I've been thinking it might be a good idea for me to get a real website onto which could upload my two short films, demo reel, and whatever else I want. I understand that some places offer a decent amount of storage and bandwidth for about $100 a year? Is that correct? I think I could a decent amount of stuff on there if I MPEG-4 compress everything.

I'd like some recommendations as to who to get the webspace from, and someone please explain bandwidth. . .what it is, what it does, how it works.

My main goal would be to have, say, one of my movies up there for anyone to view at any time, I guess by streaming? Or maybe I could have a download option too. Anyway, thanks.

Josh

- see this thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22827)

- and this thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23749)

- and this thread for related info (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24032)

bandwidth - for websites it generally means the amount of data that can be transferred off the site per month, measured in megabytes or gigabytes/month, for example: if your movie is 1 MB and your bandwidth allocation is 10 MB/month then your movie can be viewed/downloaded approximately 10 times a month, after that, you have exceeded your bandwidth for the month and the site may not be viewable for the rest of the month, unless you pay more $$

bandwidth also refers to the amount of data that can be requested from a website at any one time, a site might be able to handle 10-100 users at one time, but if you advertise during the superbowl, then you might get hit with 10K-50K people at once and you will have exceeded your bandwidth for that given time

Sounds like ipowerweb is the one most people like. Basically all I want from it is to be able to stream my movies off it, and put my reel up as well, and be able to tell people "yeah, go here and click so and so."

I'm still a little hazy on the bandwidth. Are you saying there are two different kinds of bandwidth? Or do both of those definitions in the above post apply to the same thing? It kind of makes me nervous only being able to view something a certain amount of times each month.

Also, do these guys format the site for you? Does it have some kind of template? I'm no web wizard, and have no wish to become one.

>>> Are you saying there are two different kinds of bandwidth?

both definitions imply the same thing {how much traffic can your site handle} the difference in the definitions is the time being measured:

how much traffic can your site handle at any single moment
how much traffic can your site handle during a one month period

>>> also, do these guys format the site for you?

no they just provide the space, you have to create the web pages yourself, or, pay someone to create the site for you

>>> does it have some kind of template?

most website providers have an online application that allows you to auto-create your website

most web page creation programs also have templates

tagged

Ok, this should be it for the questions. I checked out the ipowerweb site, and it looks pretty good. They offer with their package 30GB or bandwidth per month. Is this an adequate amount for what I'm doing?

Mainly I want to be able to upload video files (compressed in MPEG-1 or -4 format) and have people be able to view them as streaming video. I don't plan on doing any business or anything through the site, but that could change in the future, I suppose.

We'll have to trade notes later on to see if 30GB is adequate! I'm doing the same thing on Ipowerweb.

I'm pretty sure though that 30GB is adequate for most compressed video formats :-)

Alright, apparently I'm not done. I contacted ipowerweb with the following question, but have not heard back from them, and I'm impatient so:

Will I be able to access my site from anywhere? What I mean is, right now I'm in HOuston, but I may be moving to NY soon. Will I still be able to tweak and upload to the site no matter where I am?

>>> Will I still be able to tweak and upload to the site no matter where I am?

Yes. You can FTP to the site from almost anywhere.

The only problem I've run into - was accessing the website control panel from my work. The control panel runs on a port that's restricted by my network at work, so I have to wait until I get home or am at an Internet Cafe to make changes.

Oh, that's no problem. I just meant did I have to be here specifically to access, or could I do it from my personal computer anywhere. Thanks.

<<<-- Mainly I want to be able to upload video files (compressed in MPEG-1 or -4 format) and have people be able to view them as streaming video.-->>>

you absolutely do not want to put mpeg1 on your website, or even mpeg4 for that matter... mpeg1 especially is very inefficient, and a real bandwidth hog.

what you want is a web video format that 1)is small and efficient 2)can easily be played back by the vast majority of computers on the internet.

since mac operating systems only make up about 3% of the operating systems on the 'net, you don't want quicktime, because everyone will have to download the player before they can see the video clip... microsoft never puts the quicktime player in any of the windows operating systems.

mpeg1 can be easily played back by windows pc's without downloading a player, but it's waaay too inefficient... i don't think that pc's can play back open-source mpeg4 natively, and at any rate, it's not nearly as good as windows media 9.

realmedia has a decent codec, but the complaints about the player are many, so i quit using it.

you can download the wm9 encoder for free from microsoft, just be sure and gamma-correct any internet video that you make... tv's gamma is darker than pc monitor gamma, and mac gamma is also different... you tend to see a lot of quicktime video that looks like mud on pc's.

all of the above is based on my personal experience hosting web vid's; last month people downloaded over 70 gigabytes of video clips off of my sites... hope this helps!

