Slashdot Mirror
Best Way To Distribute Video Online?
CHAMELEON_D_H writes "For some time now, I've been working on a short, geek/nerd oriented animation. It's nearing completion, and I'm starting to look for a method to share it with anyone willing to spare a minute. There are dozens of video sharing and streaming sites out there, making my choice very difficult. Looking for the best possible video and audio quality, while still having vast OS and browser compatibility leaves me dumbfounded. Having a download link would be a great bonus. Youtube is the default and most common choice, but has mediocre video quality and resolution. DivX Web Player has astounding quality, but requires users to download DivX's plugin and forces me to find hosting or purchase more bandwidth, as they no longer serve videos via stage6.
Do Slashdotters have any experience with sharing or uploading videos? Problems you've encountered? What do your eyes say about different streaming video sites?"
My starving artist friend in NYC developed a short video on his mac and was faced with exactly this dilemma. So he sent out an e-mail with a link to the site where he was hosting a portal page. He simply said in the page that you could go watch the embedded YouTube video he had there if you didn't care about quality (and to be honest, his video really didn't require it) but then said that if you were a quality snob or if you couldn't make out the YouTube video, you could click the links.
At the bottom, he had a list of various Quicktime sizes. One was pretty much HD and he said that if you didn't have a large high quality display that you should just go for the medium version. He also pointed out you could download them by right clicking if (and his provider is horrendous) you got choppy video.
Nobody brought his site to his knees, 90% of the people probably just watched the YouTube video and everyone could watch it.
You could do a similar thing, hell you could even point out that you don't need to install QuickTime or a DIVX codec if you just watch from the portal page or visit YouTube.
Remember, you may be a quality snob but your audience isn't always so I would leave the choice to them. Is there something about your video that makes it look unbearable on YouTube? Is the animation and its features really that detailed and fine?
If it is, I have another idea. I don't know how this works but I buy my Cinematic Titanic dvds from EZ-Takes (also known as DVD Wagon) and it looks like they'll sell anything on there for a low price. You could contact a company that sells streaming video or DVD ISOs for low prices like $1 and then just not get anything for profit and use them as a cheap host for your audience. You might not see profits but you'll retain the rights to your video/audio and have a way someone can spend a dollar and get the highest quality possible from you. There's probably a more reliable company to do this through, I just know of EZ Takes.
My work here is dung.
Hit up youtube to give it exposure and link to your webpage where you provide a torrent for the better quality files. Put some simple ads on that page and you're good to go.
I mostly see things pop up on Vimeo when people don't want to post them on Youtube for quality reasons.
egypt urnash minimal art.
Flat fee per upload. Plus you get 15 credits just for registering.
http://simplecdn.com/
Their MirrorCDN option is also nice, depending on what you're doing. $.07/GB is less than half of what S3 charges for transfer rates.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
imeem.com supports 'Near DVD Quality' in their own words, and they just use s flash player. Most people use imeem for sharing mp3s but the video quality is pretty good too.
It's geek related, lots of people that have bandwidth to share on their Flash streaming servers. Set up a script that round-robins across a bunch of streaming servers. Just use a decent encoder and the quality will be good.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
At that point, distribution will take care of itself, though there may be some fallout afterwards. But at least people will see your video....
If you want some sort of "universally" available distribution your only real option is Flash. The best flash video site (which even supports HD) is Vimeo, and you would probably find it to be the highest recommended site among video pros.
An alternative is to encode into one of the standard formarts, MPEG-1 probably covers most ground and distribute using Vuze, but that requires your audience download Vuze (aka Azuerus).
I like blip.tv or vimeo. Both offer significantly higher quality than YouTube. The only hassle with blip is that you have to pay to get "premium" encoding, although the free version works just fine if you're patient enough to wait a few hours.
However, it may make more sense to host the file yourself (you can use something like Amazon's AWS to serve gigabytes of content for hardly anything) using any of a number of excellent embedded video viewers. This gives you absolute control over your media, which is a surprisingly valuable commodity. If your animation turns out to be popular, your site could see hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of visits. That can easily add up to tens of thousands of dollars of revenue. On the other hand, if you upload your film to YouTube, you're going to hand over that advertising revenue to Google and walk away empty handed. Honestly, "social media" sites are a fool's game - You do all the hard work, someone else profits.
Vimeo is your best bet, especially if your footage is HD.
YouTube has a "high quality" video upload option. I've watched a few - most of them are pretty good. Might be suitable for your purposes, and of course, universally accessible. Check it out:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hlrm=en&answer=91450
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
Another vote for Vimeo. Good quality, decently ease to use/share/restrict.
Put the crappy version up on Youtube. It lets people see what you're about and whether they'd like to have a better version.
Now here's the trick: in the video description area, include a link to a torrent tracker with the higher quality version. Seed it yourself to get the ball rolling, watch it take off from there.
