blip is it?

[Sull]

hey... so does everyone here default to using blip.tv still?
anyone hosting your own videos where you have siab installed?
other services being used?
in other words.... is blip.tv a sort of unspoken piece of siab?

thanks,

sull

[Milt Lee]

Sure, I don't use Blip.tv to post my stuff at all. Sometimes I'll
post something to Blip, but that's only a secondary thing. Like
sending stuff to youtube or current or whereever.

I always post to my own site. And then load my own poster size pix
(525x333) and thumb size pix (120x90)
I didn't even know that people did it any other way.

sorry,
Milt

--
Cell - (605) 381 4842
Office - (605) 341 4232
http://realrez.com
http://jamieleeonline.com
http://manykites.com
http://oyate.com

[David Howell]

Im using Revver on taoofdavid.com which is running SIAB.

S'all good.

David

[Cheryl Colan]

I didn't use blip until I realized that some of my self-hosted videos don't stream properly, but they do when hosted at blip. I'm using Dreamhost. Not sure what the difference is. Dreamhost offers a free QT streaming server (the Darwin one) and I tried it out but that did not help with self-hosted files. I'm sure there's a step for streaming that I missed, have not made time to investigate.

Ideally I'd host all my own videos and be beholden to no one. I get enough bandwidth and storage space right now that I could do it. But I don't like the delay in playback for users. So blip's been a good alternative, the lesser of several evils you might say.

Cheryl

On Nov 8, 2007 8:35 PM, Sull <sulle...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
I vlog: hummingcrow.com
I make: whatwefound.blogspot.com
I teach: node101phoenix.org

[Sull]

thanks for reply.
just curious.

so.... streaming?  do you really stream videos or are you referring to quicktime progressive download and faststart?  i've used darwin before but it was corporate and we needed to prevent download of exclusive footage.

[Cheryl Colan]

I don't know. I quit using my streaming server from dreamhost because it wasn't any faster than not using it. I don't know what is different about blip.tv's hosting, or whether I'm referring to quicktime progressive download and faststart. I do export my videos with those settings. All I know is they start playing much faster when I embed them from blip hosting than when I embed them from my dreamhost server.

would love to know why, but all efforts to find out have so far failed. probably because I don't know what the right questions are. :D

C

[Adrian Miles]

around the 9/11/07 Cheryl Colan mentioned about [show-in-a-box] Re:
blip is it? that:

>I don't know. I quit using my streaming server from dreamhost
>because it wasn't any faster than not using it. I don't know what is

>different about <http://blip.tv>blip.tv's hosting, or whether I'm

>referring to quicktime progressive download and faststart. I do
>export my videos with those settings. All I know is they start
>playing much faster when I embed them from blip hosting than when I
>embed them from my dreamhost server.

apologies, i've been sending emails regulary but from the wrong
account, none have got through!

so...
dreamhost have a quicktime rtsp server which is from real time
streaming. with video blogs unless you're lifecasting you are
progressive streaming.

fast start means that the video can start playing for the client
before all the video has actually arrived at their end. This is not
the same as compressing for streaming, where an additional track is
added to the video and it actually makes your video files larger. if
they are not being delivered via rtsp this is a bad thing.

also you don't want to use rtsp anyway since there is no resending of
lost packets. you work often looks like crap as a result. (30 seconds
of video is sent for 30 seconds, if not all the info arrives too bad,
it just makes do.)
--
cheers
Adrian Miles
this email is bloggable [ ] ask first [x] private [ ]
vogmae.net.au
[official compliance stuff:] CRICOS provider code: 00122A

[Cheryl Colan]

no no, all I meant is when I compress I set them up for fast start

still don't know why blip hosted plays back faster than my self-hosted

On Nov 9, 2007 2:41 AM, Adrian Miles < vog...@gmail.com> wrote:

around the 9/11/07 Cheryl Colan mentioned about [show-in-a-box] Re:
blip is it? that:

>I don't know. I quit using my streaming server from dreamhost
>because it wasn't any faster than not using it. I don't know what is

>different about < http://blip.tv>blip.tv's hosting, or whether I'm

>referring to quicktime progressive download and faststart. I do
>export my videos with those settings. All I know is they start
>playing much faster when I embed them from blip hosting than when I
>embed them from my dreamhost server.

