Site Launch

[Vince Lucena]

I finally had enough content to get my site out of draft mode.
If you have suggestions for improvement, please forward to me.
The Gallery is a little bare, as I have only had shot 3 free-bees since opening up shop, and the third is still being compiled to get up to the site.

Although the rates only discuss Weddings, I am trying to present my self as a multi-disciplened Videographer.

If anyone has ideas on making the source html meta tags better I would apppreciate it..


http://www.motionone.tv

[Vincent Croce]

Hey Vince. I liked the site, although I had a problem with the Love Story mov of Julie & Todd being squashed vertically. Some aspect ratio probs with that one. All the others came in fine. Going back to check out the rest of the site. Just noticed you had 'Aisle' spelled incorrectly on the services page.

[Jim Michael]

Your site doesn't render at all on Opera on Linux (Flash is at v.6). The polite thing to do is test for the type of browsers you support and deliver a static page for those browsers that you don't support.

[Chris Hocking]

Don't see why it wouldn't work on Opera? The HTML code looks fine and you only need Flash 6 to view it. Vince, maybe try using Valid HTML and see if that works. Maybe Opera on Linux requires more strict standards. See: http://www.w3.org/ for details.

[Vince Lucena]

Thanks for the review(s), I'll do some re-work to squish them bugs...

[Vince Lucena]

Quick Question, I know the *.Mov files were small. If any one is using a bandwidth monitor can you please tell me how fast my host provider (GoDaddy) serving them to you. I have a 15mb per sec pipe with cox, but only get served from my host provider at 250kb per sec.

[Glen Elliott]

Vince, site looks clean an easy to navigate. My very subjective advice would be to avoid using photos of your camera or camera gear. The main page feels almost as if the technology is the hook rather than the emotional and archival value of the product your creating. Keep in mind who you are advertising to, and what are there motivations for choosing you as their videographer.

[Vince Lucena]

Thanks for the tip Glen,,,

I will try to whip up a collage of actual people portrayed in those type of events/services I provide..

[Nick Weeks]

Originally Posted by Vince Lucena

Quick Question, I know the *.Mov files were small. If any one is using a bandwidth monitor can you please tell me how fast my host provider (GoDaddy) serving them to you. I have a 15mb per sec pipe with cox, but only get served from my host provider at 250kb per sec.

Normally, cable providers (and DSL) advertise in mbps, megaBITS per second, not megaBYTES, so at 15mbps that's actually 1.9 megaBYTES per second. Many Web servers are using T1s, bonded T1s, or T3s, and many times when its a T3 they throttle the bandwidth so each server is only allocated a certian speed.

At work, we're connected to the internet using an OC3 line, and many times it's very low congestion. I've downloaded files at max of around 375kiloBYTES/sec, using an OC3, which is about 150megaBITS/sec I believe.

Enough of the techno-talk... I downloaded the files around 280kb/sec here on the OC3, which is plenty fast enough. I'd say anywhere less than 100KB/sec would be something to complain about.

THe 23MB video sample might be a little large. Are you using H264? I would consider making a small version for low-bandwidth users. Even though dial-up is a thing of the past, there are still users that rely on it every day. Many phone companies are also offering a "lite" DSL package, which is only about 4-5 times faster than dial-up, so a 23MB file would probably take them over an hour to download.

You could always make a note that a broadband connection is required, but make a note the demos are also available on DVD and to either email you or call you.

As far as the site design, it looks pretty good. There just seems to be a lot of blank spaces in your design. Like the gallery page, for example, it looks a little plain. I'm not sure how difficult designing a site with FLash is because I've had no expereince with it, so I'm not sure how hard it would be to fix that, change it, or whatever. I prefer XHTML. You can make a very clean design that loads extremely fast, that's compatiable with just about any browser including cell phones (blackberry).

Also, it looks like you designed your page for 1024x768. I would suggest either designing it for a minimum of 800x600 or making it adjust itself to the browser window. Just about every household has a computer now, but that's because companies like Dell are offering them for $300. That's all great and wonderful but they normally come with 15" monitors that can only do 800x600. 1024x768 is getting closer to being the "norm" but I still believe the majority of users out there are still 800x600. The problem there is you get someone with a crazy 23" widescreen LCD that pulls up your site and sees a small box in the middle of their screen. That's where some JavaScript code will come in handy where you detect their screen resoilution, and take them to a page designed to work best with their screen... that's what I would do especially if using Flash, but you'd have to create multiple designs that may be a hassle to upgrade. You could use soem more JavaScript code to detect their browser, so if they have IE with Flash go here, Mozilla with Flash go here, IE no Flash go here, etc. etc.

All in all, I would use XHTML with CSS, but that's just me. Maybe I'm too far behind the times, but I hate Flash sites because some can be complicated to navigate. Sorry for such a long response, got a little carried away :)

[Vince Lucena]

Carried away???

Not at all. Thanks for the feedback..
I guess I decided to move out of the 800x600 mode because of the stats on my last site. About a year ago 800x600 amounted to about 20% of the visitors, the rest were higher resolutions. I will probably watch the stats a few months to see which flavor is prevalent.

Empty space, is a good way of describing the site. I was shooting for the clean design look. Although when I get some more clients, the Gallery page will fill up a little more. I guess I felt the same as you a few weeks back and placed the watermark to the right of the page to take up some of the void.

23mb, yep I agree a little to big.. I think I will get better as I refine my workflow and knowledge of the FCP5 tools.

Again thanks for all your feedback....

[Nick Weeks]

Though I've never used it, Flip4Mac WMV wncoder is supposed to work very well on Mac. I've got the Flip4Mac player, but I have a Windows PC I encode to wmv.

I would suggest trying to offer that format too, because it streams much better on Windows than a Quicktime file does.... at least from my experience.

[Vince Lucena]

I have access to a PC, is there generic software pre-installed to do the conversion, or do I have to purchase..??

[Nick Weeks]

Download "Windows Media Encoder 9 Series"

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...r/default.mspx

It's free