I've seen people who make game videos do that sort of thing, like when it's show-off clips or game music videos and the like.
The advantage of doing it this way is you increase the stumble-on factor by being on Youtube and people can see your video in seconds. Those who care enough to demand the higher-quality version will have the torrent link and be very happy. All around, win-win. Now aside from using a p2p app and thus directly supporting the terrorists, you're all set.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I distribute video using BitTorrent because that allows me to distribute video in very high quality. It is also my preference when viewing Internet video. Why insist on making the users view video files in their web browser? I personally prefer to view videos using a video player (mplayer/xine/vlc/etc) and I even download videos from web video sites like youtube (youtube-dl) and view them this way. Streaming in good quality does not scale well, and it does not work well with many software combinations (different OS, web browsers, etc). Most users seem to know how to download a video file using BitTorrent, so why not use that standard? If you really want to allow users to stream videos then give them a low quality flash video (like YouTube) and offer them to download a high-quality MPEG4 ("divx")/DVD ISO video file. This would allow those who prefer to view videos in their browsers to do so while also allowing people like me to download and view the high-quality version at my leisure. I do not think high-quality web browser viewed streaming video is possible, so consider the next best thing, low quality streaming with the option of downloading a high quality version.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
http://www.purdueband.com/ is a great example of how well this works.
I personally have used TubeMogul and found it to be a great resource to submit one video to many different sites all in a simple interface with great tracking as well for analysis later on.
Or you could post a question to Slashdot, in which your user name links to your site, and within that site is a link to the video.
:)
I think this is the video.
I know (or believe, rather) this wasn't your intention, but I am working on the coveted "Commander of the Obvious" award for most obvious solution.
Use x264 to encode a high quality mp4 of your video, and then use JW FLV MEDIA PLAYER to embed it on your site using flash. You can make it as high quality as you want.
Youtu... nooo wait.
You can now stream over bittorrent. This works by prioritizing earlier segments in the file and combining the bittorrent client with the media player.
See here:
http://trial.p2p-next.org/
http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/27/eztv-allows-bittorrent-streaming/
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I would upload one copy to a couple of streaming video sites like Youtube and Vimeo. Once you've done that, take your highest-res copy and any other material you want to share, and upload to archive.org. That way, if people want to watch on their own terms, the video is available in a huge digital library that tries to invest in digital permanence. Be clear about the licensing terms and leave your contact information.
I use blip.tv. They offer very good video quality in a Flash player and will host the original video file on their site so you can provide a download link as well. The Flash player is also very customizable, so you can fit it into your site and you don't even have to link to or otherwise advertise them. See also the comparison on Wikipedia.
Name it "xxx-porn" and spread it on the interwebs.
Animation is *such* a broad space. Some kinds of animation don't need much resolution or bandwidth, e.g. South Park. Other kinds might want lots of pixels or at least wide format, but they're still fairly low bandwidth, e.g. cartoons with lots of things in them or landscapy shapes. But there are kinds of animation where you really do need more quality/bandwidth, e.g. you're starting with photo images and doing interesting things with lighting that you want to show off.
Depending on what you're doing, it may be that YouTube, or YouTube in full-screen mode, may be enough, or it may not, and Youtube's been talking about handling higher-resolution video as well.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Please don't accuse me of a flash advocate, but it's really not their fault. Youtube encodes video at a lower quality to save bandwidth.
Flash actually support multiple codecs. h.264 is the standard used today for many video encoding needs. h.264 is sometimes used with youtube and flash, but to what extend I don't recall.
So really flash is like any other player. The best way to send video over the internet is to first encode it into h.264
...using an IP Address of some sort, and possibly a protocol on top of it. Totally your call on the last part, though.
I believe many of these video sharing sites claim rights to anything you post. You may want to keep that in mind when choosing (if that matters to you).
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
One good place to go is http://www.motionbox.com/. They do have a pay option that give you more storage and a HD option for your video. You can upload 1280x720. It still uses flash player and has a download option. People viewing don't need to signup or subscribe to watch HD content. You can see an example of one of my videos at http://www.motionbox.com/videos/7c9adfb61d1fe2f4?quality=hd&type=progressive
Hello. I work for one of a large stock video & rights management company. We deal with every codec/format that you can think of and after reading all the comments above I would suggest doing something like:
.wmv for the non-QuickTime crowd. Microsoft, I believe, has a free windows media encoder.
- Post the video on YouTube or Vimeo and include an ad or a slate sending people to a higher res version.
- Post a higher res version somewhere hosted. I'd reccomend using QuickTime, esp. the PhotoJPEG codec (great results, almost universal ability to view across QT versions and good file sizes with careful setting tweaking) and some sort of
- Flash is also an option if you have access to a good encoder. I'd stay away from DivX.
Shameless plug, but check out http://www.unicornmedia.com./ They will take content, transcode it to near lossless h.264 quality, and host it on their site for free. As the content owner, you are given the opportunity to place ads, which you get a percentage from. They launch a new front end next month designed entirely in Flex, so as long as the client has Flash, it will play.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel...
