I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ideal length of Internet video. At the Gear Media Tech seminar last week in San Francisco, host Alex Lindsay said that he and his Pixelcorps team are aiming to produce shows in the three- to eight-minute range. Conventional wisdom holds that shorter is better because 320×240 web video can’t hold the attention of viewers in the same way as TV. Internally at the Mercury News, almost every discussion about video eventually comes around to length, and the mantra is “shorter is better.”

But I wonder if we aren’t going to quickly revisit this assumption. I believe we are on the cusp of a video revolution that is going to radically alter how we consume video content, and this will affect the type of video we create as well. Read David Pogue’s latest column, on the TiVo, to begin to see where we are headed. The TiVo can now pull in video and audio from a multitude of sources, including podcasts and the web. Says Pogue:

TiVo can now auto-record Web videos from CNET, The New York Times, Rocketboom, The Onion and other sources just the way it records TV shows, and play them in TV-screen dimensions. (My own weekly videos are among the offerings.)

Grade: A. These videos look and sound fantastic on the big screen. And the whole concept makes overwhelming sense; why should all the fun and information of Web videos be confined to a stuttering, low-resolution, three-inch rectangle in your Web browser? More, more!

Smart DVRs, along with the new Apple TV and the various gaming consoles that can play Internet video, are going to do for video what blogs and audio podcasts did for other types of media - open up a sea of content from amateurs and professionals alike that threatens the programming dominance of traditional media companies.

Here’s a perfect example: Lindsay is about to start distributing a show called Cocktails on the Fly (you can find the placeholder description in iTunes). From the preview I saw at Gear Media Tech, it looks like a fun, campy show about mixed drinks with production values that rival those of the Food Network, at a fraction of the cost. The show will be distributed over the Net, not the traditional airwaves, and I’ll be able to pull it into my TV with the help of Apple or Tivo or Microsoft, not ABC, CBS or NBC.

Lindsay has other shows in the works that will exploit this new distribution model, as do networks such as Revision 3. It won’t be long before content produced for the Internet will be indistinguishable from content produced for TV. Shows with $5,000 budgets will live alongside - and often outperform - shows with $5 million or $50 million budgets. Viewers won’t care where the shows come from. They’ll just be happy with more and better choices and thrilled that they’re free from the yolk of the cable and satellite monopolies. Niche content will thrive, just as it does with blogs and audio podcasts.

All of which brings us back to length. If we know that TV watchers are more tolerant of longer-form video, and we know that the video we are producing will eventually end up on TV, isn’t it time to rexamine our assumptions that shorter is better. At the least, the landscape is getting more complicated. The video you produce could end up in an embedded Flash player on a web site, on a tiny video iPod, a slightly larger iPhone, a laptop, or a 42-inch Plasma TV. All of those devices offer different viewing experiences. Viewers may not watch a 20-minute interview on the Web, but they’ll welcome it on their TVs or iPods while commuting.

No one knows exactly how this convergence will play out. But it is (finally) coming, and content-makers should be watching closely.

UPDATE: On a slightly related note, Michael Meiser explains how to pull Google Video and YouTube content into iTunes (and elsewhere), and why that’s a significant feature. I’ll add that this would be an easy and cost-effective way for content-creators (such as small newspapers) to offer regular, subscription video programming without needing to bear the bandwidth costs.