning internet video industry and may mean bad news for existing video content networks that can’t match what Sony has to offer.

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