They don't have a public gallery like Vimeo does, you have to embed the stuff on your own sites or use their API. They're better suited for giving the illusion of you running your own video system though since they encourage you to brand the player.
Spend a few bucks converting a high quality source to Flash Video format. THEN:
If you want to host it yourself, check out HaXeVideo. Also, Red5 is supposedly widely adopted.
If you're uncomfortable with open source, check out Wowza or FMS2 - both of these proprietary servers let 10 people watch your video at the same time, and come with plenty of examples. As long as your computer is connected to the internets & you know how to configure a router...
I have had a really good experience via LegalTorrents.com. I released my feature-length film there and they're different in that you upload your content TO THEM and they seed it for you, in addition to letting it get seeded by the public.
The response by the community has been quite positive, and I find that I get several new downloads every day (and since I released two versions, 700MB and 3.4 GB, I think that number is pretty good). Almost 500 downloads in a little over a month! Accordingly, I find that a lot diversity in the country of origin for the downloaders, as I'm getting a good spread across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, as well as the Americas.
Good luck on finding a good place to host your streaming content, but if you're in the mood to release your work in downloadable-form under something like a Creative Commons license, I would certainly recommend LegalTorrents.com...
[Note: I don't work there--just an extremely happy user. I heard of them off of /., actually]
It seems like their "Animations" section might be a bit lacking, so you might have some luck! Send them an email:
http://beta.legaltorrents.com/animations
http://www.stagehd.com uses the divx codec and has the same feel of stage6 though I have noticed that the site is a bit slower, but the quality is awesome. Allows uploads as well.
However, you don't need YouTube to host your video. You can host it yourself very easily and inexpensively. If you care about quality or if your video is too long for a YouTube clip, then this is an even more attractive option.
Cross-platform, cross-browser support is very simple these days. Encode your video as a QuickTime MOV file using the H.264 codec. QuickTime Pro can do this for your easily and cheaply and does a good job with the encoding. If you want to do this with open source, you can do it with Handbrake or even just ffmpeg.
MOV/H.264 is playable by Flash 9 (fullscreen, with hardware-accelerated scaling), so it should play back in all the browsers on every OS. Just code up a simple web page with a download link and an open source Flash video player queue to play your video. If you encode it at a reasonable bitrate (QuickTime Pro has a good preset for this) then the bandwidth cost should be low.
If making the web page with the Flash player and download link and then uploading it to a server is too much trouble (and really, why should filmmakers have to bother with this) then the product I'm working on, Ringlight can help. It's a very small file-sharing application that you run on your desktop. Whenever you drop a movie file in your shared it automatically generates a web page for the file containing a thumbnail, download link, and embedded Flash video player (with fullscreen, of course). This is all hosted on the Ringlight website for you, so you can just send people the link to the page. When they go to download the video, it will download it directly from your computer, so you don't need to pay for bandwidth on a server. Users that download your video can volunteer to help you out scaling your bandwidth by becoming mirrors of the file, donating their own bandwidth. There is also an option to host your file on S3, which you can activate by just checking a box.
My service can help you if you want to scale up from peer-to-peer distribution all the way up to a massive audience and you don't want to bother with the details or pay for a server. However, if you already have a server and are willing to do a little website work then hosting it yourself may still be a preferable alternative to using a video hosting site since you can have total control over the quality and length of the video.
then you can go with an open source flash player that can play an FLV video. JW Player is one that comes to mind, but I know there are other better ones that support h264 and even seeking (albeit in a hackish kind of way).
Only speak when it improves the silence.
Vreel is entering beta very soon. They've liscensed the DivX web player and will offer videos up to 1 GB, or up to 8.5 GB if you sign up for a premium account. With support for h.264 encoding. Looks like it will incorporate all the best features of the sorely missed Stage6.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Why not use Yahoo Hosting which has unlimited data and transfer?
Couple that with On2's Flix encoder for making VP6 videos (makes Youtube look like a B&W TV with rabbit ears vs HDTV with a true 1080p source)
there's also a few other choices in terms of hosting that has unlimited data storage and unlimited bandwidth for a reasonable price per month...just use our good friend...google.
http://www.youperview.com/ accepts longer and higher resolution (quality) videos, and you can make money from the video. Since it is a pay-per-view site, you can have a preview video that is available to all, but to view the complete video one must pay (and the price is set by the video producer, not the youperview site). The preview can be embedded into a web page, and you can send people to the youperview site to view the full video. As with any video, you probably want to tailor your video to play nicely, without taking lots of time to download so that one doesn't have to view lots of pauses as the large file buffers more to be viewed.
Leak it on ThePirateBay and then act shocked and attempt to sue them. It works wonders for Hollywood!
