Some alternatives for adding video...

DodgeV83

Don't want to post your videos in Mpeg-1? Is 8mb or 16mb not enough space for you? On the $29.99 plan without videos at all? Here are some alternatives.


NOTE: Once you put your videos up somewhere, you can link to them in the description field in your galleries. I'd put all the pictures from a track meet in a gallery for example, then link to the videos from the track meet in the description. I've had much success doing this.


This one is my current favorite!

http://www.ourmedia.org/

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]What’s the maximum file size I can upload?[/font] [font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]You could, in theory, upload a 5-gigabyte video file. (If you’ve got a dial-up connection, good luck with that!) Limitations on file size are mostly practical ones: the larger the file, the smaller the number of people who will download it. However, be aware than large files — anything above 20MB — must be uploaded with the Ourmedia Publisher tool (click on Tools in the main nav), not through the Web site's publish my media pages.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] [font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]What are the bandwidth limits on my files? 1 or 2GB per month?[/font][/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]No limit. At least for now. If the Internet Archive’s servers that we rely on become overwhelmed by the demands of podcasts and videoblogs, we may have to limit the kinds of files our members upload (we still prefer media that have a long shelf life). But Archive officials say they’re ready for anything we can throw at them.[/font][/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains about 1 petabyte of data and is growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month, a figure that eclipses the amount of text contained in the world’s largest libraries, including the Library of Congress. Currently the Archive is pulling 20 terabytes a month off the Internet.[/font][/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] [font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]What kinds of formats do you support?[/font][/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Ourmedia supports all formats, including proprietary formats like Apple QuickTime, Macromedia Flash, Windows Media video and audio, Real, DivX, MPEG, WAV, MP3, the new H.264 MPEG4 compression technology, and many others. [/font][/font][/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Be aware, however, that not all formats will play on all platforms and machines, so keep that in mind before choosing a codec. [/font][/font][/font]




Here are some other picks

http://www.putfile.com

This site is cool, but you can only post videos up to 10MB.


http://video.google.com/

Google Video is cool, but has some drawbacks. The videos need to be reviewed before they are posted to the site, can take a while. Also, I think all video is converted to Flash Video. Worse, if your videos become very popular, I think they will charge you to keep them up


Straying from my other picks, you can also put your videos up with Bittorrent, but this isn't anywhere near as easy as the other websites. They won't stream in your browser, your users need to have a bittorrent client installed and you need to be able to host the tracker (Wouldn't it be COOL if Smugmug let us host trackers on our pages? :wink).

Well thats all I can think of right now. Of course, linking to your videos on another website just won't feel as integrated as hosting your videos directly from your Smugmug account. Unfortunately if you only have the $29.99 account, don't want to use Mpeg-1, or need bigger videos, this is a good way to get it done!

Feel free to add your own suggestions guys/gals

DavidTO

Hmmmm....

I'm a $29.99 guy, so this sounds good.

Right now I only have one movie online, and it's on my .Mac site.

DodgeV83

Ok, I finally tried OurMedia (actaully just went straight to archive.org) and the results are superb! I require the absolute highest quality video of some races that I recorded this weekend, and MPEG-1 with a 16MB limit really ain't cutting it. Its just sad that I had to resort to this (Linking to a file instead of hosting it on my site) when I pay $100 a year for the highest quality subscription :cry

SamirD

Video hosting has always been a pain. I was actually surprised to see smugmug allowing video at all since the focus is on still shots.

That being said, I looked into some of your solutions and they're not bad. It's good to know that there is at least one really good free video host out there. I have video hosting issues as well. I shoot thousands of video clips a year.

I have my own server so I'll probably just link to files, but I've never even thought of how to do it with integration with smugmug. Feel free to post how you did it or plan to. I'd be very, very interested.

Now once smugmug releases smugmug video, I'll sign onto that in a heartbeat.

peestandingup

Yeah, I did this a few months ago after growing tired of the crappy quality of mpeg-1. I used the Ourmedia (Internet Archive) site to host my videos that were encoded using Quicktime Pro into mpeg-4 (H.264). I took little screen shots of the video window & uploaded those & used the Journal gallery style. Then, I put links in the captions to the videos. Well, needless to say, I have resorted back to mpeg-1 & letting smugmug host the files.

So, why am I not still using this method? A couple reasons. The main one is that I found the host's speed (Internet Archive) to be very spotty. One day, it would download the videos really fast without any problems. The next day, it would take forever. It was just unreliable & didnt live up to my standards.