apologies, i've been sending emails regulary but from the wrong
account, none have got through!

so...
dreamhost have a quicktime rtsp server which is from real time
streaming. with video blogs unless you're lifecasting you are
progressive streaming.

fast start means that the video can start playing for the client
before all the video has actually arrived at their end. This is not
the same as compressing for streaming, where an additional track is
added to the video and it actually makes your video files larger. if
they are not being delivered via rtsp this is a bad thing.

also you don't want to use rtsp anyway since there is no resending of
lost packets. you work often looks like crap as a result. (30 seconds
of video is sent for 30 seconds, if not all the info arrives too bad,
it just makes do.)
--
cheers
Adrian Miles
this email is bloggable [ ] ask first [x] private [ ]
vogmae.net.au
[official compliance stuff:] CRICOS provider code: 00122A

[Sull]

thought so.  the darwin comment through me off.

i played some videos from your vlog and they loaded fine for me.

[Cheryl Colan]

all the most recent ones are hosted on blip, that's likely why ... if you go back to 2006 they're all self-hosted, then I started mixing them ...

[Milt Lee]

I've always self-hosted but mostly on web.com I tried 1&1 - it was
too slow for me. Same thing with echoecho. But I've gone to
dreamhost because of the vast amounts of storage and bandwidth. Now I
don't notice an appreciable slowness with dreamhost. They all seem
fine. I use flash as default, but I've looked at all of them - QT -
WMV - OGG and of course flash, and they all load pretty much the same.
Perhaps its the codecs I'm using (Vegas 8) - I can't really say. But
I would not want to have to go through the Blip process. Just an
added step.

Milt

[Jen Simmons]

We all do progressive download.

Streaming is so 1998. 

Unless you are doing live (a la Steve Jobs' keynotes or UStream) -- in those cases you need streaming (because you can't save the movie of something that hasn't happened yet / can't compress using quicktime h.264 or mpeg-4 or whatever when you aren't saving the file at all...). Streaming used to be a more reliable way to do video on the internet / the only way. And when I say "used to" I mean a REALLY LONG time ago.

People got attached to the word "streaming" -- it must sound cool to them -- so they still use it all the time when they mean video on the internet, but have no clue how the technology works. It drove me nuts that the "new media" professors at Temple U would walk around (in 2004/05/06) talking about how they would start doing all kinds of cool new things once the school bought and set-up a bazillion dollar streaming server. And I was like, why? Why? Why? Do you even know what streaming is? You are going to want progressive download 90% of the time, and you can do that with a regular server. Let's simply get permission to use a server that already exists! That will cost the school $0, and can happen now, instead two years from now. They never listened to me. So Temple doesn't have a videoblog for their film department. They are still waiting for their streaming server so they can start doing video. Maybe in 2009.

Here's another example of the confusion -- there's a video on Viddler that's supposed to be a tutorial on why streaming video is so cool. She says right on it "you are watching this streaming video" -- but the video is being fed via progressive download. Viddler does do both (unlike blip), but the default is download. And her video is full of inaccuracies. And it's supposed to be a tutorial on what the difference between the two formats. AAHHH!!! 

I tell people if you don't know what streaming is, then you aren't doing it. If you follow any of the tutorials at freevlog, then you are creating progressive download files. The "progressive" part is because you successfully got the video to start playing before the entire thing has downloaded. 

"Progressive download" doesn't sound as sexy as "streaming", but it is. It's more sexy. It lets you save the movie and remix. It lets you pause on the frame and scrub backwards. It lets you see a high quality image -- every frame. It sounds great. Streaming is none of these things. Streaming studders and jumps. Streaming goes up and down in image + sound quality. When you hit pause, it stops whenever it feels like / sort of. When you start playing a streaming video again, you have to wait and wait, and much of the time it doesn't work. If you are NBC, and you are trying to protect your videos and prevent people from saving them, and you are designing a system that will say up and running no matter how many gazillion people are watching Scrubs at one time -- then streaming is a really good idea. I think all the TV studios are using streaming. Anything broadcasting live is using streaming. But for what we've been doing / for all the share and remix, creative commons action we've been advocating -- streaming is a waste of time and effort. Streaming is harder. Streaming is more expensive. 

