Request to Improve Video Options

Nougat · July 6, 2007

I launched my smugmug site less than one month ago in the hopes of creating a family photos and video site to share with friends and family. I quickly learned to customize my site with banners, slideshows, themes, etc and love the layout of my photo pages. I applaud smugmug and its staff for creating such a great photosharing website.

However, I recently started exploring options to add video to my site and I was sorely disappointed. MPEG1? Are you serious? I understand that MPEG1 is the most universally compatible format for PC and Mac users, but with the explosion of youtube and other videosharing sites, almost everyone has browser plug-ins that support formats with much better compression technology such as MPEG4, Flash, WMV, etc. Another huge limitation with smugmug video is the 8MB file size limit for power users. I have to chop up my videos in short segments to make them fit. Phanfare, for example, puts smugmug's video to shame by allowing videos of up to 2GB (that's 250 times larger than a smugmug video)! They also make uploading extremely simple by allowing you to upload in any format and then making a conversion to Flash so videos are more easily viewed online.

After doing some research in these forums, I found that most other smugmug users are using outside videohosting services such as youtube or google video to host videos and including an embedded link on their smugmug sites. I don't like this option for two reasons: (1) I'm paying for smugmug service as a power user, which should include video support; and (2) I don't want to put my family videos on a public site for anyone to view.

I understand that smugmug is geared much more to photos because of the large pro photographer customer base, but there is A LOT of room for improvement for video sharing. Here are my suggestions: (1) create a new account level for "power video users"; (2) allow video files in all major formats; (3) increase the maximum file size to at least 2GB; (4) provide an auto converting feature like phanfare's; and (5) if you must, increase the annual fee to cover the increased bandwidth usage.

If there are other smugmug users that would be interested in improved video, let your voice be heard!

scwalter · July 6, 2007

I agree. This comes up frequently and the answer from smugmug seems to be that they are a photo hosting site and we should be happy that they even allow MPEG-1.

You CAN make google/youtube videos private and embed them here, that's what I've done so far.

Here's my post from <this old thread>, which pretty much mirrors your comments

-Scott

scwalter wrote:

I agree with your points. Smugmug video support is really lacking.

If anyone from smugmug is reading how about this:

Create a "Power+Video" and "Pro+Video" subscription level that has support for flash video with up to 100MB per video. Charge a bit more than the standard accounts to cover the potentially larger than average disk usage from these users. In order to limit the resources needed to support this, place the following limitations:
Require users to generate their own flash video (FLV) files. I don't expect Smugmug to convert my RAW files to JPG, so why should I expect you to convert my video into a presentable format, FLV in this case.

Setup a support forum here on dgrin so users can help each other optimize the conversion to FLV files, just like there are forums that talk about RAW processing.

This would address one big concern raised by Baldy in an older thread about need tons of resources to convert video. In this model, Smugmug would simply be a file host.

Why not use YouTube or Google Video? Quality. The quality of the videos from these sites is poor. I would definitely pay a premium to have VGA or better quality video.

-Scott

Nougat · July 7, 2007

scwalter wrote:

Here's my post from <this old thread>, which pretty much mirrors your comments

-Scott

I can't believe I missed that thread in my searches. It's really funny that you and I had such similar suggestions for improving video on smugmug. I guess great minds think alike. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif" border="0" alt="" >

I really don't want to switch to phanfare, but I may have to given smugmug's reluctance to address the video problem. After spending a lot of time reading through these forums, I feel like non-pro photographers like me are second class citizens on smugmug. When a pro requests any change there is an immediate and thoughtful response from smugmug reps, but non-pros are often ignored on issues that are very important to us. Am I being too sensitive or is it true?

jfriend · July 7, 2007

Nougat wrote:

I can't believe I missed that thread in my searches. It's really funny that you and I had such similar suggestions for improving video on smugmug. I guess great minds think alike.

I really don't want to switch to phanfare, but I may have to given smugmug's reluctance to address the video problem. After spending a lot of time reading through these forums, I feel like non-pro photographers like me are second class citizens on smugmug. When a pro requests any change there is an immediate and thoughtful response from smugmug reps, but non-pros are often ignored on issues that are very important to us. Am I being too sensitive or is it true?

I think it just goes back and forth between features for pros and features for non-pros. Back in early 2006, the pros felt like they were being completely ignored and then they got a raft of useful features (proof delay, custom watermarks, etc...). It sounds like they're now in the middle of developing a bunch of mostly non-pro features that we generally haven't seen yet (smugislands, new cart, new slideshow, improved dynamic layout, XL sizes and a bunch we don't know about, etc...).