Ok, something to chew on. So you're recommending encoding as Windows Media player files? Is that what I'm reading? If not, what do you recommend for encoding if I want people to be able to watch video?

Ok, so I did some extensive tests with WM9, and here are the settings that I found to give me the best quality to file size ratio. I rendered this in Vegas 4. So when in Vegas 4, you go to render as, choose WM9 as the format, and use these settings:

Under the project tab:

Video rendering quality set to "best"

Under the audio tab:

Mode set to "quality VBR"

Attributes set to " VBR quality 10, 44 Khz stereo VBR"

Under the Video tab:

Mode set to "Quality VBR"

Image size set to "320x240"

Frame rate set to "15"

seconds per keyframe set to "8"

quality set to "93" (if I go to the next increment up, 97, the file size doubles!)


File size came out to 7.53 megs, and it's a 3:43 long short movie that I rendered this way. The video quality's not the best it could be, but any better and it'll shoot up to 14-20 megs, I estimate. It looks pretty darn good for compressed video to be viewed online. . .especially in 320x240 mode (as opposed to full screen).

I'd like to know if anyone has any advice on how to improve anything, or if these settings will create problems. I don't have a chance to put them up on the site and view them, since I just bought the webspace a few hours ago and they haven't set everything up yet.

I've used phpwebhosting.com with high recommendations- unlimited bandwidth, emails, cgi, php!, shell, etc., for $10.

Too bad. Bought from ipowerweb.

Seriously, though, I just want to know if the above settings for my WM9 files sound groovy to everyone, if any of the WM9 experts out there have any gripes with anything.

josh, it sounds like you are off to a good start!

always choosing vbr for the video is the way that i do it as well... the hard part comes with fine-tuning the actual bitrate being used for both the video and the audio.

so you need to find the area in the encoder where you can manually manipulate the bitrate however you want it... i'm not referring to the quality setting you listed... you should be able to slightly improve the picture quality a chunk at a time, until you find that perfect balance between quality and file size... doubling the file size like you mentioned isn't what you want.

since you didn't mention it, i gotta repeat: if you aren't gamma-correcting somewhere along the line, it'll always look like mud when encoded to internet video... you might have to gamma-correct within the editing timeline itself, prior to creating the web video... high-end encoders like cleanerxl allow you to gamma-correct when making the internet video clip.

the ideal situation is to post a small version of your clip for dial-up modem users, and a bigger version of your clip for cable/dsl users... for the latter i usually don't allow more than 64-128 kbits/s max audio bitrate(stereo), with a 320x240 total bitrate of both audio and video of 380-1000+ kbits/s.

why so big for the video? the type of material and the equipment used to shoot it with makes a huge difference.

Alright, well, I'll try the tests with the bitrates.


As for the gamma correction, I brightened/contrasted the hell out of one of my shorts, and I just have to use my computer monitor to judge the rest. . .I say if it looks good on mine, and mine doesn't look that weird, it should look acceptable on most people's. It seems like the only stuff that needs gamma correction is the stuff with lots of dark video in it. . .maybe I'm wrong. Guess we'll see when the site's up.

Won't I be able to tell if it'll look like mud by looking at the rendered WM9 file? Or are you saying you can't tell 'til it's actually online?