Progressive download rules!!!

----    jen

Jen Simmons

jen@jensimmons

http://jensimmons.com

http://milkweedmediadesign.com

917-455-0022

skype: jensimmons

[Sull]

oh yeah, didnt realize at first and went back and hovered over the download for mp4 and saw your own domain .. didnt click through again. 
noted.

[Milt Lee]

This is an amazing explaination. I too went through the horrors of
not knowing about progressive downloading. I thought about getting my
own server for "streaming" - all that crap. But it was as Jen so
clearly states it was nuts! Back in the bad old days, people used to
believe that streaming was the only way to be able to show your videos
to lots of people all the time. How quaint!

Milt

On Nov 9, 2007 8:19 AM, Jen Simmons <jensimm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We all do progressive download.
> Streaming is so 1998.

Cell - (605) 381 4842

[John Oeffinger]

Thanks Jen for an excellent summary. I joined a start-up named
CampusStream, subsidiary of VTEL (video conferencing), in '01. The
initial execs were all into streaming and were not concerned about
cost. We were looking at hosting Real servers no less. When the new
CEO and VP for product dev joined, they said nix to that idea. We not
only changed the name but the delivery focus shifted to progressive.
Of course, these two guys just left Apple so they already understood
streaming vs progressive.

On Nov 9, 2007, at 9:19 AM, Jen Simmons wrote:

> We all do progressive download.

> Streaming is so 1998...."Progressive download" doesn't sound as sexy

> as "streaming", but it is. It's more sexy. It lets you save the
> movie and remix. It lets you pause on the frame and scrub backwards.
> It lets you see a high quality image -- every frame. It sounds
> great. Streaming is none of these things. Streaming studders and
> jumps. Streaming goes up and down in image + sound quality. When you
> hit pause, it stops whenever it feels like / sort of. When you start
> playing a streaming video again, you have to wait and wait, and much
> of the time it doesn't work. If you are NBC, and you are trying to
> protect your videos and prevent people from saving them, and you are
> designing a system that will say up and running no matter how many
> gazillion people are watching Scrubs at one time -- then streaming
> is a really good idea. I think all the TV studios are using
> streaming. Anything broadcasting live is using streaming. But for
> what we've been doing / for all the share and remix, creative
> commons action we've been advocating -- streaming is a waste of time
> and effort. Streaming is harder. Streaming is more expensive.
>
> Progressive download rules!!!
>

> ---- jen [snipped]

[Jen Simmons]

Ironically, I was just watching YouTube videos of the WGA strike, and
many of the actors + show runners are explaining why watching TV
shows on the internet is gipping the writers, actors and directors of
a needed source of income. Some were saying don't do it! don't watch
TV on the internet -- "don't download". "Downloading shows" from the
ABC/ NBC / CBS website is..... When you "download" shows online.....

So they are using the word "download" to refer to sites that clearly
use streaming.
;-)

Which is funny, because if someone said to me "I downloaded a TV show
at NBC last night" -- I would think, holy crap -- NBC is selling
downloads now?? (a las iTunes Store). And that's not what they meant,
these strikers -- they didn't mean downloading them to keep on your
harddrive. They meant watching the stream of the TV Show -- (the kind
that all the networks are doing this season, where you can watch the
whole show, with ads interjected, for free. And the studio calls them
"promotions" and refuses to pay residuals on them. Which is the
reason for the strike...)

(ah the life of a geek, critiquing the use of technology vocabulary
for the higher good.)

This WGA strike, btw, is inserting into the mass media the Reality
that TV is moving to the internet. That traditional broadcasting is
dead. That all of us will watch everything via the internet in 5
years. It's no longer an idea we'll have to explain and convince
people of -- the strikers are educating the public right now. And the
public will soon know this for themselves. Which makes me excited all
over again about SIAB -- we HAVE to put tools in the hands of
independents so we can all compete in the new market / new delivery
system. Apple's not helping us -- the studio shows + films are being
promoted by Apple, while the "video podcasts" are hidden / pushed
aside. SIAB can really step up here and push back.............

-- jen

[John Oeffinger]

Totally agree which is why I am really excited about what you and all
the people involved with SIAB are doing.

