New video features released - Oct 30th

[docwalker]

I should have made an announcement the other night but I did not think about it at the time.


We sped up video processing significantly.
Added “Replace Video Preview Image” tool so you can now tell us what your videos should look like before your fans click Play. Upload a jpeg that matches the resolution of your video (e.g. 1280×720).:barb

[docwalker]

For replacing the preview image:

Once you have uploaded the video, you can replace the thumbnail with a photo that is EXACTLY the same dimensions as the original video.

Click tools
In the "this photo" section click more
Click the "Replace Video Preview Image"
Upload the new image

It must meet the same upload requirements as all other photos. :thumb

[brandofamily]

For replacing the preview image:

Once you have uploaded the video, you can replace the thumbnail with a photo that is EXACTLY the same dimensions as the original video.

How do I ID the dimensions if I do not know them... uploaded awhile back.

[Andy]

How do I ID the dimensions if I do not know them... uploaded awhile back.
Anthony, please use the tool and see :thumb

[brandofamily]

Anthony, please use the tool and see :thumb
thanks

[lifeinfocus]

For replacing the preview image:

Once you have uploaded the video, you can replace the thumbnail with a photo that is EXACTLY the same dimensions as the original video.

Click tools
In the "this photo" section click more
Click the "Replace Video Preview Image"
Upload the new image

It must meet the same upload requirements as all other photos. :thumb

I used the new feature. Easy to use and it allowed me to better categorize the videos I have loaded. It makes it easier for the user to determine which video to play based on the photo content. I also added some text on the photos to indicate video content.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
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There is one thing that seems a little unusual - just as a video first starts to play the replacement picture will sometimes pop up for a brief moment. Is that intentional?<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Two other items:<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
1. Videos loaded in a journal do not play when the play button is clicked. I know this is a bug and you are working on it. I can work around this now. Looking forward to this being fixed.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
2. After a video plays, how can the user be automatically returned to the journal gallery it was selected from? Now it returns to the photo gallery picture. If the user wants to see more videos in that journal listing, he/she needs to select the menu or use breadcrumbs (which I disabled for now.)<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
http://www.lifeinfocusexpressions.com/ (http://www.lifeinfocusexpressions.com/)<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
We have released our website to friends now for review and hope to finish it within about 1 week.<o:p></o:p>
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Thanks for all your assistance.<o:p></o:p>
Phil Walenga<o:p></o:p>

[docwalker]

For number 2 you cannot control that at this time. Thanks for letting us know that it is something you want. :thumb

[lifeinfocus]

For number 2 you cannot control that at this time. Thanks for letting us know that it is something you want. :thumb

Sorry, I forgot to mention that the processing time is significantly faster. Thank you, thank you!!

Initially I was uploading MPEG 2 files that were large and time consuming to upload and convert. Now I am converting the videos to MPEG 4 AVC prior to uploading. Total time for a fairly large video to be converted, uploaded and processed is about 1 hour. I would say that is excellent considering the size of the files and resulting quality and dimensions.

Good job!

[shrekie]

I should have made an announcement the other night but I did not think about it at the time.


We sped up video processing significantly.
Added “Replace Video Preview Image” tool so you can now tell us what your videos should look like before your fans click Play. Upload a jpeg that matches the resolution of your video (e.g. 1280×720).:barb

Thanks, this is great. I have replaced the preview image for the video that is within my gallery here:
http://www.lookingglassphotography.com.au/gallery/7277503_mHkqr#P-3-24

However, with the help of some great Dgrinners last night, I now have the same video also embedded at the top of this page:
http://www.lookingglassphotography.com.au/Travel/707313

When I changed the preview image, it didn't change it for video shown in the second page (which loads the video from the same gallery). Is there any way I can create a preview image for the video here as well?

Thanks :)

[drake]

Just now saw this sticky. Great features. SmugMug continues to amaze me :)

[clevercaptures]

Hi Smugmuggers!