You can upload video to video.google.com for free and you can use pretty high quality. There are even full length movies on google video that are supposedly public domain.
cheers,
-DT
Set a release date, claim that you have been stifled by someone in the movie industry, and then "accidentally" leak it to the pirate bay a day or so later. Then there is always the method of naming it girl on girl xxx sex etc etc and putting it on piratebay
What's the best way to distribute HTML files online?
DivX is a CODEC (enCOder+DECoder) for the MPEG4 video format.
You can play DivX encoded videos with every MPEG4-compatible decoder.
Every other information is only deliberate disinformation by DivX Inc. to sell you their trash.
But why would you use such an outdated and non-free codec in the first place, when there are enough alternatives.
There are x264, XviD, Theora as video encoders,
Matroska and Ogg as containers,
Vorbis, MP3 and too many other formats and encoders to count for audio.
And nowadays eveybody who watches downloaded films has those on his disk anyway (except maybe for Theora and the Ogg DirectVideo demuxer).
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Nobody brought his site to his knees, 90% of the people probably just watched the YouTube video and everyone could watch it.
If the link points to a torrent, the site is even more likely to be able to withstand lots of users downloading the video.
That's what torrent where designed to begin with (before the format became also popular on sites like pirate bay) : to enable content provider to distribute huge files without killing too much bandwidth.
All the poster has to do is to send some way or another (using a plain HTTP link, or sending burned CD-R through snail-mail) the file to a small amount of friends who could all seed the file initially and everything will be ok.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Dailymotion has HD hosting. It is in many ways similar to youtube, but better quality.
I can get hosting with no transfer limits for $5 per month and there's plenty of ISPs to choose apart from the one I use.
How poor do you have to be to not be able to afford that?
No sig today...
Your question doesn't make it clear. Are you needing an existing service to actually host your content, or are you just looking for the best method of delivery for your own site? Just because YouTube quality is low doesn't mean you can't use the exact same technology (Flash FLV video) but at a higher bitrate and resolution. You can set up your own "YouTube" on your site in a matter of minutes. You just need a flash video player (there are tons of them out there for free) to point at the FLV files sitting on your site.
As others have pointed out, you also do not specify if you want something streaming, that someone can begin watching within seconds of clicking a link, or something that is downloaded and played offline. The latter offers the best possible quality, because the bitrate can greatly exceed the viewer's bandwidth.
Better known as 318230.
I've been discussing a project with a friend that would involve distributing standard definition and high definition videos to TV stations around the world. This would not be live streaming; it would be video files to download and integrate into various TV station local productions and broadcast. The TV stations would need to use these videos typically through their non-linear editing systems. Any idea which file format would be most usable by TV stations in these video formats: 480i59.94, 576i50, 720p50, 720p59.94, 1080i50, 1080i59.94?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
www.dovetail.tv is made for exactly this scenario. high-res, streaming, focus on indie producers.
high resolution, automatic process, only downside, you might need to split files to play without the need of the veoh client to download, in rest, divx / mpeg 4, whatever you have is good to use if id streaming, you can embed files in web page through a flash player option, keeping same high quality output.
best of luck
simon
For streaming on site:
1.
Convert your movie to MP4 with AAC sound and use some free, open source flash video player like http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player for streaming.
2.
Use Vimeo. Very good quality.
3.
Offer Youtube clip and Vimeo and downloads on the same page.
Regarding bandwidth:
1. Offer the movie in 3-4 sizes
2. Use a torrent tracker (either on the server or something like PirateBay), it helps.
If you don't want to use bittorrent and he expects lots of simultaneous downloads, buy a dedicated server with a lot of bandwidth.
For example, FDCServers.net offers some servers with up to 15 TB (avg 50mbps) of download pretty much guaranteed, at about 150-170$.
Keep in mind though, if he wants quality bandwidth (not really needed in this case), 100 mbps link (33TB) usually goes for about 500$ a month.
I've not done much research on this, but maybe you can do a combination of things.
What do you think?
Now that we are going back to capped/pay per byte internet it wont be practical to distribute over the net.
Of course that is part of their plan. Make it too expensive to 'pirate' a movie so you buy it from them instead.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For our animated short films (http://cattleshow.net) we use Quicktime and host the files ourselves.
I can definitely recommend Quicktime - everyone knows it and either already has it or knows where to get it, you get great quality and compatibility, decent encoding/conversion tools.
And you can do it like Apple does with movie trailers (http://www.apple.com/trailers) - three quality settings + one to three HD quality settings for download. Use bittorrent. If you use Amazon S3 for HTTP delivery you get bittorrent support for free (I think it's only matter of adding the .torrent extension to the link).
One thing I REALLY, R-E-A-L-L-Y like about Blip.tv, beyond their generous file size limits, easy embedability (is that a word?), widescreen support, etc., is the fact that if you encode your video to the right FLV flash specs, they will NOT transcode it again. I consider this to be a great little known secret actually.