I understand what Steve Jobs is doing strategically for Apple (read
AppleTV/iTunes/video rentals) much less time-shifted audio and video
content for portable/mobile devices. Apple is very successful in
controlling their message which is why their marketing is so good.
Some of today's politicians could learn from that. That said, I don't
agree with downplaying the podcasts...but this too can and probably
will change.

We develop e-Learning courses and I want to begin vlogging on
eLearning using Web 2.0 tools. SIAB and WP make a terrific platform to
do this in. Video helps connect the dots for some people better than
any other medium...they have to see it if they can't touch it. As an
example, I hope to capture some of the eLearning developments in
Second Life to include in a weekly show. It will be interesting to
comment on screen as my RL self while my SL avatar tours the eLearning
or sim I am talking about. My hope is to wake up some of my generation
to the fact that what we forecast virtual worlds and gaming as
eLearning tools for the current college generation in 1998. We could
see this migration then and virtual places like SL and WOW demonstrate
how rapidly the eLearning world is transforming. Educators and
eLearning producers need to upgrade the thinking and skills or get out
of the way - and hopefully, video using an easy to use interface such
as SIAB will help awaken some of our peers. At least it will be fun
trying it.

On Nov 9, 2007, at 10:51 AM, Jen Simmons wrote:

>
> IWhich makes me excited all

> over again about SIAB -- we HAVE to put tools in the hands of
> independents so we can all compete in the new market / new delivery
> system. Apple's not helping us -- the studio shows + films are being
> promoted by Apple, while the "video podcasts" are hidden / pushed
> aside. SIAB can really step up here and push back.............
>
>
> -- jen

[snipped]

[Get Real TV]

Cheryl and Everyone,

Matthew here - A new guy who is totally stoked about SIAB, almost as
much as lemon-pepper chicken wings.

I just read this topic about using Blip.tv Vs Hosting Yourself and
wanted to know why nothing was mentioned about bandwidth issues or the
other benefits of Blip.tv.... I feel like I am missing something here
as I am just getting started with using SAIB.

Doesn't Blip.TV offer some incredible functions such as cross-posting
to numerous blogs and automatically having your vlogg post listed at
several powerful directories, etc. Could I cross-post to my WP blog
and still get the benefit of vPiP?

I am trying to understand how vPiP works in light of all this. Should
I be uploading to my hosted WP to get the best benefit or use blip?
Either way, I have to upload each file format I want to use in vPip
right - whether I upload to my site or to Blip.tv this step is the
same?

Thanks in advance,

Matthew

On Nov 9, 1:12 am, "Cheryl Colan" <cheryl.co...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't use blip until I realized that some of my self-hosted videos don't
> stream properly, but they do when hosted at blip. I'm using Dreamhost. Not
> sure what the difference is. Dreamhost offers a free QT streaming server
> (the Darwin one) and I tried it out but that did not help with self-hosted
> files. I'm sure there's a step for streaming that I missed, have not made
> time to investigate.
>
> Ideally I'd host all my own videos and be beholden to no one. I get enough
> bandwidth and storage space right now that I could do it. But I don't like
> the delay in playback for users. So blip's been a good alternative, the
> lesser of several evils you might say.
>
> Cheryl
>

[Jay dedman]

> Doesn't Blip.TV offer some incredible functions such as cross-posting

> to numerous blogs and automatically having your vlog post listed at

> several powerful directories, etc. Could I cross-post to my WP blog
> and still get the benefit of vPiP?
> I am trying to understand how vPiP works in light of all this. Should
> I be uploading to my hosted WP to get the best benefit or use blip?
> Either way, I have to upload each file format I want to use in vPip
> right - whether I upload to my site or to Blip.tv this step is the
> same?

these are good questions.
First, I think some people realize they dont get thousands of
downloads per video so want to host their own work. Plus, hosting
packages get bigger and bigger these days. You'd have to really get
slammed to go over your monthly limit in many cases.

blip and other free hosting sites are a great option.
Most of us do use blip, but many of these sites dont compress Flash
very well to save on bandwidth.
the benefits you get from hosting on social networks are evened out on quality.
your choices really depend on your priority.

we do need a video tutorial for vPIP.
what it allows is for multiple formats to be posted, plus embeddable
code for all those formats.
right now, you do need to insert each format URL into vPIP.

jay

--
http://jaydedman.com
917 371 6790
Video: http://ryanishungry.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jaydedman
Photos: http://flickr.com/photos/jaydedman/
RSS: http://tinyurl.com/yqgdt9

[Jen Simmons]

A) Yeah - SIAB and vPIP do not require any certain host. They work will all the hosts / or most all.