The next reason is more my own personal tastes & something that has been echoed here on the boards. I was encoding my vids into mpeg-4 (H.264) because I felt (and still do) that its the next generation codec & will soon become the standard. Well, I got allot of different results from people trying to view them.

Since freakin Microsoft doesnt wanna play nice with mpeg-4 yet, windows media player wont play them on its own. So, you either need to install 3rd party plug-ins or just install Quicktime to view them. One girl said that her work place wouldnt allow any downloads or installing of anything, and that included media players. Another (windows) guy said that once he clicked onto the video links, IE would just download the file to his HD instead of playing within the browser. And so on, blah blah.

Even though most of the problems were because Microsoft doesnt wanna accept standards & wants everyone to use their own propiatary format, for the sake of everyone I just went back to the old way, for now.

But, I still havent erased the gallery yet, so here it is if you wanna check it out:
http://www.kerryryanbailey.com/gallery/969252/


BTW, I have been experimenting with youtube (www.youtube.com) and its not too bad. They use flash, which has its good points & bad, but it will almost aways be compatible with all browsers. Only thing is people cant download the videos to their own computer. However, a workaround would be to use the Ourmedia site to host the original file & then link to it in the caption.

You can see how youtube looks on my site. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to watch 2 youtube videos:
http://www.kerryryanbailey.com/gallery/783450/2

DodgeV83

Yea the speed issue is kinda keeping me away from the alternatives too. The archive is the only site I used that kept the 16:9 aspect ratio of my videos, and as you said their speed is very spotty.

I really don't want to turn this into a codec thread, but Windows Media Player plays standard, non-propiatary MPEG-4 videos just fine. H.264 is Apple's baby just like WMV is Microsoft's baby, I wouldn't ever expect Quicktime to play WMV files, so I'm not really surprised that Windows Media Player can't play H.264 files.

peestandingup

DodgeV83 wrote:

I really don't want to turn this into a codec thread, but Windows Media Player plays standard, non-propiatary MPEG-4 videos just fine. H.264 is Apple's baby just like WMV is Microsoft's baby, I wouldn't ever expect Quicktime to play WMV files, so I'm not really surprised that Windows Media Player can't play H.264 files.

Not true. Apple does not make H.264, its an open standard format developed by other companys. Apple just incorporates it into Quicktime, same as what Blu-Ray & HD-DVD is gonna do. Unlike Windows Media, which is proprietary (developed by one single company). Sorry dude, but they ain't the same. Windows has had a long history of not wanting to adopt standards.

Read this:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/faq.html

And, yes. Quicktime can be made to play wmv files just fine.
http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm

DodgeV83

peestandingup wrote:

Not true. Apple does not make H.264, its an open standard format developed by other companys. Apple just incorporates it into Quicktime, same as what Blu-Ray & HD-DVD is gonna do. Unlike Windows Media, which is proprietary (developed by one single company). Sorry dude, but they ain't the same. Windows has had a long history of not wanting to adopt standards.

Read this:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/faq.html

And, yes. Quicktime can be made to play wmv files just fine.
http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm

My mistake, I figured it was Apple's baby since everybody said I needed Quicktime 7 to view them (though I'm sure other players are compatible) and Apple seemed to be backing it pretty hard.

Either way I'd actaully prefer just standard MPEG-4 videos on Smugmug, I'd never put anything in H.264, not at this point in time. The fact is that I don't personally know many people who have the capability of playing back that format.

Anyways, I wouldn't compare H.264 to WMV9 its definately better, though I haven't done any tests to see how much better it is at 500k and 1000k. I'd compare it to Microsoft's VC-1 (which BluRay and HD-DVD also support)...too bad there aren't any encoders for VC-1 yet that we can use

SamirD

peestandingup wrote:

Yeah, I did this a few months ago after growing tired of the crappy quality of mpeg-1. I used the Ourmedia (Internet Archive) site to host my videos that were encoded using Quicktime Pro into mpeg-4 (H.264). I took little screen shots of the video window & uploaded those & used the Journal gallery style. Then, I put links in the captions to the videos. Well, needless to say, I have resorted back to mpeg-1 & letting smugmug host the files.

So, why am I not still using this method? A couple reasons. The main one is that I found the host's speed (Internet Archive) to be very spotty. One day, it would download the videos really fast without any problems. The next day, it would take forever. It was just unreliable & didnt live up to my standards.

The next reason is more my own personal tastes & something that has been echoed here on the boards. I was encoding my vids into mpeg-4 (H.264) because I felt (and still do) that its the next generation codec & will soon become the standard. Well, I got allot of different results from people trying to view them.