Almost every other site will not only re-encode your video, but they'll do it to terrible specs. So, if you encode to a 1 mbs FLV file at 640x480 straight from your highest-res master source, you'll not only get a nice clean video, but you can upload to Blip.tv, and they will literally serve up the file you uploaded as is. To be honest, I'm not even sure Vimeo can compete with that.
Try it if you don't believe me...
I don't know why anyone hasn't mentioned viddler yet. It seems to have pretty decent resolution. ( i haven't put it to the test so I don't know). However it also has the added benefit of users being able to embed comments at _specific points_ in your video. That's pretty neat. Especially if you want those comments. e
Upload it to YouTUBE, and if it gets popular buy some real hosting ( http://nearlyfreespeech.net/ is pay-for-use with good load scaling) and put some Google ads on it and pull the YouTUBE version. If it's truly popular you'll make a small profit.
I'm not sure of the best way to put it on your page. I'd just use SUPER to stuff it into an MP4, which will then either download or be automatically streamed via Quicktime (I have to applaud Apple for that piece of cleverness).
The government can't save you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, it's Flash that ruined the reputation of YouTube. It's not about the video quality. It's about the security. And the browser has a lot to do with this, too, for failing to support video (it supports still pictures and animated GIFs, so why not video and audio, too, as a built-in integrated feature).
As for the encoding, show me a free open source H.264 encoder (even if it is a slow one that takes many times the play time to encode it), or a hardware encoder with free open source drivers that work in BSD and Linux (or at least one of them and can be adapted to the other).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Not to be a M$ shill, but the Silverlight Video streaming actually looks pretty good and they are offering free 10GB hosting on their CDN. There is a 10 min, 1.4 Mbps limit so that's a drag, but it's still pretty decent.
http://streaming.live.com/
Sample Site using Silverlight Video Streaming
(doesn't look like this site has the free limits)
http://www.t5m.com/
Encode your video in DIVX format, name the file Batman_The_Dark_Knight_0day_DVD_rip.avi, and stick the torrent on TPB.
You'll be famous. I promise.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The secret to YouTube is adding &fmt=18 at the end of the URL.
My fiance just put up her first professional music video, and the quality is pretty good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op11TX0ELIg&fmt=18. The benefits of ease-of-distribution, in my opinion, far outweigh the loss in quality.
Plus, as you hit the high levels of quality, you shut out more and more people as the speed increases.
I work for a cable station (I'm sorry) and this is something of a dilemma for us since we've eventually gotten the ok to start seeding our video content off-site. Our goal in this was purely promotional, we weren't looking for any return other then better exposure and maybe some better search rankings.
If exposure is your only goal I would recommend going overboard and using a service like HeySpread (www.heyspread.com), which uploads to all the big players in one shot. If you don't want to spend a little money there you can go to each site yourself individually, go through the steps on each site.
Point is, once it's on a free video site, it might as well be on all of them. If you're looking for returns on your videos, you might want to look into the advertising rev-share on youtube, or revver.
Why don't you just give a CoralCDN link to your video's URL?
I have a web reseller account at Lypha and host 3 websites on it and the 3rd is just a file server. I get like 6 terabytes a month and some ungodly amount of storage (more than the server has I think) so now it's my file server and video hosting server. Streaming 640x480 WMVs @ 1.5MBPS bitches! Or whatever I want really, it's my account lol. I've put full res game footage up at times :D
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
This company really knows how to stream lengthy hd videos: http://www.travelwizard.tv
Don't forget to list it in the Miro guide.
Miro makes it pretty easy for people to browse for and download video that is distributed via bittorrent.
Upload it to a Usenet group. Your target group is geek/nerds so they are all going to know how to access Usenet. You can then post on the websites of your choice what group your video is in. I have about 30 days retention in newsgroups on my provider ( suddenlink.net ) so you can re-upload it every 30 days.
This allows you to post it in whatever quality you desire or post several different qualities to allow the user choice.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
Put it everywhere so that you get the most exposure?
...put a torrent to thepiratebay.
I hear itÂs free and they have tons of content :D
The best way to distribute video online is through www.TubeMogul.com. TubeMogul allows you to distribute a video to up to 20 sites at once, then pulls in your views, comments and ratings from across sites in one place... and it's free for up to 150 deployments per month. There is also a pro version for higher usage and more data - typically for media companies, agencies, and new media production companies.
On file types, TubeMogul accepts a variety of file types and sizes that the sites accept. Best bet is typically h.264 with a high bitrate yet still under 100MB.