B) I use blip.tv / recommend it to clients for two reasons.

1) it automatically makes a flash file. This saves time + well... I haven't figured out how to make a flash file on my own (since I use blip instead) so... I need the flash movie, I use blip.

2) Many of the people I teach to videoblog don't know how to FTP -- or I don't let them FTP to their own server. That might sound weird, but I try to prevent people from destroying their own sites by moving files around, and for some clients, that means I don't give them FTP access. By using blip / flickr / and the WP file uploader, they don't have to FTP. And therefore they don't break anything. It's more foolproof.

There are lots of other good reasons to use blip (post via your cellphone + let blip crosspost to your blog.... autocross post to other services.... whatever.) And the blip crew has been really great to the videoblogging community from the beginning -- long before anyone else came along.

Meanwhile -- it would be great for Freevlog-the-College-Years to include a tutorial on how to make a .flv movie!!!! That would be handy!!  RYAN??

jen

Jen Simmons

jen@jensimmons

http://jensimmons.com

http://milkweedmediadesign.com

917-455-0022

skype: jensimmons

[Sull]

if in mac, i recommend visualhub - http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/
worth the $20 spot.

[Get Real TV]

Jen,

I could certainly help you on the FLV issue. There are numerous tools
to create/convert video into .flv format.

As for the cross-posting feature with Blip, one of my questions was
whether this feature would work with SAIB functionality, namely vPIP.
Do you see what I mean? If cross-posting to my WP would mean my video
would still be displayed with vPIP than that would totally rock! If
this is so, are there any limitations?

-Matthew

On Nov 9, 7:57 pm, Jen Simmons <jensimmons.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A) Yeah - SIAB and vPIP do not require any certain host. They work
> will all the hosts / or most all.
>
> B) I use blip.tv / recommend it to clients for two reasons.
> 1) it automatically makes a flash file. This saves time + well... I
> haven't figured out how to make a flash file on my own (since I use
> blip instead) so... I need the flash movie, I use blip.
> 2) Many of the people I teach to videoblog don't know how to FTP --
> or I don't let them FTP to their own server. That might sound weird,
> but I try to prevent people from destroying their own sites by moving
> files around, and for some clients, that means I don't give them FTP
> access. By using blip / flickr / and the WP file uploader, they don't
> have to FTP. And therefore they don't break anything. It's more
> foolproof.
>
> There are lots of other good reasons to use blip (post via your
> cellphone + let blip crosspost to your blog.... autocross post to
> other services.... whatever.) And the blip crew has been really great
> to the videoblogging community from the beginning -- long before
> anyone else came along.
>
> Meanwhile -- it would be great for Freevlog-the-College-Years to
> include a tutorial on how to make a .flv movie!!!! That would be
> handy!! RYAN??
>
> jen
>
> Jen Simmons

> jen@jensimmonshttp://jensimmons.comhttp://milkweedmediadesign.com

[Enric]

Blip.tv cross-posting into vPIP is being looked into. This feature
may come into vPIP in about a month. But currently blip.tv
cross-posting does not insert the videos into vPIP. They need to be
manually inserted into the blog entry.

-- Enric

[Get Real TV]

Enric,

Thanks for the spot on response... Just what I needed to know. That
feature to cross-post into vPIP would be cooler than four furious
fraggle-rock holiday specials!

Question: Doesn't Blip enable you to post video with multiple formats
which viewers can choose from? If this is correct, and we would have
to upload each file format for use in vPIP anyway, what is the
difference between using Blips multi-format player and vPIP?

