This is Philip's idea from a different thread, but I think it has some potential, so let's bat it around a little.

What do you guys see as the pros and cons of hosting on Youtube.com? I always find it runs a bit slow, but it does have a lot of extra exposure.

Can youtube look good with the right compression? most of what i've seen looks like doo doo.

I like the idea. Make a DVi or DVi Challenge #6 Channel. It's free, you can control who posts what (used to be you couldn't) and you can have a link to a higher res version using your own bandwidth if viewers want to see that. So strike that, I LOVE the idea.

I ended up putting my dvc5 entry onto Google after we were officially done just so my family could all see it without eating up my bandwidth. The compression is awful, but if we can include a link to a high res option as Dennis says then I think it's a great idea. Levels the playing field a bit for people who don't have easy access to server space.

Whether it be Google video or YouTube.... the quality will be sub-par.

I say NO GO. I'd suggest offering a dollar price to say allow the DV chalenge website to offer hosting of a short film under the size/length requirements.

The quality on YouTube just wouldn't look good, IMHO.

I like the idea. A separate channel on YouTube! Dude! Sweet!

I'm with the others who believe that the quality of YouTube isn't as good as you can get by doing it yourself. I'd say that anyone who wants to put their stuff up on YouTube for the competition should go for it, but that it should be an option and not a requirement.

Just my 2 cents,
Bill

Bill's logic makes the most sense so far.

does anyone know offhand what youtube's rights as far as youtube's use of our videos might be?

i never post anything online that i don't mind in the public domain, but people who are posting for the first time might not think that way. i'm feeling especially sensitive about people who use their kids in their videos (self included), i'm not so sure the youtube audience would be my first choice.

i like the idea of centrally locating the videos and making the delivery aspect a bit easier and more uniform, although i think part of the benefit of how DVC is structured is that part of the challenge is figuring this whole piece out. my first DVC challenge, this is exactly why i signed up, to force myself to learn a bit about web delivery, which i had been side-stepping, up to that point. it was a valuable lesson, and it opened up a whole new set of options for my actual business.....

There's definitely pros and cons to both sides.

On privacy concerns -- DVInfo.net is not private as far as I know. I think anyone can look at posts here without having an account. The atmosphere is obviously a little different here than it is on youtube.com, but I think anyone out there, member or not, can come and watch the videos on DVInfo.net just as easily as on youtube.com.

I think that the quality on youtube depends on the length -- they recommend keeping it under 5 minutes, which would work for this contest. It may not be the absolute best quality, but it would make the delivery process more uniform (and a little less frustrating for people trying to download/watch the videos).

On privacy concerns -- DVInfo.net is not private as far as I know. I think anyone can look at posts here without having an account. The atmosphere is obviously a little different here than it is on youtube.com, but I think anyone out there, member or not, can come and watch the videos on DVInfo.net just as easily as on youtube.com.

while that's true, the videomaker has the option of complete control over putting the video up or taking it down after the contest runs. i'm not sure this is the case with youtube....i wouldn't write off this concern so quickly.

while that's true, the videomaker has the option of complete control over putting the video up or taking it down after the contest runs. i'm not sure this is the case with youtube....i wouldn't write off this concern so quickly.

I had a colleague posting things to youtube as a test and he was able to take things off as well. It took a little time for his clips to no longer be listed, (over night when the database refreshes maybe?) but the links were immediately dead.

I've got my own server space so I don't mean to lobby one way or the other as it doesn't really matter to me. But not everyone has the same access, and also the most information with which to make a decision.

I'm in agreeance that if the picture quality is asstacular, I'd rather look for another option. What else is there?

Hosting on your own personal server.

Or you could consider charging a certain amount via paypal to host our videos on the dvc website.

Hey Dylan, shoot me an email. We have the DV Info Net media server available for you, it can probably fulfill your hosting requirements. Let's talk about it offline.

Hey Dylan, shoot me an email. We have the DV Info Net media server available for you, it can probably fulfill your hosting requirements. Let's talk about it offline.

I would feel much better with a DV Info host than any other. Fifty people trying to post to YouTube does not sound that good to me, especially at the last minute. I have enough trouble trying to post to my own website. JMHO.

Mike

The other obvious site would be Video.Google. The encoding can look great and you have the option of embeding it into your own pages. As an example of good encoding, take a look at my site and watch some of my last entry. It plays pretty smooth and I am not hosting the file.

On the bad side of the coin, it requires you to have a fairly up to date version of Flash Player installed via your browser. For most that is effortless and seemless.

Try the links to my videos here:
http://www.DeepBlueEdit.com/Portfolio.htm and watch "Memories of a Dream" first. Then look at "Secrets" to see what a bad encode looks like. Not sure why Secrets came out bad but it did. I may try re-uploading it to them and see if that helps. Not sure that's an option however.