I've been with the company from the beginning, so I am biased. But I'm also available for questions - mark >at> tubemogul dotcom
Just do what all the fansubbers do. They're in pretty much the same situation as you, and this is what they do: they use Xvid and Vorbis to encode the file and then share it with interested people using Bittorrent. Granted, sometimes they'll do it slightly differently, e.g. they sometimes use direct downloads for shorts, or a different codec, but generally, this is what they go for. And it works. Both on their end: they don't suffer if they fansub a popular series, and on your end: you can watch the video in your normal media player, which means fluent high-quality playback in fullscreen. There's a lot to be learned from checking out what other people who are in the same situation as you are doing, in general. It can quickly teach you the tricks of the trade, but in some cases also show you all the common pitfalls (for those of us who prefer to learn from other people's mistakes).
Earlier this year I put up some awesome very high quality videos on my web site that my employer produced.
Well, that was a huge mistake. Not only did a percentage of users have bandwidth problems, many also experienced problems with their computers not being able to decode and render the video in real time.
That made for a lousy experience.
So remember to consider the lame bandwidth AND the lame PCs that your viewers may have. Highest quality is great until it turns into no quality.
For a codec, something simple like MPEG-4 ASP (Divx/XVID) and MP3 audio will make sure everyone can view it.
About everyone has Flash installed, so why not H.264? Of course you can offer alternative downloads in legacy formats like AVI or MOV. archive.org even offers MPEG-2. But most people want to see first, then maybe decide to download. For watching, nothing beats MPEG4/AVC/AAC over Flash at the moment, and that's what most video hosts are using. Flash is also the most widely deployed and the most reliable plugin.
Vimeo is really nice. The UI is great, the video quality's good, and they even put a link on the page to download the original file format you uploaded. I'd recommend using Vimeo as the primary source, uploading to Youtube just because people are on there and searching, and also maybe sticking an iPod version and/or high quality xvid copy on Amazon S3. That should cover most bases.
Has a FLV "preview" and allows a high-quality download option.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
I find some of the best work here:
http://www.cgsociety.org/
Dailymotion offers HD quality, or at least something close to it.
I'm not sure how long the encoding on that site takes, but I've been impressed by a lot of the video's on there.
Blogotheque.com uses dailymotion for their content, and that site is pretty popular, so I think it should be a decent service...
Use FLV like youtube, just don't compress them as much. The question you'll have to face is whether to allow users to skip ahead in the video or they can only watch the portion that has downloaded. If you want users to be able to skip ahead, that will require a streaming server. If you don't mind making users download the whole video to skip to the end, then any old web server will do it with no special add-ons. But yeah, basically just take high quality video and convert it to FLV. The converter program should allow you to specify the quality to use. I like FLV because it is so well supported. All the others seem to have too many gotchas, but damn near anyone can play an FLV as long as they have Flash, and almost everyone has Flash these days. And if you use the simple streaming method I mentioned above, you can host it basically anywhere you want.
My suggestion:
Post it to youtube, for the lazy people who dont care how high res it is.
Post a direct A HREF link to a regular AVI or MPEG file, for people who cant or dont run flash, and/orwho understand that it will have to download first and then they have to open it in their choice of players. You could optionally post two files, one small version (for the no-flash people that also have no-bandwidth), and a larger one (for the folks at work that sit on a DS3)
http://www.getmiro.com/ It's free. It uses bit torrent so it won't crash your server. Has better resolution than youtube.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
I've never used it but I know the blender foundation people use it a lot to show off some contributed works
Use vimeo (vimeo.com) excellent quality
Do all of the above. The more places you have your stuff visible. The more people will watch it. It's good marketing.
That said, I like Vimeo. You get low rez for your own site, high def on their site, and users with an account can download the source file.
No, I don't work for Vimeo.
There are also some paid video hosts such as BrightCove and Ooyala.
Jason Wohlford
If you wanted to start your own site, there is software available: http://plumi.org
It's based on plone/zope, can do transcoding using indytube for embedded playback and pasting into blogs, and offers higher quality downloads. Auto bittorrent transcoding is on the roadmap.
Takes almost all file types, has RSS feeds based on any number of factors, including tags, publisher, producer, director, country etc.
For an example of it at work, check http://engagemedia.org
google video has the best quality. Also it stores the original video, should they ever use a different compression codec. As proof just google the google-video-to-avi favelet.
Youtube does have a high-quality mpeg4 ipod version of new videos (ones after about 2007?) but you can only see them with an ipod or user-agent switcher, or download them with keepvid.com.
Silverlight Streaming?
http://streaming.live.com/
It's free for up to 1 GB of storage and 1 TB of transfer a month. File max size is 105 MB, which is plenty for even a short HD clip.
You have to upload in WMV, but an uploaded file is available as both an embedded Silverlight player (Win/Mac, with Linux coming via Moonlight) and a straight link to the WMV playable by tons of tools, including VLC. And Windows Media Player and other tools will let anyone "Save As" from the web link if they want a local copy.
I've got a sample/tutorial on my blog:
http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/Direct-links-to-files-on-Silverlight-Streaming-and-new-All-Stars-clip/
It's one of the few free services that'll give you a straight, ad-free link to the media file.