Matthew

On Nov 9, 8:25 pm, Enric <enric.me...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Blip.tv cross-posting into vPIP is being looked into. This feature
> may come into vPIP in about a month. But currently blip.tv
> cross-posting does not insert the videos into vPIP. They need to be
> manually inserted into the blog entry.
>
> -- Enric
>

[Cheryl Colan]

If you use blip.tv, you upload the video to blip, and then you copy the URL of where blip keeps the video file and paste that into vPIP

if you self-host, you FTP the video to your site, and then you insert the URL of where you are keeping your video file into vPIP

you don't upload to vPIP

re: blip's "multi-format player" do they have one? I'm not aware of it. but vPIP is the kickass multi-format player. blip *stores" multiple formats for you but I think when you crosspost with blip it only embeds one format (flash if it's been transcoded already, whatever you uploaded if it hasn't)

Cheryl

[Get Real TV]

Cheryl,

Does vPIP transcode into other formats on the fly? Or do you mean if
you point to the various file formats on whatever server they are
being stored it will play each format in place.

Matthew

On Nov 9, 10:31 pm, "Cheryl Colan" <cheryl.co...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If you use blip.tv, you upload the video to blip, and then you copy the URL
> of where blip keeps the video file and paste that into vPIP
>
> if you self-host, you FTP the video to your site, and then you insert the
> URL of where you are keeping your video file into vPIP
>
> you don't upload to vPIP
>
> re: blip's "multi-format player" do they have one? I'm not aware of it. but
> vPIP is the kickass multi-format player. blip *stores" multiple formats for
> you but I think when you crosspost with blip it only embeds one format
> (flash if it's been transcoded already, whatever you uploaded if it hasn't)
>
> Cheryl
>

[Enric]

The second, "if you point to the various file formats on whatever

server they are being stored it will play each format in place."

-- Enric

[Cheryl Colan]

Personally I didn't mention bandwidth because Dreamhost provides me more than enough bandwidth for my very limited viewership - I think about 30 people watch my videos on average .... not a huge load -so although blip's bandwidth is great, it's not a feature that I personally need (as Jen suggested in her reply)

And while blip offers cross-posting, I prefer to write my own posts, so I don't really need that either. If I use their crossposting, I have to take the way they code it ... I end up going in and editing it anyway, so I may as well just write my own post to begin with

as to automatically having my post listed at all these directories, blip is pretty self serving - they direct traffic from those directories to my "show" at blip, not to my web site. I want the traffic coming to ME, not to blip. so while it's nice ... it's also not so nice

so I am not a great fit for most of blip's services (I also don't want ads anywhere on my videos, so their pre-roll / midroll / post-roll ad service is totally lost on me)

and of course, they could make blip.tv not be free anytime they want, or go out of business and junk their servers - I don't think those are likely events but they're possible

bottom line is you have to decide if your vlog or web show is a good fit for blip's services

shows like Epic-FU (formerly jetset) want to be viewed anywhere, they want to be in all those directories & on youtube, and they definitely want blip's bandwidth - so they're a good fit for the extra services

I hope that helps some - I fall into a rather peculiar category of not being interested in "monetizing" - at least not for my personal site. I want to share my story with friends and loved ones, but I want ads and being beholden to third parties as far away as I can keep 'em

Cheryl

On Nov 9, 2007 5:26 PM, Get Real TV <living...@gmail.com> wrote:

I just read this topic about using Blip.tv Vs Hosting Yourself and
wanted to know why nothing was mentioned about bandwidth issues or the

other benefits of Blip.tv... . I feel like I am missing something here

[Cheryl Colan]

They transcode what you upload to Flash format, and they can also make .mp4 and .mp3 files for you (though those features might come with a pro account - not sure on that)

but yeah, if you point to various file formats on whatever server, vPIP will load them and play them in place

Cheryl

[Cheryl Colan]

YES! awesome explanation.

forgive my fuzzy-headedness

I do know that I'm doing progressive downloads

and I'll be the first to admit I don't have a great understanding of streaming

but I still have not determined why I get faster playback results when hosting files on blip as opposed to on my own server

dreamhost's streaming service was just part of my investigation into the "why" - but I didn't succeed in finding out, and the streaming service was definitely not the answer

next step is to do a more thorough comparison of the various file types

and whether PodPress is just buggy

could stem from many different things

cheryl

On Nov 9, 2007 8:19 AM, Jen Simmons <jensimm...@gmail.com > wrote:

We all do progressive download.

