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fannish complaining
... is it just me, or are fanvids suffering from a case of megabyte-bloat lately? I get that you want your vid to be high-quality, but past a certain point, I'm not going to bother downloading it. I clicked on one link the other day, only to discover that the vid was 420 Mb. For three and a half minutes of video? I don't think so!
(I also do not support this growing trend to offer vid links without telling me what format I'm downloading or how big it is. Mystery vid surprise! Do not want!)
When I make vids, I've had a lot of trouble finding a compressor that'll give me a reasonably sized video that isn't choppy or poor quality. So I do understand that it can be a struggle with the technology, especially for a newbie vidder. But ... do people not even check? Or am I just behind the times, still thinking in terms of "bandwidth" and "hard drive space"?
ETA: So that this post isn't just whine, I have discovered yes, Virginia, there will be an SGA Big Bang this year!
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purimgifts is open for signups. Should I? Should I not? *dithers*
ETA 2:sg1_beyond_otp is taking prompts for their Gateverse OT3+ ficathon. You don't have to participate to leave prompts!
(I also do not support this growing trend to offer vid links without telling me what format I'm downloading or how big it is. Mystery vid surprise! Do not want!)
When I make vids, I've had a lot of trouble finding a compressor that'll give me a reasonably sized video that isn't choppy or poor quality. So I do understand that it can be a struggle with the technology, especially for a newbie vidder. But ... do people not even check? Or am I just behind the times, still thinking in terms of "bandwidth" and "hard drive space"?
ETA: So that this post isn't just whine, I have discovered yes, Virginia, there will be an SGA Big Bang this year!
And
purimgifts is open for signups. Should I? Should I not? *dithers*ETA 2:
sg1_beyond_otp is taking prompts for their Gateverse OT3+ ficathon. You don't have to participate to leave prompts!
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At the job I left last year, running a graphic design department, I used to constantly be after my employees to clean up the server and not clutter it up with giant files until nothing would fit anymore. I was trained on hardware that was so cramped for space that we had to watch every megabyte (hell, every kilobyte) very closely. KIDS THESE DAYS. *shakes cane*
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And I remember saving fanfic at uni and carrying it home on floppy disks, back when I didn't have internet at home - hell, you bet every kilobyte counted there!
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At least it's not just me. :D
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Yeah, me too!
If I don't do anything to compress a video out of iMovie, it renders out at about 300 Mb for a 3-4 minute video. (I think the program is going for DVD quality.) But sheeez, I wouldn't think of uploading it anywhere without compressing it further. I guess it's probably new-ish vidders either not realizing that they can make the video smaller, or not being able to find a way to do it without ending up with exceedingly poor quality. Honestly though, I'm way more likely to watch a poor-quality vid than a really huge one.
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None of the fics from last year grabbed me (didn't see any that were obviously Rodney centric gen/het h/c?), so I didn't read any, but I'm up for the challenge as a writer!
It was disappointing when they said there wouldn't be another one... but the SGA fandom can't be beaten down so easily XD
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But yeah, it's kind of the luck of the draw as far as who signs up. Last year leaned heavily in a Sheppard direction -- which isn't bad, of course; Sheppard people got a windfall :D -- but it could definitely use a variety of writers!
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Eep! Big Bang, tempt me not! Tempt me not! Though, seriously, I am happy it's still going on :D Sharpes_Hussy also told me about an AU Big Bang that's going on (multi-fandom).
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I'm trying not to commit to anything new until I get my original fic straightened out a bit. And I also need to start thinking about this year's Genficathon!
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It's good to be reminded that the world is full of people with a wide variety of tastes. :)
It does seem like a lot of vidders are offering both options anymore. If the only option is streaming, I usually pop over to Keepvid.com and see if it'll let me snag a copy that I can watch later.
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I think part of my distaste for dling is that I'm pretty much a vid newbie. I never watched a vid until about three years ago when streaming vid sites were pretty ubiquitous. I know for a long long long time the only option was dling (and before that watching on a friend's couch!), so I think maybe I'm just not part of the fannish culture that values dling? I dunno. :)
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... hee. No, that makes sense; everyone's going to have their own preferences on this kind of thing. Actually, I'm probably the way I am because I got used to having to start a download going and then go away, do something else and come back to watch it; just having it at my fingertips doesn't really work for me for whatever reason. I've never even tried Hulu, even though a bunch of shows I know are on there!