My video compression blog
There isn't one format all OSes natively support. Encode for WMV, QuickTime(MPEG-4), Real, and Flash. Depending on the projects installed Linux can support all codecs, but Redhat/Fedora exclude well patented formats.
.... should be a torrent. Am I missing something ?
I always use Vimeo, it supports HD uploads and it's looking way better for 16:9 videos!
Miro www.getmiro.com
Stage is dead, tahrt sad true. But new site with same features is comming. www.vreel.net unfortuantely for free wieving you are required to use zangoo adware, taht is biigger problem than using divx webplayer (or mplayer in linux). So the choice for quality is www.veoh.com, but i really hate their policy because the totaly cuttof some countries. Veoh enables both easy viewing via flash and also download in original format, containcer, size, ... just original file.
Vimeo.com
It puts emphasis on stuff you've worked hard on (rather than the last 3 minutes you spent with your webcam) and has an HD feature so you can keep the quality as high as you need.
Never had any problems with using other platforms or browsers.
Hope that helps
Try the following: www.vimeo.com www.dailymotion.com DailyMotion allows embedding of HD content (1280x720p) on your site without a fee too. R
azureus vuze
I have been trying wuapi.com, and it's been flawless, you can upload HD videos, similar to stage6. Altrough they don't give an option to download them, there is alway clipnabber to help. Hope it helps
Do Slashdotters have any experience with sharing or uploading videos?
Seriously?
Opera is implementing the new Web5 standard for movies which is the Ogg Theora player that in my opinion beats DivX in quality and size, and you wont have to download any additional codecs like the DivX Player...
Encode your video in On2's VP6 (which can be very decent quality and playable by Flash, which most people have), upload it to Amazon's S3 service, and use a Flash video player to play it. Problem solved. You have complete control over your video's quality, and will pay next to nothing to serve it up. You can also have other versions on S3, such as xvid/h264, and simply link to them. It's not that difficult.
Try ExposureRoom for near TV resolution streaming. Looks to me even better than vimeo.
There's also FlowPlayer, though you'll need to host it somewhere.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
If it's animated, try
http://www.mytoons.com/
It's simple.
You release a torrent of your video in an OGG container (Vorbis audio and Theora video). Savvy people get this.
You link to a Youtube version for the plebs.
here is a link for you to see what a creator of an animated series did, and now is making millions because he was able to set up his own distribution website for viewing, and could then afterwards attach ads ans sponsors to his site once people caught on, there is over 10 million people viewing his cartoons.
Assert a highly restrictive copyright on the content and then employ the most sophisticated DRM you can on it. Within days, perhaps hours, it will be all over the Net, especially if you enlist the aid of the MPAA to protect it.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
YouTube for exposure, Revver and Blip.tv for revenue and format diversity. If you've got something crazy HD, distribute it via BitTorrent--the market will respond if it's popular, and you might only have to seed for a few days.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
www.vimeo.com
A very good 720p free video site. Check it out. It's what I use and it's awesome.
Upload a high-quality MPEG-2 file to The Internet Archive, fill out the form describing the video, and let them create derivative files for you. TV shows do this daily uploading gigabytes without difficulty. You'll end up with files you can link directly to at no charge (use the "download" URLs, don't link to specific servers; download URLs will be redirected as archive.org does their internal bookkeeping). If there are any kinds of videos you want which archive.org doesn't make for you, you can upload those too. BitTorrent doesn't work as well as archive.org because when your video is no longer popular, seeders drop out and make it harder for others to get the video. Also, as more browsers have Ogg Vorbis+Theora built-in, you'll want a copy of your video encoded with Ogg Vorbis+Theora so you can use <video> with the browser's built-in support.
Digital Citizen
I'll soon be in a similar situation as the guy who asked the original question about where to host, except I'd like to know if there's any web video host that provides worthwhile monetization.
I think blip.tv seems the most open so far ($4-5 per CPM). Youtube's answer is "sign-up and find out". No thanks.
Drop a low quality version on youtube and then stick a link to a torrent in its description. Thats what torrenting was made for. People need to support it for the good so ISPs etc. see the potential benifits of it.
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/you_tube_redux_gary.html
All the poster has to do is to send some way or another (using a plain HTTP link, or sending burned CD-R through snail-mail) the file to a small amount of friends who could all seed the file initially and everything will be ok.
Well, the main problem with distributing via Bittorrent is that if you're the only one seeding nobody will be able to get to 100% (and thus be able to watch your flick) for a while. {...} for best results it should be available from more than one host.
Hence - as I said above - the poster should send the content to a couple of friends so that at least a handful of seeds have the content.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Now if you upload in AVI or MPEG, youtube and myspace tend to recompress them, giving you visual crap. Use Canopus Procoder or the Helix Encoder and encode in Real Video, and get your quality how you want it. Then upload to one of these sites. My experience is that then the sites tend not to reencode, and just wrap the video in a Flash container. So while the real video may not look quite as good as your divx before your upload, it looks a heck of a lot better after the upload.
