Website for hosting video....

[Gerald Webb]

Hello people,
I'm going to ask this here rather than on Yahoo answers or similar because I think the things that are important to me will be to my fellow Vegas-ites as well.
Can anyone recommend a web hosting service or the like,
or,
can anyone tell me the best way to start up a web site?
Do most of you do it yourselves?
Am I better off to employ a "Web site guy" to do it for me?
Most important thing of course is to be able to host your own videos, are there other things to be wary of?
Should you get a local host, or doesnt it matter if its on a different continent?
Thoughts and opinions greatly appreciated.

[Leslie Wand]

for clients use dropbox

for all else i use vimeo (and embed in websites)

if you're expecting any traffic at all hosting your own isn't really practical.

[Gerald Webb]

thanks for the reply Leslie,
So you dont have your videos on your lesliewand.com.au , you just embed the vimeo links.
Did you set up your lesliewand.com.au yourself? was there much in it?
Is the first step to purchase the domain name? Does it matter who from?
cheers

[Chris Harding]

Hi Gerald

I have been on powweb.com for about 10 years now and they are awesome!!! I used to upload FLV video clips to their server but I found that with Aussie brides accessing a USA server, there was too much buffering and waiting.

What I do now is embed a YouTube Custom Player on my site and then create a playlist called "weddings" for it ..that way the brides have a choice of maybe 40 wedding clips and samples to choose from and YouTube's servers are pretty quick too....I got tired of people saying "your videos take too long" It's not the most professional method but it gives easy access to brides...I also upload clips in SD not HD (just 640x360) ....that also speeds things up and brides will seldom appreciate or have the time to watch HD clips anyway!!!

In Vegas 9 I just render in Sony AVC as an MP4 file and set the template to 640x360 and it make an easy to upload MP4 clip for clients!!

Chris

[Larry Reavis]

I used GoDaddy years ago, and returned to it for my self-hosted videos (Yogananda, fundamentalism, atheism: A journey toward self-realization). You can get 3 years, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, for $48 per year (as I recall; I paid for 10 years).

Rendering for the web from Vegas is the pits. I want top quality and low bandwidth. Here's a sample at an astonishing 500 kbps:

Physics: The quantum explanation"

I render .MXF files from Vegas, then put the .MXFs into Handbrake. Here's a tutorial that outlines various options:

Sony Creative Software - Forums - Vegas Pro - Video Messages

If you search for "Handbrake" on the above forum, you'll get easy-to-use settings for Handbrake. It takes me about 3 min. to put a .MXF file into Handbrake and get it rendering. Rendering usually is around 60 or 70 frames per second, so it goes fast. 2-pass variable bitrate rendering takes about twice as long.

Just last night, I deleted my YouTube account because I didn't like the username that I had chosen (you can't change it - you can only delete the account and all videos on it and start over again. I'm in the process of uploading the first 2 videos on my new account (you should be able to find it tomorrow if you search for "Larry Dominus Reavis" or "LarryDReavisPhD" from within YouTube - in case you wish to compare quality with the self-hosted videos.

YouTube is OK, but limited to 15-min. videos. Quality suffers a bit, too, but not like a few years ago. However, it is likely to play well all over the world; some folks on this forum said my self-hosted videos were streaming poorly.

It you get your own site, I'd say do it yourself. That way, you'll have total control. My son has pros in India manage his business website, and - although they do a good job - I can see that there are improvements that he probably could make if he did it himself. On the other hand, the pros will avoid many common pitfalls - such as too much highlighting (I did that), too many exclamation marks !!!!!!!!! etc.

I like the free nVue for building and editing my website, but you do need to know at least the basics of .HTML to get it to do fancy stuff.

Right now, I'm preferring to use YouTube to drive traffic to my website. We'll see if that strategy works.

[Gerald Webb]

Thanks guys, will look at these options.
Larry, that video @ .5mbps is remarkable, I thought mine were ok at 1-1.5mbps but that lifts the bar.
Now i'm late for work, couldnt stop watching Larry's vid, lol. Love that guitar playing!
:)

[Gregory Barringer]

Check out Big Black Bag. They have a 2 week free trial.
The nice thing about their sites is they are iPhone friendly. The templates are easy to learn and the free training is well done.

[Leslie Wand]

Originally Posted by Gerald Webb

thanks for the reply Leslie,
So you dont have your videos on your lesliewand.com.au , you just embed the vimeo links.
Did you set up your lesliewand.com.au yourself? was there much in it?
Is the first step to purchase the domain name? Does it matter who from?
cheers

no videos on my site - all embedded from vimeo (free)

yes, use dreamweaver, but there's a huge amount of cheap (even free) website software out there and it's no longer rocket science (you don't need coding!!!).

you can get your domain via your isp (they're separate entities, but the isp can arrange it for you).

good luck.

[Jerry Amende]

Originally Posted by Gerald Webb

Larry, that video @ .5mbps is remarkable, I thought mine were ok at 1-1.5mbps but that lifts the bar.

fwiw, HandBrake can produce some amazing quality at low bitrates. I did some comparisions - Vegas h.264 (mp4) Renders from Sony & MainConcept vs HandBrake @ 200Kbps. Here: Low Bit Rate Testing

...Jerry

btw, this is a GoDaddy hosted account.

Edit: I should note that content of the video is a major factor in achieving low bitrates - a "quiet" video, e.g. a talking head with little background movement & no transitions is much easier to achieve quality at low bitrates than a "busy" video with lots of motion.

[Larry Reavis]

Right. I include transitions and other bandwidth eaters when necessary, but I shoot with good light in order to cut down noise, I use green screen (like all the opening talking-head shots) and then blur the background and keep background motion low (the trees and bushes in the opening green screen are not moving much - I shot on a day with low wind), I don't do too much movement of stills, etc.