They haven't really said what they intend to do with video. I personallly think they're in a bad spot with video where they have old and lousy video support while the standards for video have moved a lot at other sites and it has gotten a lot more popular on the web. It seems to me that they either have to get current with tools and formats or announce that they're going to partner with some other sites that make their living hosting videos so that regular users (without custom HTML coding and without having to do video format conversion) could put videos in their Smugmug pages.

Andy · July 7, 2007

Nougat wrote:

After spending a lot of time reading through these forums, I feel like non-pro photographers like me are second class citizens on smugmug. When a pro requests any change there is an immediate and thoughtful response from smugmug reps, but non-pros are often ignored on issues that are very important to us.

Really? Hm.... I can think of lots of stuff that was driven by primarily by non-pros: speedier galleries, ajax interface, and the brand-new SmugIslands feature. Add to that, continued theme development (there are 50), easier email sharing, visitor help pages, a longer free-trial period, and easier add-photos menu and more

But I see that maybe the perception is the opposite, is that true? We try very, very hard to respond to every post and request - it's possible that some have been missed? If you can point me to some, let me know please.

As to video: well, yes - photos are our focus. We'd love to support more formats, it's been on our list for some time, but other, more important (driven by all types of customers) features and development has always taken precedence.

I hope this helps.

Coffeebean · July 17, 2007

I am quite disappointed by these responses. I love my Smug Mug gallery and have spend countless hours uploading images here. (I don't even want to think about it). But, the extremely limited video capabilities may just force me to switch to Phanfare. I want ONE place where I can backup and share my families photos AND videos. Easily. It sounds like the video improvements are not going to be happening. I cannot even express how much I dread having to move all my files. Ugh.

HappySmugger · July 17, 2007

I know... it's really unbelievable that smugmug doesn't have a flash video offering. I mean, even facebook has a GREAT video sharing service. I use it to share with my family. i think a lot of us family types consider video a number one priorty. it would seem an extremely unwise business move for smugmug not to make it a priority as well. i'm not taking about 2-5 months. but if you're not offering video in a year, people will be flocking elsewhere. Video is now mainstream. I shoot video and photos of the same event and scene, and would like to share both.

Also, I would gladly pay more for the service since it takes so much more harddisk space.

chn · July 17, 2007

HappySmugger wrote:

... it takes so much more harddisk space.

Not necessarily. It really depends on the encoding and therefore the quality of the video.

Which raises my question what people really want. With image, the original image is stored at full resolution with smug mug. So SM is not just a photo sharing place but also a storage and if necessary a recovery (backup) place for photos. For SM to live up to its photo standards they would not just be able to host a flash version of the video (much like youtube) but also the HD (high definition) version of it. I guess that could be a niche market but are people ready to pay for this?

wslam · July 17, 2007

Well the least smugmug should have done by now is to allow easy embedding of say youtube. We do not have to upload the video to smugmug to host, youtube will be just fine. Adding youtube clips to smugmug now is a pain...

scwalter · July 17, 2007

wslam wrote:

Well the least smugmug should have done by now is to allow easy embedding of say youtube. We do not have to upload the video to smugmug to host, youtube will be just fine. Adding youtube clips to smugmug now is a pain...

It's pretty easy to add YouTube and GoogleVideo movies to your page. Why do you say that is now a pain? I haven't added movies in a while, has something changed?

-Scott

HappySmugger · July 17, 2007

scwalter wrote:

It's pretty easy to add YouTube and GoogleVideo movies to your page. Why do you say that is now a pain? I haven't added movies in a while, has something changed?

-Scott

Scott,
Could you briefly let me know how to do this?
Thanks!

scwalter · July 17, 2007

HappySmugger wrote:

Scott,
Could you briefly let me know how to do this?
Thanks!

Sure. Go to your video on YouTube and look below the video for the line that says "embed". It should start with something like <object width="425... You won't be able to see the whole field, but just highlight that field and copy (Ctrl-C).

Next, we're going to embed that video into the description of a gallery. Back on your smugmug page, you can create a new gallery and then edit the description and paste the embed link you copied above into the gallery description between <html> and </html>.

If you want to add more than one video, you can insert a horizontal line and just copy another video link.