Second thought is to go with online hosting, either pay, or get a fileden account or something. I actually do this. I have the lower quality myspace / youtube videos embeded on my site, then you can download higher quality MPEG, DIVX, or Quicktime videos.
MPEG is probably your best bet if you do not want your people to have to download special software. MPEG will also run on lower end Pentiums and Pentium 2s without much trouble. You will not get as good as a compression, or as good of video quality, but its like a universal playable format. If its a geek video and you are wanting people with Linux, BSD and other alternative OSes to be able to view it, MPEG is your best bet. Just make sure you do not compress in MPEG-2.
So, yeah, my recommendation is to convert to both MPEG and Real Video, and upload the Real Video to YouTube or Myspace, embed the flash link, and offer the MPEG for people who cannot view flash videos.
Also, remember that the PS3 and the iPhone support YouTube, but not the other sites.
This is so much easier than in the old days. I would have to create a 26k Real Video Stream, a 56k Real Video Stream, a 100k Real video Stream (ISDN), a 300k Real Video Stream, then do the same thing with Windows Media Player, then offer MPEG, DivX and Intel Indeo 5 videos
What's up with the 'nix' and 'nod' tags that are on nearly every story on Slashdot today?
Any video on YouTube can be forced to play back in 'high quality' mode. To do this simply add &fmt=18 to the end of the video's URL.
Of course none of this will help you if the recording is a lego rendition of what actually happened.
I'm bais...
This is a company my friend Rob Sandie started. www.Viddler.com
I warned you I'm bais, but that's what I do for friends.
I think you're right about .avi not being flawed. I run macs all day and output all types of video formats. I've always run across .avi files when I get uncompressed stuff from people who do video on Windows machines. As far as I can tell it's just a wrapper like .mov is. In .mov you can have MPEG 4 or any other format. It's just an architecture thing to enable other features outside of basic specifications. .avi was that they were seeing weird codecs like divx and MS-mpeg4 wrapped in it and having all kinds of trouble in the late 90's early 2ks. Just like Quicktime was thought to be the best looking video on the web during that same period. It wasn't Quicktime per se. It was the Sorenson Video 2 and 3 codec that was used for the video that made it great.
I think what screwed everyone up over
That way I can watch it on Linux, Mac, PS3, my phone, iPod, PSP, ...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
We'll, it's really a math question.
WMV: Windows + Mac * (Flip4Mac OR Silverlight OR VLC) + Linux * VLC
Flash: Windows * Flash + Mac * Flash + Inux * Flash
If you're think of H.264 enbled Flash, I think even Dobe only states a 80% consumer market share, and it'll be corresoningly lower in Enterprise.
All VC-q needs is a 6 year old version of WMP, while H.264 needs a less than a year old version of Flash.
My video compression blog
http://www.ffmpegx.com/flv.html
From the website:
"Currently, the best format for such use is FLV (Flash Video), as almost all browsers will display it natively without need of installing extra plugins. It is for example the format used in Google Video."
You can control the size and bit rate (quality) so you can create a widely compatible video, but still make it high quality.
Ben in DC
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be moved by statistics" Oscar Wilde
Use YouTube. It's obvious the best real choice. If you want people to actually see your work, then this is the place that they will find it.
You are presenting your video in the marketplace. The marketplace of public attention. Unless you are a Hollywood star, that is someone who has previously introduced successful content into the pay-per-view marketplace, you are competing with everyone else in the marketplace of public attention.
The marketplace of public attention for video is YouTube. Put your work there (even with the low resolution) and the people who find your work interesting will make the effort to download your stuff at higher resolution.
But first they have to know about you and your work. And YouTube is the place where that happens for entry-level video makers. And if you're not a Hollywood star, then you are an entry-level filmmaker by definition.
Don't pay serious attention to anything that anyone on Slashdot tells you, just post your video to YouTube.
Do it right now.
You can use Silverlight Streaming Service for free. They give you 10GB free space and Expression encoder can be used to encode and publish videos.
putting it on VHS?
I have been using TubeMogul for some time now - it allows me to upload a video once and then post it to many places. For examples -and a blatant plug - Google: video "prescott computer guy". http://www.google.com/search?q=video+%22prescott+computer+guy That way whatever my needs are (downloading, quality, specific format, etc.) I have it posted the way I want... and it is pretty easy. Also gives reports of who has viewed what, etc.
Hello,
this is Dan, I have been producing and directing
my own films for several years now.
I was selling my doc with filmbaby, aka film baby.
I got eight of my friends to purchase my dvd from the filmbaby website,
which they did, but filmbaby only paid me royalties for TWO items sold!
They cheated me!
They denied it and then never responded to my request of removing
my film from their site.
Finally my attorney threatened filmbaby and then my film was
removed from their website.
If others had similar experiences with them, please contact me.
Dan Medina