Oh, one more thing. A big thing. I don't really understand this bit rate stuff, or know what it is and what it does. If I've already rendered a file, and the quality looks real nice, and it's 12 megs or so (the short movie I mentioned above), are you saying I could still have problems because I didn't set the bit rate correctly? The "Quality VBR" option causes EVERYTHING under the bit rate tab to be inaccessible, so I'll have to use a different mode to be able to manually change the bit rate.

you really have to examine the wm9 file in detail to see what's up with the gamma and the bitrate both... but you can see the effects of gamma on the editing timeline... and no, i'm not saying that you could necessarily have problems, just think of it as an eternal struggle between picture quality and how much you want to pay for bandwidth when hosting your vids on the net :-)

usually a .1 or .2 change in the gamma is all that's needed, i never have to change the contrast on the stuff i shoot.

the other issue is that gamma/brightness settings on computer monitors are all over the place! check your file on multiple pc's if possible, just play the file back from the local harddrive, you don't have to be online.

what i usually end up with is the same video file rendered at multiple bitrates... then pick the best file from there.... maybe double the playback size in the windows media player to see the defects better.

the object is to know the audio/video bitrates of your files!

if your encoder won't allow you to change the bitrates under "quality vbr", you need to find an encoder that will... the free wm9 encoder from microsoft will allow you to change bitrates, just do the gamma correction in the editing timeline first.

this is a hassle, but what you gain from it is a good understanding of manipulating bitrates... that experience is directly transferable to mpeg2 encoding for dvd's.

Ok, let me try again. Let's say I have already encoded a file, and I'm happy with the size and the video/audio qualiy. Are you saying that by encoding the way I did, and by NOT manipulating the bit rate, that I could be causing problems for my potential viewers, even though the quality and file size are both OK?

Do I HAVE to use the bit rate manipulation method to arrive at the results I want, or does it matter how I get there?

If so, can someone give me some starting points with the Microsoft Windows Media encoder? I'm not even sure where to start with it. . .selecting progressive download, windows media server, etc.

I've been so far using Vegas 4's encoder.

<<<-- Do I HAVE to use the bit rate manipulation method to arrive at the results I want, or does it matter how I get there? -->>>

you already are manipulating the bit rate, you just don't know it... the application has limited you to only a couple of bitrate choices, and hidden the details from you.

no, you probably aren't causing problems for potential viewers by taking the default choices.

but you might be paying for wasted bandwidth, or losing business because the audio/visual quality of what you just encoded isn't good enuf for your target market.

Granted, but all I'm saying is, couldn't I tell that just by encoding the WM9 file and then watching it? I mean, there's no way I'm going to get crystal clear video, full screen, at a full frame rate without it being a huge file, right? I feel people who are evaluating the work should be able to tell the difference between badly shot video and lower quality encoding that's done for their specific benefit. I also want to be able to share with you guys, and though I'm lucky enough to have DSL (debate this if you want), some are still on 56k.

I think if it's reasonably sharp for online video, with no (or very few) "muddy" areas of the picture, and gamma corrected correctly (tee hee), it'll be okay. . .don't you guys? I'll put a few files up when I can (maybe tonight), and you can tell me if they come across okay on y'all's computers.

Basically, when I get the video real nice (audio doesn't seem to take too much work), it comes out to about 2 megs or more per 10 seconds of video (I use a little ten second clip as my test), which is way to large. I like to try to keep it under 900kb per 10 seconds (this is still large, but all the stuff I've done so far is so short it shouldn't be too much of a problem). Any less than about 800kb per 10 seconds, and muddy areas start to appear the video, and it starts to look real fuzzy.

ya, the ultimate deciding factor is how it looks! but it's always a battle between bandwidth vs. picture quality... just like when you are encoding mpeg2 for a dvd.

a 900kb file that is 10 seconds long would have a bitrate of 90kb/s?? that's dial-up modem quality... so you should think about making an additional clip that is dsl/cable modem quality, i listed the bitrates i use earlier.

what you have to end up doing is learning how to read the log files of your website... so you can see what gets downloaded the most, and if you are near your bandwidth limit.

did i mention that san diego is the first city in the country to have more people accessing the internet via broadband, than thru dial-up modems?

my weblogs reflect that... a lot more downloads of the big files than the dial-up modem files.

About the quality of the files I mentioned. . .REALLY?

It looks damn good to me, very sharp, clear, not muddy at all (this is full screen quality, too, not just 320 x480). Granted, it's only playing at 15fps, but I swear it doesn't look that bad on my computer monitor.