Here's one of my galleries with videos. These are from Google Video, but it works the same.

http://scwalter.smugmug.com/gallery/2016108#100143233

My description for this gallery looks something like this:

<html><hr>

<h3>Ben - December 2006 <font color=red>NEW!</font></h3>
<embed style="width:800px; height:477px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-6133200243992126882&hl=en" flashvars="">
</embed>
<hr>

<h3>Ben - October 2006 <font color=red>NEW!</font></h3>
<embed style="width:800px; height:477px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=384776750750533869&hl=en" flashvars="">
</embed>
<hr>

<h3>Ben - September 2006 <font color=red> </font></h3>
<embed style="width:800px; height:477px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-7724196660869496458&hl=en">
</embed>
<hr>

</html>

I've just used horizontal rules <hr> between the videos and used heading 3 for the titles.

There are some extra hacks you can use to hide the images, but I never got around to doing that for this gallery. If you look in the customization FAQ for how to do an HTML gallery, it will tell you. That's all we're doing here, just an HTML gallery that happens to have videos embedded.

-Scott

wslam · July 18, 2007

I have done what you suggested in the past. Well, I consider that a pain!

Why not make a simple UI, Add Video, and allow users to paste the URL youtube provides for embedding? And then, smugmug would know how to add a video for each page, like a normal album instead of showing up all in one page?

scwalter · July 18, 2007

wslam wrote:

I have done what you suggested in the past. Well, I consider that a pain!
Why not make a simple UI, Add Video, and allow users to paste the URL youtube provides for embedding? And then, smugmug would know how to add a video for each page, like a normal album instead of showing up all in one page?

I guess is it a little bit of a nuisance. The UI integration you mention is not something I had considered, but I agree that would be a very cool feature. If they're not gonna support hosting the files, at least make it a little easier to integrate third-party.

-Scott

HappySmugger · July 18, 2007

scwalter wrote:

I guess is it a little bit of a nuisance. The UI integration you mention is not something I had considered, but I agree that would be a very cool feature. If they're not gonna support hosting the files, at least make it a little easier to integrate third-party.

-Scott

Thank you, scott! I will try it right away! I really appreciate your thoughtfulness and time.

caroline · July 18, 2007

scwalter wrote:

It's pretty easy to add YouTube and GoogleVideo movies to your page. Why do you say that is now a pain? I haven't added movies in a while, has something changed?

-Scott

Thanks for this and the info on how embed the video, not something I would have ventured to do but it really is soooo easy:D
http://caroline2.smugmug.com/gallery/3169739
or from a link in this gallery http://caroline2.smugmug.com/gallery/3130103

Cheers
Caroline

Hindsight · July 20, 2007

I'm a videographer and photographer by trade, and I could really care less about SM's video capabilities. I use SM to display, sell, and backup my photos. This site shouldn't become distracted by video. They're two entirely different mediums. There are plenty of web based offsite storage services out there for people who just want backup for videos. There's still a lot of improvement/ innovation possibilities in the realm of photography hosting yet untapped, and SM seems very receptive to new ideas and to staying a site run by photography people for photography people.

Web hosting is cheap. Go get a host, upload your HD vids, show them off, store them, whatever you want but don't expect SM to become a video hosting site. Besides video isn't profitable for them. It doesn't sell and takes up much more space. The math isn't complicated here. SM is driven by their rake from photo sales. Video hosting makes their money from advertising.

jennifer · July 20, 2007

I've uploaded a video to youtube, set it to private, and embedded the code into a smugmug gallery. The video's preview image loads but when a user (not myself) tries to watch the video, it doesn't play. I can watch the video fine, but I'm also logged into youtube at the same time. Is this because the video is private? I'd like to be able to embed a youtube video but not have it searchable on the actual youtube site. Help??

jennifer · July 20, 2007

Nevermind... I uploaded to Google Video instead and it works perfectly. Whether or not youtube is an option is of no matter to me. I've always felt funny about that site anyway!

papajay · July 20, 2007

"With two (sites:one4pics-one4video) you don't get eggroll (keyword functionality)!"

Hindsight wrote:

I'm a videographer and photographer by trade, and I could really care less about SM's video capabilities. I use SM to display, sell, and backup my photos. This site shouldn't become distracted by video. They're two entirely different mediums. There are plenty of web based offsite storage services out there for people who just want backup for videos. There's still a lot of improvement/ innovation possibilities in the realm of photography hosting yet untapped, and SM seems very receptive to new ideas and to staying a site run by photography people for photography people.

