Premium Members Sydney Seeber Posted July 20, 2009 Premium Members Report Share Posted July 20, 2009 I used Vimeo for a while to host my reel in flash. Lately they have gotten very busy and have been suffering technical issues a lot. Your video may play back in slow motion after waiting a half hour to upload it. Or it may have artifacts and glitches. Switching to QT h.264 Vimeo is good to have for online sharing/viewing of your projects, as it's got a built in viewer base like Youtube, but more artsy minded, if you will. There's millions of potential viewers that you don't have by hosting your own web site. However, the quality will never match that of a personal server, as the video is degraded when it's re-encoded once you upload your already encoded file, plus other various limitations along with the advertising factor. These days, web hosting is insanely cheap... My server has unlimited bandwidth and server space, and doesn't limit the up/download speed either... For the same price as Vimeo's paid service. So I'm of the opinion that both Vimeo (Only the free version for me) and personal web servers are in order... One's for the viewership, the other is for speed, quality and no limitations... That's where I'll send individuals, potential clients, friends, etc. to view my videos. Vimeo viewers are just the random masses on the internets, there so I can get views on a project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Jess Haas SOC Posted July 20, 2009 Premium Members Report Share Posted July 20, 2009 Im a fan of quicktime myself. Quicktime pro includes a nice little feature where it will output a reference quicktime that links to 3 different quicktime files of different quality allowing iphones to automatically get a special iphone version. Even gives you reference code to embed the player in your page. Just about everyone has quicktime on there computer these days so compatiblity isn't really an issue. I have an old operator reel up at http://JessHaas.com using this method. Also have a higher quality downloadable version up for the hell of it although that could confuse some people. ~Jess Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Sydney Seeber Posted July 20, 2009 Premium Members Report Share Posted July 20, 2009 I myself am a huge fan of the Quicktime reference files, they are simply fantastic in a collaborative environment where many people need access to the same file, and re-rendering is a needless pain in the ass... I wish everything I did on the computer worked like Quicktime reference files. However, many government and business organizations do not have Quicktime installed, and since most of these computers are satellite workstations, the end user cannot install the software themselves. This is the only reason I have always had to offer an alternative to Quicktime, that being .wmv and Flash files. Government/business computers can get by just fine without Quicktime as it's considered more of a fringe/creative/waste of company time program, but they can't get by without Flash these days... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
max volokh Posted July 22, 2009 Report Share Posted July 22, 2009 don't forget about iPhone, I compress all video to iPhone format 8-) http://max-volokh.com/max-volokh.com/video-eng.html or www.max-volokh.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Charles Papert Posted July 22, 2009 Premium Members Report Share Posted July 22, 2009 I think there is a fine line in terms of how "flashy" (literally and figuratively) one's site should be. I myself don't like sitting and waiting for flash to load just to get into a site. I also don't like having music forced at me, or cute sound effects and transitions between links and pages. As a result my own site is so stripped down it's practically too much so, but it gets you where you need to go. Like everyone else my own reel is aging in a big way (I put my energy in keeping the DP reel updated, and even that is 6 or 8 months behind). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Gus Trivino Posted July 22, 2009 Premium Members Report Share Posted July 22, 2009 After saw the demo reels of Charles, Eric or BJ, my demo reel seems a "handheld demo". Guys, you are a big reference to follow. Best to all, Gus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Brad Grimmett Posted July 23, 2009 Premium Members Report Share Posted July 23, 2009 As a result my own site is so stripped down it's practically too much so, but it gets you where you need to go. Speaking of too stripped down...mine is JUST my reel. But in my defense, it's not finished yet. The low-res version loads immediately for speed purposes, and there is a high-res version if you want a larger and less compressed version. bradgrimmett.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Tyler Posted July 23, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2009 My AC who made my site also made an Iphone site. my site sees if you are on a phone and redirects to a mobile site. it is made for the Iphone but works on all mobile phones, and if you want to you can add my site to your Iphone desktop with its own icon. take a look from your phone spinechoindustries.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Imran Naqvi Posted July 25, 2009 Premium Members Report Share Posted July 25, 2009 I'm with Charles. I don't like flash sites at all. I want to be able to see it on my iPhone. Besides, who today is genuinely impressed by a complicated flash site? Back when it was a black art and video and dynamic pages were a novelty, it was interesting but all it proved was you could pay someone to build the site for you. Now I don't need to be impressed. Yes it needs to be more than just a text page, but nice use of colour, some relevant pics and a nice clear link to a showreel is all I want (and I'm sure all producers need). My reel (far too old now and out of date) is a quicktime file, because I have most control about how that looks. I've yet to have anyone contact me and ask for an alternative format after pointing them at my showreel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Sydney Seeber Posted July 25, 2009 Premium Members Report Share Posted July 25, 2009 You may be confusing Flash Player with an all Flash-based site, things that have evolved into very different elements. Flash and Quicktime are containers, not codecs, for anyone who may not have been aware. At this point, they can both decode h.264, making making video files virtually identical in file size and quality. But the containers themselves, (.flv, .f4v, .mov) don't read each others' files at all well, making content creation a pain in the ass. Flash is of course, also an animation program now owned by Adobe. It's also a term people use when describing annoying all Flash based web sites (Yeah, I don't like them either) that take 5 minutes to load before you get to the content. That content of course, was encoded in Flash. Companies are finally moving away from an all Flash-based site, thankfully. When you navigate to Youtube or Vimeo, those are Flash encoded videos, as are many of the the annoying advertisements all over the page, but the site itself is not completely Flash. The videos look like shit compared to those on your personal web site because they have been re-encoded on top of the original encoding process, as well as formatted to a particular frame size. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Imran Naqvi Posted July 26, 2009 Premium Members Report Share Posted July 26, 2009 True enough, but either way I can't see them on my iPhone (unless its a youtube embed) which reduces their usefulness to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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