Dan,

I've been thinking about putting together a little website, and the info here has been very useful. Since you stated that your video material looked very dark and needed gamma correction - and since some others do NOT see the same thing, I thought that your directshow window adjustments may be off. In your monitor setup, you should find adjustments to adjust only the video window (brightness, contrast, color, etc.) separate from the overall monitor adjustments. This is called OVERLAY CONTROLS in my Invidia card setup. Hope this helps.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dan Euritt : since mac operating systems only make up about 3% of the operating systems on the 'net, you don't want quicktime -->>>

I'm surprised someone hasn't already called you on this. PCs may not come with Quicktime installed, but most people seem willing to install it. Quicktime is considered one of the best looking formats for web video, as far as I've ever been able to tell.

In fact, in February 2003, PC Magazine said that Quicktime has been "long considered the de facto format for delivering video content."

In March, 2003, PC World wrote, "MPEG-4 is quickly becoming the format of choice for delivery of high-quality video to everything ranging from VideoCD, broadband and even 56Kbps dialup connections" followed by a page of instructions on how to use Quicktime 6 to make video files.

I am no mac-head or Apple apologist. I am a long-time PC user and I offer video files on my website in QT format because people (mostly PC users) seemed to *demand* it. I know for a fact that mostly PC users visit my site and -- given the choice between QT and RealPlayer -- the majority choose Quicktime.

I used to offer .wmv files but removed them because people wanted QT and I didn't have room to offer 3 formats. Now that I have more disk space I am considering adding Windows Media back to the line-up, but only to help out the very small minority of people who can't seem to figure out how to download QT or RealPlayer files -- a problem which has already been fixed, in part, by creating streaming QT files instead of making users download them.

Users have to download a Flash Player, but that doesn't stop many, many designers from creating Flash-based sites. Quicktime is far more prevalent than just "3%" of internet surfers, and -- if what you have is worth watching -- people will be willing to download a reputable application like Quicktime in order to view your content. As a matter of fact, as a PC user, I prefer Quicktime files over Windows Media files, especially WM9 files.

You sound like you know your way around WM9 and have a lot of happy downloaders, but I think your suggestion that a designer *not* use Quicktime is ill-advised. My 2-cents.

<<<-- Originally posted by John Britt : I'm surprised someone hasn't already called you on this. PCs may not come with Quicktime installed, but most people seem willing to install it. -->>>

actually, most people are not willing to install it... the majority of people will leave your site before hassling with installing new player software... this has been proven statistically many times over the years.

back in ~1997(?) or so, i briefly worked as a 'net video encoding engineer for a company in solana beach, ca., that got bought up by akamai... at the time, quicktime owned video on the 'net, along with mpeg1(!).

apple foolishly let their quicktime dominance slip away over the years, and now the borg are taking over internet video, just like they took over in the browser war with netscape.

i really don't like microsoft, but i have become assimilated :-) because that is what it took for the maximum compatibility with everyone else on the internet... windows media has the greatest player penetration... why should a guy on a dial-up modem, for instance, have to suffer downloading the quicktime player, when he can watch wm9 without downloading any player at all? he will leave your website before sitting thru that player download.

i do like the superior functionality of quicktime, and it's reliability, but wm9 definitely has better audio/video quality than anything else on the 'net today... real media runs a close second, tho.

your stats for qt vs. real aren't too relevant when talking about windows media... and it's been literally years since i have had anyone ask for the quicktime video format... since i'll probably be serving up around 50+ gigs of web video this month, wouldn't you think that if it mattered, somebody would have asked for it by now?

flash vs. quicktime player downloads... which one is the biggest download? how hard is it to install for the end user? i think flash wins that contest, which is why it's a lot more popular than quicktime.

hi dave, i have been plenty guilty of creating overly-bright video clips :-0 because my monitor is kinda dark... lately i've been creating darker clips, here is one that i just did, i think it was shot kinda bright to begin with tho: http://www.sportcompactdragracing.com/video/bakkendragdaybig.zip

Dan wrote: "your stats for qt vs. real aren't too relevant when talking about windows media... and it's been literally years since i have had anyone ask for the quicktime video format... "

I don't wish to start an argument, but please reread my post. I quoted two major PC/Windows publications from *last year* and (a fact I didn't mention) I only started adding Quicktime video to my site within the past year as well, due to demand. I'm not speaking from 7 years ago, I'm quoting publications and relaying personal info from the past year. Why would a major PC publication waste precious space with a Quicktime tutorial if only "3%" of internet users have QT? How come 99% of my clients (who are mostly PC users and not particularly savvy ones, at that) don't seem to have a problem with the video files on my site?

