Whats the best format for video?

[nate]

What do linklists prefer for video submissions? Thumbs leading to downloadable movies, or embedded video?

Thanks link list guy!

[SmithsMedia]

thumbs to video - just try not to have the thumbs as target '_blank'

Personally the Quicktime stuff does my head in

[LD]

I've been using embedded flvs lately, and I like the look. With the popularity of YouTube, people are used to them. I wish more people used them on freesites.

[SmithsMedia]

It would be easy to make free sites though the issue of where the content is hosted comes into play :)

[HowlingWulf]

I haven't used sponsor hosted embeds cause I thought linklists frowned on having content not on your server.

[nate]

An observation and a question:

When I surf porn, I like embedded because I dont want to waste time downloading shit unless it looks good.

Embedding requires jscript and an swf player. Thats easy enough as I can put the freesite inside a wordpress site (but not a wordpress page) and use the embed stuff from the wordpress plugins.

The real question is... are you top dog link list owners OK with that much jscript on a free site?

[LD]

I don't use sponsor hosted embeds. I host the content and use jw player. I get listed with all the major list. Some sponsors provide content in flv format.

[nate]

I don't use sponsor hosted embeds. I host the content and use jw player. I get listed with all the major list. Some sponsors provide content in flv format.


How much bandwidth do you use a month usually?

[LD]

How much bandwidth do you use a month usually?

Looks like 100-150..I still do picture sites and thumbs linked to wmvs, too...the flv embeds are my favorite though.

[nate]

Thanks Lucious. I'm working on the process of rezizing/optimizing/message inserting/FLVing some videos now. If you are only burning through 150 gigs a month, I'm good to go.

Thanks for your help! |bananna|

[papagmp]

I prefer wmv's but flv's are fine too as long as you host the files. Converting wmv's to flv's as a piece of cake if you have the right tools - I use Micromedia's Flash 8 encoder and can schedule it all as a batch but I'm sure there are other and newer tools out there.

Personally I hate anything that needs quicktime to play.

[Cleo]

Personally I hate anything that needs quicktime to play.
You can embed h.264 (mp4 or m4v) movies into a Flash player and then the user does not need QuickTime but if you provide a link to the h.264 movie file then it can also be played on a iPhone, iPod or any device that plays h.264 movies.

[Buncha]

I'm glad to see embed FLV becoming more accepted. I'll have to try that on some freesites.

If you're thinking of doing FLV, check out the Sothink Flash Encoder. I've been playing around with it, and it's pretty amazing. Not only does it convert your video to FLV, but it also creates a player, a preview thumbnail, and the HTML code. Costs $45, but there's a free trial.

http://www.sothink.com/product/flashvideoencoder/index.htm

[nate]

You can embed h.264 (mp4 or m4v) movies into a Flash player and then the user does not need QuickTime but if you provide a link to the h.264 movie file then it can also be played on a iPhone, iPod or any device that plays h.264 movies.

I've had trouble getting h264 (which is a beautiful codec) to work with flowplayer3. Once I iron out the container/codec problems, thats going to be my setup of choice.

VDub (VirtualDub) is a an open source video pseudo-editor that some of you might want to try out. Its supports flv and h264 with the ffdshow plugin, it's free and encourages open source solutions.

Playerwise, Flowplayer3 is free for commercial use but has a 2 or three second branding overlay (which you can buy out of) that is really inconspicuous. They say it handles h264, but I'm still working on how to get everything right.

For converting to FLV, riva is free and easy to use. When I say free, I mean begware, but the begging is not intrusive. The downside is that it only supports limited input formats. It wll also pop out a jpg for your embedded video's splash, so the video doesnt need to load for the viewr to see something in the player.


Also, here's a partial answer to my initial question: PK will accept embedded video, Thmbnail Post will not.

|whisper|

[Evocan]

I don't use sponsor hosted embeds. I host the content and use jw player. I get listed with all the major list. Some sponsors provide content in flv format.

Luscious, is there any chance you could pm me/post an example of your flash pages? I've been trying to use flash lately and have been getting knocked back a lot - just trying to figure out where I'm going wrong?

Cheers,
Evocan

[LD]

Luscious, is there any chance you could pm me/post an example of your flash pages? I've been trying to use flash lately and have been getting knocked back a lot - just trying to figure out where I'm going wrong?

Cheers,
Evocan

you've got mail...

[Tommy]

I hate quick time cause you need to buy an upgrade to make the movie bigger

FLV's are good.. that what I have been building lately
http://www.tommys-bookmarks.com/videos/ivy-black/ivy_taurus/

of course I still linking all other types

[Cleo]

I hate quick time cause you need to buy an upgrade to make the movie bigger

FLV's are good.. that what I have been building lately
http://www.tommys-bookmarks.com/videos/ivy-black/ivy_taurus/es
That looks great but it would seem important to make the page viewable on smart phones like the iPhone that doesn't do Flash. If the video was encoded as a mp4 and embedded into the player with a link on the page to the mp4 then it would also be viewable on non Flash devices.

[Tommy]

uhhhh.....

cant the iphone watch videos at youtube, those are flv's

[Cleo]

uhhhh.....

cant the iphone watch videos at youtube, those are flv's
Apple did a deal with YouTube and got them to re-encode all their videos as h.264 (mp4) vids that they embed into a Flash movie player.

When an iPhone requests a YouTube video the iPhone switches to the YouTube player application and plays the mp4 vid.