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July 19, 2005
Obstacles to Video Blogging from Ghana
In response to my recent video blog test from Accra, Josh Thomas writes the following:
amazing. this is really exciting. i can't wait to see how your trip evolves. Can you talk about the main obstacles to uploading your vlogs and/or podcasts? what is really striking you about Ghana, specifically as it relates to tech there?
Good questions; I can probably answer the former better than the latter at the moment, since my impressions of Ghana are barely 36 hours old at this point.
The biggest obstacle to video blog here seems to be bandwidth - simple as that. Right now I'm at BusyInternet, perhaps the fastest cyber cafe in West Africa. Sitting here in the restaurant, I'm getting the wi-fi access to upload video files at around 5k per second - rather slow when some video blog may be 10, 20 50 megs and counting. Just for kicks, I tried to post a 30 meg file to see how long it would take; my FTP software estimated it would be at least 90 minutes to complete the job. Downloading big files is problematic as well.
Back home in Boston, I generally compress video so it's optimized for DSL broadband connections. That makes sense in a place where millions of people have fast Internet access at home. But here in Ghana, you're lucky if you can find true DSL speed anywhere, both for upload and download. So that makes it really, really important to learn about compression options. Personally, I used the 3ivx codec for my video blog test, exporting the files from Final Cut Pro.
I own Final Cut Pro for work; off the shelf it'll cost you nearly $1000. That's nearly half the per-capita GDP here in Ghana, so if you're thinking about selling high-end video software here, fuhgettaboutit. The trick, I think, will be chatting with some of my PC-based video blogging colleagues, since Macs aren't very common here. To make video blogging a reality here, people will need access to affordable video editing software and affordable compression tools - and we have to remember that what's affordable in the US or Japan isn't worth discussing here. I'm particularly interested in learning about free/open source video tools - something I'm no expert in, but would obviously make sense in an African context.
Another potential solution is smart phone video blogging. Mobile phones are huge in Ghana, and it's quite possible that some of these phones are beginning to have both Bluetooth and video cameras built in to them. If that's the case, there's not much stopping a person from going to a cybercafe, transferring a video clip from their phone to a PC, and uploading it - bandwidth and the desire to edit it notwithstanding, of course.
So this Thursday, much of my talk at the workshop will probably focus on basic blogging and perhaps some podcasting, since both make relative sense when compared to video. Having said that, the fact I was able to cobble together some clips this morning and post them in about 10 minutes, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. And considering the Ghanaians I've encountered so far, if there's any group that'll figure out a way to do it, it's them. :-) -andy
Posted by acarvin at July 19, 2005 10:51 AM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