The simple fact is that your "3%" comment is completely wrong. Quicktime is incredibly prevalent and Josh should be encouraged to have more than just Windows Media files on his site, to give users options. Beyond that, it's all personal preference. As I said before, I acknowledge that you show very healthy figures re: downloaded video, and you seem to know the ins-and-outs of encoding for the web very well, but I think some of your rational re: Quicktime is misguided.

<<<-- Originally posted by Josh Bass : I like to try to keep it under 900kb per 10 seconds -->>>

hi josh, i liked your website!

i downloaded your demo reel, it's running at 523kb/s, not sure where the 900kb per 10 seconds number came from??

on my monitor, a lot of the interior shots on your demo reel were way too dark... a great candidate for gamma correction :-)

but the bitrate quality was great!

<<<-- Originally posted by John Britt : I quoted two major PC/Windows publications from *last year* -->>>

no flames here, o.k.?

the only thing you quoted was the opinion of a couple of writers in non-internet magazines... and your quotes were totally unsubstantiated by any statistics at all!

i did NOT say that only "3%" of internet users had qt... i said that "mac operating systems only make up about 3% of the operating systems on the 'net"... do you understand the difference?

i'd be glad to entertain your qt pov, if you can back it up with some real-world facts... here are my numbers: i see over 20,000 unique url's a month, with not one single request for qt.

Dark? I DID gamma correct all those clips. . .or most of them, anyway. I can try again, I suppose. I don't really know how I'm going to make them any better, since everyone's monitor's a little different.

Dan

No flaming intended. And again, I respect your experience and your volume of hits.

You say that my quotes are "totally unsubstantiated by any statistics," yet the only numbers you can show are empirical evidence from your own website. I would like to give two of the top-selling PC magazines a benefit of a doubt when it comes to their journalistic credibility. I see no reason why PC Magazine would simply make up false information in order to call Quicktime "the de facto format for delivering video content." I trust that they can substantiate their views so that the average reader doesn't have to.

Actually, though, I think that using PC Mag and PC World quotes shows more of a basic user's POV than an internet-specific source would. Both of these magazines are geared toward mid-level PC users -- you won't find many grandmothers reading it, but it's not necessarily geared towards IT specialists either. Those magazines, in my opinion, reflect the general landscape of Windows users, i.e. the average person who will be visiting your or my site. If they are talking about QT6, then (at least close to) a majority of their readers are probably using it.

As for the "3%" -- your implication seemed to be that so few Windows users had Quicktime that the number of QT users online was at least very close to 3%. Sorry if I misinterpreted that.

Regardless, a quick Google search will find statistics showing up to 8% or more of people online are using Macs -- not a huge number, but far greater than 3%. A 2002 article at http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/1403581 quotes a Neilsen/NetRatings survey that said that Mac users made up "8.2 percent of the online population" -- it may be 2 years later, but I highly doubt that that figure has dropped by more than 5%. I don't have the time to search out the figures, but if you have a more recent survey, I will defer.

Nevertheless, the question is not how many Macs are out on the Net, but how many computers total have QT installed on them. 100 days after the release of QT 6, Apple stated that the app had been downloaded 25 million times. In 2003, the company announced that 1 million copies of iTunes for Windows had been downloaded in 3-and-a-half days after its launch. Every Windows user who installs iTunes gets Quicktime as well.

These may be Apple's figures, but they are probably close to the truth -- and much probably much higher now, 6 months down the line.

The question becomes: You may see 20,000 unique URLs a month, but how many other users do you lose (or simply just alienate) by not offering Quicktime as an option?

