MediaZilla anyone?

[Clive McLaughlin]

Daniel Latimer brought this to my attention in another thread. Really interesting.

But surely Iy can't be the only deliverable. The B&G will still want the files in some sort of physical format surely?

What if you quit your account and retire - what happens lf your previous clients wedding films you hosted with MediaZilla?

[Danny O'Neill]

I think it will need to be an 'as well as' thing.

We surveyed our clients and the problem is, most are not tech savvy enough to know how to get video from their laptop/devices onto their TV. And we all still love to watch films on a TV right and not off a laptop.

We now offer USB delivery and this is going down well. Pop it in and play it on your TV.

We would love to give mediazilla a go, it will be a great way for our couples to share around their film but many still want a DVD so they can play it at nans house and a blu-ray for themselves. Now, if they were able to add an app onto the Apple TV or other smart TV's. Well, thats everything sorted.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Clive McLaughlin

What if you quit your account and retire - what happens lf your previous clients wedding films you hosted with MediaZilla?

I see mediazilla more as a way to show potential clients a finished film online, like you would present it on a dvd or blu-ray, or a way for your client to share the entire film with family and friends for a limited timeperiod. If I would use it in that way I would keep it online for sharing purposes for max one year.

I do find mediazilla interesting as a paid option, there might be clients that want to share their entire wedding film online in that way.

[Roger Gunkel]

There are a number of things that bother me about this whole approach. My wedding videos are typically 90-110 minutes, which fit onto a dvd or I can transfer in hd to a usb drive. With a cloud based delivery, my internet download speed is 13mbs consistently, but only 0.85mbs upload, but more important is the download speed of clients, which in the UK is frequently way down on what I can achieve.

How much does a subsciption cost, I couldn't see it on their website and would I have to subscribe ad infinitum, paying ever increasing costs into the future on the off chance that a client may want to view their wedding in 10 years time? Ok they can have a 1 year access to it at my cost, then they have to decide if they want to continually pay out to maintain access. they would probably want a hard copy as a safeguard, which really defeats the whole point of online anyway. Why should they pay out hundreds or thousands of pounds for a wedding video, and still have to pay to view it?

Once the commitment to cloud storage only is made, then we and they are totally at the mercy of the companies concerned, re future pricing, access limitations, even the longevity of the company. It could all be lost if the company goes bust or their servers screw up!

I'm afraid that a business model based on my clients having their product floating around in the ether on someone's server somewhere, does not fill me with anticipation or excitement. I know full well that when it all goes tits up, it will all be seen as my fault and what am I going to do about it!

Roger

[Chris Harding]

I was chatting to the guy that developed it on the Linked-In forum for Wedding Videos and there was quite a few questions he couldn't answer. He basically made an exit from the topic and we never heard from him again so I have no idea whether the project actually went ahead or not.

Does anyone know if the guy got it up and running ..it seemed quite pricey but you did get a DVD style menu as opposed to what you can get using a USB drive.

Chris

[Roger Gunkel]

The question of menus is one that is brought up frequently when discussing alternative delivery systems, but does anybody find that the clients actually want them or even use them? Whenever I visit a client to show them examples, they always prefer to fast forward and never seem to bother with menus. I'm really not convinced that menus have much value with a wedding.

With usb, you can usually fast forward or skip large chunks of a fixed amount. You can of course always make each chapter point as a separate file if you really want to break it up. Menus are great on commercial discs where you want to locate a particular show of a tv series, or alternative content, but apart from that I don't bother with them.

Roger

[Chris Harding]

Roger? you read my mind!!

Most of my brides choose the default option on my menus which is "Play all Movies" ..they want to watch the whole wedding! As long as they can see it from front to back I don't think they care ...menus for weddings are probably just a added value for marketing purposes "We provide a comprehensive menu on the DVD so you can skip to any part of the day" ...but do they really want to??

Chris

[Noa Put]

I have stopped using scene selections but only have menus on the dvd or blu-ray that lead to the trailer, highlights and complete ceremony so they can rewatch the trailer or just the highlights or whatever as that sounds logical to me, I even take out "play all" because I can't imagine they want to go through the whole thing again when they rewatch it or when they show it to the friends so they have a choice what they want to see.

Also when your clients start skipping through content means the film is either too long or too boring

[Chris Harding]

Mediazilla is supposedly having a launch and webcast today 1st October so we shall see how successful they are ..the website only has marketing content and they have a Facebook page with 300 odd "likes"

They seem to be funded mainly by video producers in the USA including Ray Roman so it will be interesting to see how it is accepted by other videographers and more importantly, brides. There are also quite a few concerns about privacy if you google "mediazilla"

Time will tell

Chris

[Kyle Root]

I guess I'm missing something... what's wrong with Vimeo?

[Noa Put]

As I understand Mediazilla can mimic a dvd/blu-ray menu online which could be more interesting to showcase to your clients or as a sharing option to give the couple the chance to share their entire dvd contents online the way you see it when you use a dvd at home.

[Daniel Latimer]

I listened to their webinar. They are going live now for the first 100 people to sign up (more later) and it is an annual cost of $495.

[Noa Put]

Ouch, if I convert to euro that's 8 times the price I pay for a vimeo plus account, no thank you.

[Daniel Latimer]

It's "only" about 2.5 times more in the us, but if brides can actually buy into it as a replacement for DVDs then the time savings would make me consider it.

[Paul Mailath]

but what can it do that vimeo doesn't?

okay - an interactive menu system - more than double the price of a Vimeo Pro account and I can create private portfolios in Vimeo, have more storage capacity in vimeo. I certainly upload complete weddings at the moment and give clients access but only as an extra, I wouldn't want to do without some sort of physical delivery