Was this the Pleistocene era? *g*
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Of course, I really don't like vids a whole lot to begin with (I could probably list from memory all the ones I'd watched, and the ones I really loved I could probably count on one hand), so that is part of it.
But also, I'm just lazy and I'm not a saver. If I were the type to save vids, it would be one thing, but if I have to dl something to watch it, I just have to delete it afterwards, so it's much less trouble for me to just watch online.
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...what the hell were they exporting it as? Uncompressed AVI? There are these magical things called codecs, that were invented a long time ago in a far off land. I even hear they've got this new fangled format called MP4, that can tame even the wildest of High Definition beasts, with nary a pixel out of place, with only a fraction of the space required.
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(friendshipper, I'm loving the nostalgic comment threads...omg, my first d'loaded vids. And the episode d'loads at 175 when I only did it at night and the d'load took 5-6 hours...)
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Back when I was first in SG1 fandom, before TV shows started coming out on DVD, there was a website (it *might* actually have been the first incarnation of Gateworld, though I'm not 100% sure of that) that had all the episodes as teeny tiny WMVs. The image area was about the size of a postage stamp! But it was the only way to get caught up on older eps. I think I still have a few of them on CD somewhere.
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Also, it got me into the habit of saving stories! They weren't always immediately reaccessible. These days in SPN/J2 that's great, with stories mostly only posted to LJ and thus easily deleted/flocked/namechanged...
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The hell you say?! Lies! Damned lies! XD
... I just don't even know! I don't even get something that huge when I export a completely uncompressed .mov out of iMovie. You'd almost have to try.
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*snorts* If I'm like this NOW, I am going to be an absolutely insufferable old person!
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I know its really hard on people to download such big files especially, like you said, for a 3 minute vid. I can't imagine how those vids get so big! The last 3 minute HD vid I did was 140MB (the online version is 72MB). 400? that's huge!
The notable exception to this was a vid I did called "Legacy" which was a 15 minute tribute to SGA set to a musical remix that I designed. And that was bigger because, well, it was 15 minutes. LOL But I still put it out at DVD quality and brought it down as much as I could (290MB) and warned people it was a bit larger. So, 400MB for a 3 minute vid? Wow. That's HUGE.
I wish I could share the HD vids because they just look gorgeous when finished, but they are large and often require a lot more PC horsepower to run than some people have. :)
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I can totally understand wanting to make the vid look nice. Actually, one thing I really like is when different-sized download links are available. For me personally, I'm not too concerned about image quality as long as it's watchable -- for bigger vids I often end up reducing the image size anyway, because I usually watch vids in one quandrant of my screen while doing emails or art or word processing in the other part of the screen --so I like to download a smaller sized video, but for people who do prioritize image quality, it's nice to have large shiny ones available!
Like I said in the comment above this one, I think some vidders don't really pay a whole lot of attention to how much gain in quality they're getting for the extra size. As long as you, the vidder, are happy with the trade-offs, that's all that really matters. But I can't imagine that even the most high-quality vid could possible NEED to be 400 Mb to look good!
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There is a definite trade off, but it is possible to share a vid at what my vid software calls "DVD quality" and that comes in under 100MB which I think is reasonable and the quality is just fine to me and I've not heard complaints.
I don't think I"ve ever seen a 400MB vid, that's so big! and like you, I don't think I'd download it anyway, not at that size, in most cases.
It really comes down to a trade off but also the vidder recognizing their audience and putting out something appropriate.
I used to offer different sizes, but the DVD setting in publishing seems to be a great middle road that works for everyone The default setting is only about 20MB smaller and considerably less in quality, so I use this setting instead. :)
Interesting conversation. I don't think I've seen this discussed before and perhaps there are some vidders that didn't realize the inconvenience and didn't know. :)
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I also try to tell people when I post that I have the HD versions available for anyone that wants them. If I had my own server, it'd be easier to host everything, but using public servers like megaupload, its a bit of a pain to maintain links so I try to keep my life simple. ;)
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and 420 mb for 3 minutes of video? you couldn't do it on purpose if you tried!