Web hosting is cheap. Go get a host, upload your HD vids, show them off, store them, whatever you want but don't expect SM to become a video hosting site. Besides video isn't profitable for them. It doesn't sell and takes up much more space. The math isn't complicated here. SM is driven by their rake from photo sales. Video hosting makes their money from advertising.

Perhaps my title should be a question???, rather than a delcarative statement!!!
Nevertheless, I'm a first-timer when it comes to uploading video to smugmug. While I "hear" all the controversy over this ("outdated technology", "smugmug should not be a video hosting site", etc), I would like to add this commentary to the dialogue:

I subscribed to Smugmug primarily because I wanted to have a secure place to store and organize my pictorial archives for my family...my legacy for all time. The bit of Smugmug functionality that most caught my attention was the ability to keyword my collection for easy searching (for me, and for my heirs)

"Gorgeous galleries", file sizes up to 8 Gazillion Mega Bites, etc. are all very nice (and certainly vital to the pros), but lower image resolution (most of mine are 4 Megapixel images and less than 2 MB) are entirely satisfactory for my purposes and, I believe, for most of my "non-professional" (read sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, parents, etc) viewers. My first 10 second video clips (SmugMug MPEG-1 quality) got "rave reviews" from this crowd, and the file size for each clip was way smaller than for my average still-photo files.

The point I'm trying to make is that I'd like Smugmug to be my SINGLE source repository...and I'd like it to be convenient for me and my family (heirs) to find anything of mine (pictorially) they'd like to see...24x7...for now, forever. The ability to search it all at once with a keyword or two makes this very appealing.

Storing still photos "hither" (SmugMug), video clips "thither" (U-Tube), photobook collections "yon" (God-Knows-Where) is technologically feasible, but just doesn't excite me like having everything in one place.

I'll survive, for a while at least... and so will my family, whatever happens...so it's not the end of the world if I don't get this wish. I'd just like it simple (elegant is fine), functional (nice mix of good stills and decent quality video), and secure (thank you SmugIslands!).

It must be a huge source of challenging frustration for the Smugmug team to continually be pulled in different directions by those of us who do not sell pictures for a living (in case you hadn't figured it out by now...I do not), and those of us who do.

brandofamily · July 21, 2007

jennifer wrote:

I've uploaded a video to youtube, set it to private, and embedded the code into a smugmug gallery. The video's preview image loads but when a user (not myself) tries to watch the video, it doesn't play. I can watch the video fine, but I'm also logged into youtube at the same time. Is this because the video is private? I'd like to be able to embed a youtube video but not have it searchable on the actual youtube site. Help??

just an FYI... if it's set as private users can only see if logged into your account...:(

here's my video page...
http://brandolinoimaging.smugmug.com/gallery/2951399#175294006

caroline · July 22, 2007

brandofamily wrote:

just an FYI... if it's set as private users can only see if logged into your account...:(

here's my video page...
http://brandolinoimaging.smugmug.com/gallery/2951399#175294006

Hi Anthony
I had never noticed the videos on your site before though I often take a look because you have such great pics and have created such a great site with Smugmug

As a result of this thread, and as an experiment, I uploaded a video to google and made this gallery :-
http://caroline2.smugmug.com/gallery/3169739
When viewing the video it plays in the Smugmug gallery, not going to the google page - I'm wondering if it is by design that your videos play in the youtube interface (sorry if I'm getting the terminology wrong here) or is that the way it has to work ?
Does Youtube have features that made you choose it over google for video?

I would be reallly interested in any other comments/suggestions you have in this respect.
Cheers
Caroline

brandofamily · July 22, 2007

caroline wrote:

Hi Anthony
I had never noticed the videos on your site before though I often take a look because you have such great pics and have created such a great site with Smugmug

As a result of this thread, and as an experiment, I uploaded a video to google and made this gallery :-
http://caroline2.smugmug.com/gallery/3169739
When viewing the video it plays in the Smugmug gallery, not going to the google page - I'm wondering if it is by design that your videos play in the youtube interface (sorry if I'm getting the terminology wrong here) or is that the way it has to work ?
Does Youtube have features that made you choose it over google for video?

I would be reallly interested in any other comments/suggestions you have in this respect.
Cheers
Caroline

My video will play on you tube if you double-click the screen. It's abuilt in link that I can not seems to get rid of. I only chose Youtube because it was suggested here. Knowing that the google screen can not redirect the user like this I might be changing over to them real soon...

by the way, can you share the code you had to use to embed your storm clip... I'd like to play around to see if I can use it inthe same way I have the youtube set up...

caroline · July 22, 2007

brandofamily wrote:

My video will play on you tube if you double-click the screen. It's abuilt in link that I can not seems to get rid of. I only chose Youtube because it was suggested here. Knowing that the google screen can not redirect the user like this I might be changing over to them real soon...

by the way, can you share the code you had to use to embed your storm clip... I'd like to play around to see if I can use it inthe same way I have the youtube set up...