In general it can take from 4 to 48 hours to get loaded on Google. If we are looking to have them hosted after judging, this is a good thing.

Sean McHenry

I'm uncomfortable posting videos I care about on YouTube as you give up all rights (until you take it down) of the video. YouTube can use it however they please. And if you had it up, they use it for something, then you take it down, it's too late - they already used it for whatever they wanted. Granted, I doubt YouTube uses many of the videos uploaded to their site, but still a risk.

Hey Dylan, shoot me an email. We have the DV Info Net media server available for you, it can probably fulfill your hosting requirements. Let's talk about it offline.


Roger that!

Totally a no-go on the You-Tube suggestion for me. The reason is any video uploaded onto You-Tube becomes You-Tube's property, if I remember correctly. You give up all rights. They can use, sell, edit, whatever they want with your video. I think you take your rights back if you take the video off You-Tube, but if it's already been used, then it's too late to change that. I just don't like the idea of not holding onto the rights to my video for the sake of convenience. There are other ways and it seems to work fine.

A big thumbs down to You Tube

From what I see there are 2 main problems with services like youtube:

- not possible to download the movie on the computer (unless some of us know how to check the html source and find our way)
- the quality is many times even below the minimum suggested values here at dvinfo (in those tutorials on how to compress your videos).

I'm not selling these things but I did some research and for ~40$ there is available what is called VPS (Virtual Private Server) with storage around 10gb, and unmetered bandwidth which means that there would be more than enough space (if there would be each short to have 50mb in size, it could fit 200 of entries) and we know most of them don't go beyond 20mb. Also, because of the unmetered situation, the movies can be downloaded as many times as we want without fear for overcharge or so.

Each user would have an account so they could delete their entry if they wanted to but this account would be frozen after the deadline date until the winner announcement to avoid modification :) Or a CMS would be put in place, or any other solution.

I am sure that a few of us here (including myself) would be willing to put up a few dollars a month so the server could be paid for.

Dylan, would you spare a sip for the server tho? :)

If people are interested in showcasing their work just go to a site like godaddy.com and register your name as the domain and they will host webspace for you. That's the company I went with and I've been more than happy. I host my personal webpage there www.kellyharmsworth.com and my company web site www.proflight.ca. Both are under heavy construction at the moment :-)

Cheers
Kelly Harmsworth

not possible to download the movie on the computer (unless some of us know how to check the html source and find our way) There's a plug-in in Firefox that does this. It's called the Amazing Media Browser. There are ways to protect embedded video from programs like this one so it doesn't always work.

and unmetered bandwidth
Quite often, inexpensive servers with unlimited bandwidth have slow download speeds, which would be a bit of a pain when a hundred people are trying to download 10 videos a day. It's not always the case, but I know a few people with servers like that.

Quite often, inexpensive servers with unlimited bandwidth have slow download speeds, which would be a bit of a pain when a hundred people are trying to download 10 videos a day. It's not always the case, but I know a few people with servers like that.


There is no such things as unlimited "per se". It is called unmetered; meaning that they open a 2mbps port on the server that allows you to transfer at any time with a speed of about 200k/sec (or your connection can handle that rate or several downloaders would add up and sum the 200k/sec). On the VPS will be only the DVC's movies, which gets announced at a rate of 4-5/day (let's say each 20mb). Takes roughly 2 minutes to download one (assuming you do it at 200k/sec). On average we are talking about 10-15 minutes to download (most of folks out there seems to have an average of 30k/sec download rate). As you probably imagine, not all of us will download the movies at the very same time tho. (the port can also be 10mbps which equals to 1mb actual download rate).

As a conclusion, anything works but to be able to download the movie on the computer seems to be a very important thing (even if someone has slow connection, they can download it and watch it good comparing to being forced to view in a browser); I personally watch them full screen and set myself at a distance.

There are some other minor issues to keep in mind as well. We have been over a few of these some time ago but they bear repeating:

Putting a file on a server that is meant to be a file holding area is not the same as a server meant for serving multimedia. A multimedia server has special software to allow actual streaming of media. The difference being that while most of us these days have pretty quick connections, a file can download about as fast as we can watch it play out. That's not streaming, that's the nature of what Apple used to call "Progressive Downloading". The file is being downloaded to a cache and stored on the viewers computer in their temporary internet folder. If they want a copy, all they have to do is go into that folder, copy out the media file and rename it. Viola, they have a copy of your movie. Take a look at your temporary folder sometime and see what's in there. You might be suprised.

Streaming servers send smaller chunks directly to the player. The chunks are cached to play smoothly but they are not held in cache as a whole media file.

It makes little difference these days with the fast connections but be aware, just because you have found a storage "bucket" that can hold your file, there is no guarantee it will be secure and no guarantee on the throughput speed.

If you use a Windows Media file format and your bitrate is 256Kb per second, the machine you store the file on should have at least that much guaranteed download speed <B>per connection</B>.

Sean