Incidentally, that clip also looks OK at 200 kbps, but it looks a tad better at 500 kbps; and I figure there is no point in going lower (in most cases - except overseas at some locations where GoDaddy servers struggle).

For those whose players can't play flash and for those folks overseas, I'm going to embed the YouTube versions on my website - hopefully today.

[Jerry Amende]

Originally Posted by Larry Reavis

Incidentally, that clip also looks OK at 200 kbps, but it looks a tad better at 500 kbps; and I figure there is no point in going lower (in most cases - except overseas at some locations where GoDaddy servers struggle).

I would suggest the the main reason for keeping the bitrate as low as possible is because not all users have high speed internet connections.

...Jerry

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by Jerry Amende

I would suggest the the main reason for keeping the bitrate as low as possible is because not all users have high speed internet connections...

Yah, but... how low is low? (sorry...)

500Kbps is pretty good, and pretty conservative for a broadband audience. Any home user with cable modem or DSL is good with it. Almost any office user, too.

The problems come in high-use shared connections, like coffee shops. If a couple other users in the shop are streaming video, maybe HD on Hulu, it's pretty easy to flood the service.

But, even with that, how low is low? If you encode at 200Kbps, you know, 180 is lower... at a certain point you just stop and say that picture quality is as low as you want to go.

***********************************************************
Larry, that is some pretty outstanding 720p at 500K. I've had some significant experience in compression, I teach a college class in it, your results are really very, very good!

[Jerry Amende]

Originally Posted by Seth Bloombaum

But, even with that, how low is low? If you encode at 200Kbps, you know, 180 is lower... at a certain point you just stop and say that picture quality is as low as you want to go.

"Low" is the point where a rendered version of your video has subjectively good visual quality. The point I'm trying to make is that this process is trial-and-error. A "busy" video will require a higher bitrate than a "quiet" video. The higher bitrate will be tougher to progressively download for users with lower bitrate connections. I've been at motels & restaurants that cannot handle the 200Kbps videos - and what about mobile phone connections?

The other point I was trying to make in the referenced URL ( Low Bit Rate Testing ) is that, after much experimentation, at low bitrates, HandBrake renders produce higher quality than either the Sony or MainConcept h.264 encoders packaged with Sony Vegas.

All-in-all, I really don't think we are in disagreement.

...Jerry

btw: Over at that Sony Creative Software forum, we have group that has been studying the subject of high quality Web delivery and created a project page here: HD Guide for Vegas Users (note that it's not complete - and still in "Draft" form). If you wish to post comments, there is a reference thread at the Sony Forum.

[Larry Reavis]

Originally Posted by Jerry Amende

I've been at motels & restaurants that cannot handle the 200Kbps videos - and what about mobile phone connections?

...Jerry

My original goal was to get better image quality at a lower bitrate than available on YouTube. If you look carefully at the YouTube version (YouTube - (2c Part 1) Physics, maya, and Kriya Yoga), you'll see that the image quality is not as good as that observed in the self-hosted version (I uploaded a 2500 kbps .MP4 to YT, knowing that they'd need every bit possible in order to get a semi-clean image).

Moreover, when everyone in my neighborhood gets home in the evening and my DSL connection slows down a lot, I can't play the YT version without some buffering, whereas the self-hosted version never buffers.

Having said that, I think Jerry has a very valid point. My next goal is to work on getting it to play on mobile phones, especially those that can't play Flash. I've been experimenting JW Player's claim that it will role over to HTML5 for players that don't have Flash installed, but without much success (in this case, not a bitrate problem).

If Jerry and the other the smart guys that I've been reading over at Sony forum, or at JW Player, ever get a procedure that actually works, then I'll re-compress at fewer pixels - maybe 360x640, and then seriously try to cut bitrate - placing 2 links on my website (or 4, counting YT & download links), so that those with slow web connections can see the videos.

Incidentally, it's my understanding that HTML5 & WebM etc. are standards that still are in flux. We may just have to wait a bit longer for the dust to settle.

Also, according to Wikipedia, there are several dozen operating systems in current use; we may have to resign ourselves to the fact that perhaps we'll never find a way to play videos on all of them.

Seems there's always a next step to occupy our time . . .

[Danny Fye]

Originally Posted by Larry Reavis

I used GoDaddy years ago, and returned to it for my self-hosted videos (Yogananda, fundamentalism, atheism: A journey toward self-realization). You can get 3 years, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, for $48 per year (as I recall; I paid for 10 years).

I quit Godaddy because uploading to them became painfully slow.

Rendering for the web from Vegas is the pits. I want top quality and low bandwidth. Here's a sample at an astonishing 500 kbps:

Physics: The quantum explanation"

Video is great quality but long. I quit watching it about one third of the way through it..


Others say they use Vimeo. I tried and tried to use it but I always get jerky motion with my videos. Church services with speakers who like to walk all over the place.


I finally decided to create wmv videos. Render to uncompressed avi and then use a dos batch file to render to wmv.

I then use windows to send the wmv files to zip files and upload them to my site. Users download them, unzip and watch.

In Vegas I use sharp at 0.500 and set Levels from Studio RGB to Computer RGB.

One reason for wmv is many people cannot install a player for other formats. So wmv works best for most.

The videos are approx two hours and most people do not have time to sit and watch the whole thing. So multiple zip files for parts of the video plus they can watch a part now and later on watch another part of it.

Clicking on it to play online means one cannot do that and if it gets too long they quit watching and go somewhere else.

Hope this helps.