Streaming is so 1998. 

[snipped]

[Get Real TV]

Thanks for teh clarification Cheryl!

I can totalyl see where you are coming from. I too am not interested
in their ad system. I will just have to see what comes of all this
because I am doing three types of shows which have different needs I
think:
1. I oversee a live webcast via ustream.tv twice a week of "Hearing
God for Your Health"...
2. I will be doing some more pre-produced video stuff for a book I am
helping to market ...
3. MY FAVORITE: I am producing my own personal shows that are
creatively funny and meaningful.. shorts and skits-type stuff.

I am looking at having several hundred people viewing the these
projects at any given time. I have loads of bandwidth and space, so
based on your post I am going to reconsider how each of this project
might work. I can see the promotional stuff benefitting from blips
multi-cross-post thing, but the other stuff I want to really get
people to my own site.

Matthew

> On Nov 9, 2007 5:26 PM, Get Real TV <livingpara...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I just read this topic about using Blip.tv Vs Hosting Yourself and
> > wanted to know why nothing was mentioned about bandwidth issues or the

> > other benefits of Blip.tv.... I feel like I am missing something here

[Adrian Miles]

around the 9/11/07 Cheryl Colan mentioned about [show-in-a-box] Re:
blip is it? that:

>no no, all I meant is when I compress I set them up for fast start
>
>still don't know why blip hosted plays back faster than my self-hosted

hi Cheryl

blip is probably paying for more and better bandwidth :-)

[Milt Lee]

I host all my own stuff. Because -

no ads
I control the way things are compressed
with Vpip, people can cross post on their own - which I love.
And basically - I'm a control freak. I like to know exactly what's
happening, and how to change it - if it's wrong.

Milt Lee

[Living Parable]

When you say people can cross-post on their own - how do they do that?
- Matthew

[ryanne hodson]

Meanwhile -- it would be great for Freevlog-the-College-Years to include a tutorial on how to make a .flv movie!!!! That would be handy!!  RYAN??

i'll put it on my (ever growing) list of tutorials for sure
i've been using flash 8 encoder
but just days ago realized that visual hub is waaaaaay faster for making an flv.

don't know if there is a free way
anyone know a free way to convert to .flv???
 

--
Me ----> http://RyanEdit.com
Twitter------>http://twitter.com/Ryanne
Documenting Green ----> http://RyanIsHungry.com
Educate ----> http://FreeVlog.org
iChat/AIM ----> VideoRodeo

[ryanne hodson]

i love you milt
but this is inaccurate info for blip vs. self hosted

I host all my own stuff.  Because -

no ads

there are no ad on blip unless you tell them to put them there

I control the way things are compressed

you have control over your compression on blip
except for FLV version
unless you compress your own flv and upload it to blip.

with Vpip, people can cross post on their own - which I love.

i don't think i know what you mean
vpip simply plays all formats in the same spot on your page

And basically - I'm a control freak.  I like to know exactly what's
happening, and how to change it - if it's wrong.

i'm also a control freak
but still use blip.
 

Milt Lee

[papyromancer]

I just saw visual hub in action this afternoon. That's some really nice
software.

I don't use Blip to host on my videoblog because it doesn't transcode
into all the formats that showinabox is capable of serving. Right now
I'm transcoding to all the appropriate file formats in batch, and
uploading those files to Amazon S3. It lets me put up flash videos at
700 kb/sec and they load really fast in my browser.

And check out the pricing structure:
(I don't know how to permalink to it...Look on the left side for Simple
Storage Service)
http://amazonaws.com/

I run a very low bandwidth vlog for about $1.50 a month.

--Drew

[elbows]

S3 and the like are certainly interesting options, havent heard too
much about them from vloggers, I guess because for most the video
hosting sites like blip have eliminated the need to shop around. If S3
had come around before there were any video hosting sites, I bet
people would have been wetting themselves over it, its ability to
scale and its pricing structure are attractive.

If a bunch of video hosts go bust in the coming years and leave users
without their content, we may see more people taking matters back into
their own hands I guess.