Here it is:-
<html><embed style="width:400px;height:326px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=2772660445476534213&hl=en" id="VideoPlayback" align="middle" quality="best" bgcolor="#ffffff" scale="noScale" salign="TL" FlashVars="playerMode=embedded"></embed></html>

brandofamily · July 22, 2007

caroline wrote:

Here it is:-
<html><embed style="width:400px;height:326px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=2772660445476534213&hl=en" id="VideoPlayback" align="middle" quality="best" bgcolor="#ffffff" scale="noScale" salign="TL" FlashVars="playerMode=embedded"></embed></html>

I loaded a video awhile back you google... I guess I forgot... but now I can not figure out how to get the code to embed it... help...

caroline · July 22, 2007

brandofamily wrote:

I loaded a video awhile back you google... I guess I forgot... but now I can not figure out how to get the code to embed it... help...

Assuming you can find your video on Google ?:D and can view it - on the RH side there is this :- tornado_at_charterhouse_24th_june_2007-1-20070722-151145.jpg

tornado_at_charterhouse_24th_june_2007-1-20070722-151145.jpg

Is that what you meant ?

Caroline

Andy · July 22, 2007

papajay wrote:

It must be a huge source of challenging frustration for the Smugmug team to continually be pulled in different directions by those of us who do not sell pictures for a living (in case you hadn't figured it out by now...I do not), and those of us who do.

Not really - so much of the site is geared to everyone who uses it, standard, power, and pro - there's plenty of commonality. We strive to make it so all types of customers benefit. The video question continues to be open. But that's not stopping us from going full steam ahead with SmugIslands, new cart interface, looking to improve on our slideshow, working hard and fast to get photobooks for all our customers, and more. Much more.

brandofamily · July 22, 2007

caroline wrote:

Assuming you can find your video on Google ?:D and can view it - on the RH side there is this :-

Is that what you meant ?

Caroline

got it thanks... I switched my vids over to Google... better image quality (atleast it seems to me to be beeter) and no direct link to their site emebbed in the vid screen...
thanks for the info

caroline · July 22, 2007

papajay wrote:

I subscribed to Smugmug primarily because I wanted to have a secure place to store and organize my pictorial archives for my family...my legacy for all time.

The point I'm trying to make is that I'd like Smugmug to be my SINGLE source repository...and I'd like it to be convenient for me and my family (heirs) to find anything of mine (pictorially) they'd like to see...24x7...for now, forever.

This is a massive expectation of Smugmug, and also places great responsibility on their shoulders - my parents and grandparents left their treasures behind carefully wrapped in boxes and envelopes, labelled in shaky handwriting 'for Caroline' etc. now our photographs are the equivalent of those treasures and as you say papajay we need to preserve them for the future. Maybe this could be another USP for the Smugmug product ? Can there really be any such guarantee for the future ?

Caroline

caroline · July 22, 2007

brandofamily wrote:

got it thanks... I switched my vids over to Google... better image quality (atleast it seems to me to be beeter) and no direct link to their site emebbed in the vid screen...
thanks for the info

The videos look really good now, glad to help.

papajay · July 22, 2007

Andy wrote:

Not really - so much of the site is geared to everyone who uses it, standard, power, and pro - there's plenty of commonality. We strive to make it so all types of customers benefit.]...

Good to know that "officially" Andy...So, perhaps it isn't all that frustrating afterall, but it has to be a challenge! Pictures are pictures...but unlike many other photo-sharing sites, SmugMug has correctly "defaulted" to maintain pro-standards, so the non-pro's like me benefit in terms of photo quality, even when we don't really "need" it (purple vignetting is something that happens when I leave my oval-shaped photos in cardboard boxes in the attic too long, and barrel distortion is something that happens after a Bud-Lite slips out of my hand).

Andy wrote:

The video question continues to be open. But that's not stopping us from going full steam ahead with SmugIslands, new cart interface, looking to improve on our slideshow, working hard and fast to get photobooks for all our customers, and more. Much more.

I think this is why Smugmug is such a great product now, and will continue to evolve to meet the needs of it's customer base, both pro and not-so-pro.

Request to Improve Video Options

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