And unless your personal experience somehows trumps anyone else's, I can personally say, as a Windows user, that I try hard *not* to use Windows Media Player, and in fact, until very very recently, refused to even download the codec to allow WM9 video to play on my system. And as I mentioned before, *my* empirical evidence shows that most people have no trouble viewing the QT files on my site (and seem to prefer them to RealPlayer, although that seems to be no surprise). My clients usually do not become my clients until they have seen my demo -- if they can't see the video, then I don't get hired. And I've only had to send out a small handful of VHS tapes or DVDs to those who could not access either of the available formats on my site.

My main beef comes with suggesting that someone *not* offer users the option of Quicktime; that they should only be handed WM9 and deal with it. Vistors should be given options, not forced to take one format or nothing. People like options -- give them options and they'll like you even more. And given that many creative professional are Mac users, that's not necessarily a demographic that Josh wants to alienate. As I stated previously, now that I have expanded my disk space, I will probably once again offer Windows Media files just to be fair to everyone -- to give my visitors 3 options to choose from.

<<<-- Originally posted by Josh Bass : Dark? I DID gamma correct all those clips. . .or most of them, anyway-->>>

i went back and looked at your main demo reel on a couple of other pc's... it looked a lot better on other monitors... most people run their monitors too bright anyway, so you ought to be golden with what you got.

i usually light talking heads with less contrast than what you have in some of your shots, maybe i'm watching too many sitcoms, lol.

it's a great demo reel... the opening with the finger reaching for the play button is a neat idea!

Talking heads. . .you mean the stuff at the end? That was all run and gun event coverage. On-camera light, right into the face.

If not those talking heads. . .which ones are you referring to?

"The Mac platform has made a small step forward in Google's February 2004 Zeitgeist. Mac browsers accounted for 4% of Google's traffic for February 2004.

The Mac platform was last at 4% in March 2003, but has been hovering at 3% since that time in Google's stats. The peak was at 5% in September 2002." -http://forums.macrumors.com/printthread.php?t=64657

i suppose that this will all sound sort of pissy to some people, lol, but if you don't look at all the angles you'll never know anything.

i've been looking at web codecs for quite awhile, btw, here is something i did years ago:
http://www.oceanstreetvideo.com/vidcomp1.html

nielson stats are suspect... look at this, circa the same time period as your quoted study... nielson suddenly starting counting downloads of still images in the mix right along with video downloads... wm and real don't play still images in their media players: -http://news.com.com/2102-1023-937302.html

<<<-- Originally posted by Josh Bass : Talking heads. . .-->>>

not the bar per se, but when that guy was talking to the girl at the bar(?), there were some cutaways to a bedroom(?) that had some kinda soft but drastic film-like contrast... looked good on a brighter monitor, hard to pull that sorta thing off with video.

oh yes. . .that was the early days of the bass lighting experience. If I knew then what I know now. I'm trying to satisfy you quicktime people, but these files are taking forever to upload.

Is there some reason a file that's longer than another file would be significantly smaller?

when rendered to QT, The ninjews is about 10 megs smaller than my demo reel, and it's also about a minute longer! I used the exact same settings for each. . .

<<<-- Originally posted by Josh Bass :
Is there some reason a file that's longer than another file would be significantly smaller?
-->>>

are the frame size settings the same?

as an aside, i think that you went with the full 720x480 frame size in the demo reel(?)

usually you want to go with square pixels when it's displayed on a pc, so your frame size should have been 640x480... also try encoding it at 320x240, with a smaller bitrate than the 523kb/s you've been using, especially if bandwidth costs are an issue... see what the playback looks like.

the playback times should be the same regardless of what format it is.

Yeah, I did all that. . .that's why it's weird.

There's an interesting comparison between DivX 5.1.1, Windows Media 9, QuickTime 6.5/Sorenson 3, and QuickTime 6.5/MPEG-4 codecs at http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1546486,00.asp. (ExtremeTech is associated with PC Magazine).

thanks for the link christopher... no surprises there, the quality of qt video codecs is poor, that's why i don't use it or recommend it anymore... what the test didn't show was how really lousy the qt audio codecs are, and how difficult it is to tweak the qt encoder to get acceptable results.

much as i hate the borg, it's the only way to go these days for 'net video... there are so many complaints about the realmedia player taking over your computer that i had to recently abandon that also.