Since freakin Microsoft doesnt wanna play nice with mpeg-4 yet, windows media player wont play them on its own. So, you either need to install 3rd party plug-ins or just install Quicktime to view them. One girl said that her work place wouldnt allow any downloads or installing of anything, and that included media players. Another (windows) guy said that once he clicked onto the video links, IE would just download the file to his HD instead of playing within the browser. And so on, blah blah.

Even though most of the problems were because Microsoft doesnt wanna accept standards & wants everyone to use their own propiatary format, for the sake of everyone I just went back to the old way, for now.

But, I still havent erased the gallery yet, so here it is if you wanna check it out:
http://www.kerryryanbailey.com/gallery/969252/


BTW, I have been experimenting with youtube (www.youtube.com) and its not too bad. They use flash, which has its good points & bad, but it will almost aways be compatible with all browsers. Only thing is people cant download the videos to their own computer. However, a workaround would be to use the Ourmedia site to host the original file & then link to it in the caption.

You can see how youtube looks on my site. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to watch 2 youtube videos:
http://www.kerryryanbailey.com/gallery/783450/2

One way to have the bandwidth you want is to have your own file server. These are relatively cheap and come with quite a bit of bandwidth. They are basically designed for serving files.

I like the youtube integration with smugmug. The only problem is the quality of the flash. It's like really, really bad quality (highly, higly compressed) mpeg.

SamirD

The codec issue is one on it's own. At this point, mpeg1 is appropriate for smugmug because it is universal. It's probably not cost effective at this point to allow all sorts of format.

What I've learned is to find the codec that the rest of your industry uses, not neccessarily what is best. For me, that's xvid.

peestandingup

DodgeV83 wrote:

Either way I'd actaully prefer just standard MPEG-4 videos on Smugmug, I'd never put anything in H.264, not at this point in time. The fact is that I don't personally know many people who have the capability of playing back that format.

Anyways, I wouldn't compare H.264 to WMV9 its definately better, though I haven't done any tests to see how much better it is at 500k and 1000k. I'd compare it to Microsoft's VC-1 (which BluRay and HD-DVD also support)...too bad there aren't any encoders for VC-1 yet that we can use

With VC-1 vs H.264, it basically boils down to proprietary vs open standard. They are both fine codecs in themselves. Here is a good article on the situation:
http://www.eetimes.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=50500181

SamirD

DodgeV83 wrote:

I really don't want to turn this into a codec thread...

Too late!

peestandingup

DodgeV83 wrote:

I really don't want to turn this into a codec thread, but Windows Media Player plays standard, non-propiatary MPEG-4 videos just fine.

In order for WMP to play standard MPEG-4 video files, you have to download a third-party codec to make it work. WMP on its own will only play a form of MPEG-4 called "Microsoft MPEG-4" which is, you guessed it, their own propiatary format. Its container is a .asf file, not the standard .mp4.

I tested this by encoding a video using QT Pro into the standard MPEG-4 (.mp4) format (not H.264) and WMP (v10 on a PC) wouldnt play them on its own, but both QT & Real Player played them just fine. And the QT versions of MPEG-4 are all non-propiatary, even H.264.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316992#34

Im really not trying to argue, just stating the facts. Its well known among the entire industry that MS doesnt play nice with open standards, but Apple does. This is just more proof of that.

mk12345

I'm a beginner to video-on-the-net. My digital camera creates .avi files that are very sharp, but also very large. What is the "best" format for me to cnvert to prior to uploading - so that they don't take so long to download, but still are sharp? Also, will the user need to wait for the entire download, or is there a way to stream it? I'm open to using ourmedia, or similar to host them.

DodgeV83 wrote:

Don't want to post your videos in Mpeg-1? Is 8mb or 16mb not enough space for you? On the $29.99 plan without videos at all? Here are some alternatives.


NOTE: Once you put your videos up somewhere, you can link to them in the description field in your galleries. I'd put all the pictures from a track meet in a gallery for example, then link to the videos from the track meet in the description. I've had much success doing this.