Regarding flash format encoding, bear in mind that once the flash
player that supports h264 is released proper and has time to get onto
most peoples machines, I would think .flv will become obsolete, and it
will be one less issue to think about, and one less reason to need to
use a video hosting service.

Cheers

Steve Elbows

On Nov 11, 11:19 pm, papyromancer <papyroman...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I just saw visual hub in action this afternoon. That's some really nice
> software.
>
> I don't use Blip to host on my videoblog because it doesn't transcode
> into all the formats that showinabox is capable of serving. Right now
> I'm transcoding to all the appropriate file formats in batch, and
> uploading those files to Amazon S3. It lets me put up flash videos at
> 700 kb/sec and they load really fast in my browser.
>
> And check out the pricing structure:
> (I don't know how to permalink to it...Look on the left side for Simple

> Storage Service)http://amazonaws.com/

>
> I run a very low bandwidth vlog for about $1.50 a month.
>
> --Drew
>
> On Fri, 2007-11-09 at 21:06 -0500, Sull wrote:
> > if in mac, i recommend visualhub -
> >http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/
> > worth the $20 spot.
>

> > On Nov 9, 2007 8:57 PM, Jen Simmons < jensimmons.l...@gmail.com>

[ryanne hodson]

i don't think there are any services that transcode into all the formats that vpip can play...

infact i think blip does like 3 (flv, mp4 and mp3)
and i've never heard of another that does anything more than flv

thought it would be grand if blip let you control the flv bitrate i think it looks crumby...

http://RyanEdit.com
Twitter------>http://twitter.com/Ryanne

[Brook Hinton]

I recently stopped using blip and went back to hosting my own stuff at
dreamhost. Blip is great at what they do, but as I'm now doing some
higher bandwidth stuff I found blip's files just don't come through
the wires as quickly as dreamhost's. As I start to do more and more
online work in 24p, blip's flash encoder becomes a problem as well,
since it transcodes to 15fps - and 24 to 15 conversions are very very
ugly.

But blip is GREAT at what they do and I reccomend them to people all the time.

Brook

_______________________________________________________
Brook Hinton
film/video/audio art
www.brookhinton.com
studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab

[ryanne hodson]

ah, i didn't realize blips flvs were at 15 fps
and i think their bit rate is a wee bit low.

bah.
other than that, they're great!!!

[Milt Lee]

Well, what can I say?
I appreciate your comments, Ry. I clearly don't know all the ins and
outs of blip, but that's cool too. I guess I just like to host my own
stuff. But I would like to understand something. Are you folks
saying that Blip transcodes everything you send - into a flv file?
hmmmm...that's interesting.

So am I right about this - if I send a mp4 - it's going to change it
to a 15 fps flv file???

If this is true than I guess that's another reason to host your own.
I really really love vpip, and how I can use it.

I guess I don't know all the wonderful things about blip, but I'm up
for finding out. Right now though, I think SIAB is the way to really
rock your video. Just my opinion.

xoxox
Milt

Cell - (605) 381 4842
Office - (605) 341 4232
http://realrez.com
http://jamieleeonline.com
http://manykites.com
http://oyate.com

[Jen Simmons]

Since blip has always been so responsive, I wonder if they'd add expert transcoding options to their menus. Most people don't know or care -- so they could leave the defaults right where they are. But for the rest of us -- it'd be great if they'd let us adjust.

Or is this a "pro account" feature already?? It does sound like a good pro account enticement. Which I'm never going to buy....I just put my cash into my own server space instead....

J

Jen Simmons

jen@jensimmons

http://jensimmons.com

http://milkweedmediadesign.com

917-455-0022

skype: jensimmons

[Brook Hinton]

Blip hosts whatever format you want. They OFFER transcoding to flash
if you want to offer that format as well. You can have oodles of
formats available for any given clip.
The flash encoding is a default thing now, but you can turn it off.

Brook

--

[ryanne hodson]

brook
i didnt realize you could turn the flash transcoding off in blip
where is that?
i'd prefer, like many others, to upload my own .flv files over there....

-ryanne

--
Me ----> http://RyanEdit.com

[Enric]

If the first file you load for the entry is FLV it won't transcode the
rest uploaded and will use the one sent up.

-- Enric

[ryanne hodson]

that's great to know!
thanks guys!!