This one is my current favorite!

http://www.ourmedia.org/

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]What’s the maximum file size I can upload?[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]You could, in theory, upload a 5-gigabyte video file. (If you’ve got a dial-up connection, good luck with that!) Limitations on file size are mostly practical ones: the larger the file, the smaller the number of people who will download it. However, be aware than large files — anything above 20MB — must be uploaded with the Ourmedia Publisher tool (click on Tools in the main nav), not through the Web site's publish my media pages.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]What are the bandwidth limits on my files? 1 or 2GB per month?[/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]No limit. At least for now. If the Internet Archive’s servers that we rely on become overwhelmed by the demands of podcasts and videoblogs, we may have to limit the kinds of files our members upload (we still prefer media that have a long shelf life). But Archive officials say they’re ready for anything we can throw at them.[/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains about 1 petabyte of data and is growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month, a figure that eclipses the amount of text contained in the world’s largest libraries, including the Library of Congress. Currently the Archive is pulling 20 terabytes a month off the Internet.[/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]What kinds of formats do you support?[/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Ourmedia supports all formats, including proprietary formats like Apple QuickTime, Macromedia Flash, Windows Media video and audio, Real, DivX, MPEG, WAV, MP3, the new H.264 MPEG4 compression technology, and many others. [/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Be aware, however, that not all formats will play on all platforms and machines, so keep that in mind before choosing a codec. [/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]




Here are some other picks

http://www.putfile.com

This site is cool, but you can only post videos up to 10MB.


http://video.google.com/

Google Video is cool, but has some drawbacks. The videos need to be reviewed before they are posted to the site, can take a while. Also, I think all video is converted to Flash Video. Worse, if your videos become very popular, I think they will charge you to keep them up


Straying from my other picks, you can also put your videos up with Bittorrent, but this isn't anywhere near as easy as the other websites. They won't stream in your browser, your users need to have a bittorrent client installed and you need to be able to host the tracker (Wouldn't it be COOL if Smugmug let us host trackers on our pages? ).

Well thats all I can think of right now. Of course, linking to your videos on another website just won't feel as integrated as hosting your videos directly from your Smugmug account. Unfortunately if you only have the $29.99 account, don't want to use Mpeg-1, or need bigger videos, this is a good way to get it done!

Feel free to add your own suggestions guys/gals

SamirD

The way I've found is Google video. They handle all the conversion, you just send them the huge original file using their uploader program, which isn't too bad.

There aren't any ads or controls on who can see the video, but it's a good, reliable, and free service.

DodgeV83

SamirD wrote:

The way I've found is Google video. They handle all the conversion, you just send them the huge original file using their uploader program, which isn't too bad.

There aren't any ads or controls on who can see the video, but it's a good, reliable, and free service.

Archive.org is good if you want to embed the video on your site (they don't have to leave your site to see the video, see my other thread for more info about this). I've tried embedding the Google Video, which is supposed to work, but it never seems to work for me. That + the multiple-day wait after uploading has kept me away from Google Video. Of course, the Archive.org site is FREE, so don't expect the fastest download times with your videos there. I'd still try to keep the bitrate low.

If hosting good quality videos is REALLY important to you...I paid $26 for my first year at Dreamhost. They give me 20GB of storage space to start, and that has increased to 22,240MB since the amount increases for every week you are with them. I also have over 1TB of bandwidth a month so thats not really an issue either. I think its worth $26 even if your just testing it out for a year.

I upload my files to Dreamhost and embed them into my site here. They even offer Quicktime streaming with a real streaming server for those who are interested in that. The main difference with this (for me) is that the user can skip to different parts of the video without waiting for the whole thing to download. You can also set it to auto-detect the user's connection speed and give them a different video based on that, though it didn't work the last time I tried it due to a bug in Quicktime 7.

Here is a page I made that uses Dreamhost to serve the videos and Smugmug to present them.

http://www.frelowphotos.com/gallery/1528411

SamirD

I have my own host, storage, and bandwidth. The problem is getting them published quickly. Ideally, I need a "SM for video" service with watermarking that allows me to upload videos and then have them automatically converted and watermarked just like I do for my pictures.

I actually did some research today and may have found some watermarking and coversion utilities. And it seems like a default codec may be coming along that we didn't expect--macromedia flash. It's already installed on 98% of users computers and the newer versions are approaching mpeg4 on quality. I think SM has a chance at a single, workable solution soon if they so choose.

DodgeV83

I agree! I would quickly sign up for a Video Smugmug (one level up from Pro?) if it provided me with the level of video quality I'm currently getting from Dreamhost!

Again...GIVE US THE CHOICE TO DO WHAT WE WANT WITH OUR VIDEOS!

Adamcha

I use vimeo.com for my videos. It has a 30 MB per week limit, but still, you can stream a low quality version, then download the high quality version if you so wish.

The majority of the videos I have put up so far are underwater videos I got from my optio wp and w10. The majority were put up for a friend in Pennsylvania so he could see the videos I made of his kids. Here is the link for those interested in seeing this service in action.

http://www.vimeo.com/user:118364/clips