Im sure this is a simple query for you but I cannot resolve it myself :-(

I bought one of those awesome 5D MkII cameras a couple of days ago and my very first video, a mere 206MB, was uploaded to the website and is there now for the world to see It's not the best video on the web, hand held and a bit shakey, but for a first attempt I am quite pleased with it :-) I edited this with Cyberlink Power Director which gave me the choice of either 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio. I chose 4:3 aspect ratio and the wide screen video came out with a black area above and below the image as expected. This uploaded to the website and plays beautifully. Thanks for that! It is located here:-

http://www.clevercaptures.com/gallery/7897758_Jjnet#512187968_fmQGG-A-LB

I then made a second video and edited this one in 16:9 aspect ratio so I ended up with only the 16:9 rectangle with no black areas. When I play it on my desktop in GOM Player or Realplayer it shows the wide screen video perfectly. However, having uploaded this to the website here:-

http://www.clevercaptures.com/gallery/7909592_hpuHK#512802544_6Locq-A-LB

as you can see, it condenses the viewing area to 4:3 and squishes the rectagle to make me look a bit thinner than I really am! As much as I appreciate this improvement to my physique, is there any way that I can play the 16:9 video in that aspect ratio please? Or do I need to re-edit in 4:3 ratio and accept those pesky black areas above and below the video?

Help!

Many thanks,

Peter Parker (Spidey)

[docwalker]

Spidey,

It looks like maybe the editor is not passing the aspect ratio information correctly. I have seen that before. I am not sure what causes it. Usually saving a different format, or converting before upload will fix it.

--Doc

[clevercaptures]

Hi Doc and thanks for the prompt and helpful response :-) Thats good news as i am currently doing the obvious testing of various editing softwares at present and seeing how the quality is affected by the editing tools and the type of output.

I was using Cyberlink software that is not at all HD friendly and am now trying Coral. If I am not happy with this I will venture to Vegas. However, Coral just did a very nice job of re-editing me practicing canoe slalom and the output at 1440 x 1080 in VCHD looks fantastic on my Media Player! Im uploading that to my website as I type and if it comes out as good online I will post a link here for your veiwing pleasure :-)

I am a little disappointed that Canon did not hook up with a software company to package a good editor with the 5D2 - or even make it seperately available. Its a bit like giving me a lovely bowl of soup....but no spoon! I will still enjoy it, but slurping it out of the bowl and licking my fingers is nowhere near as enjoyable as savouring each and every spoonful :-)

Sorry to chunter on a bit....Im waiting for the upload to finish! lol...i'm gone!

Spidey

[clevercaptures]

OK - Cracked it! And mighty awesome the visual and audible spectacle is too! So for all you 5D2 folk, this is what I use to get my Hi-Def on my Smugmug website:-

I edit the various MOV files using Corel Video Studio Pro X2 - which I find fast and easy to use. OK, the rendering takes a while but well worth the wait. I then create an output file under the HDV section using "HDV 720p - 25 for PC". This results in the Smugmug version of that being 1440 wide and as crystal clear and sharp as anything I have ever seen anywhere! Awesome!Oh! the AVCHD PAL HD 1440 I mentioned above did not work - I uploaded it and it was being processed and then, like other formats, it just disappeared :-(

But all sorted now! Here is the first HDV 720p - 25 for PC upload that has resulted in perfect reproduction online!



http://www.clevercaptures.com/gallery/7909913_Tx7yt#514649963_GSpgR-A-LB

Hope this assists other 5d2'ers! ENJOY! :-)

Spidey

[nigelbb]

Nicely done. I like the slo-mo effect. Your workflow does seem very complicated though. We use Macs with iMovie or Final Cut Pro & that is very straightforward. iMovie converts to Apple Intermediate CODEC which can then be edited & output in whatever form you like. FPC can either edit the native H.264 .MOV files or convert to ProRes 422 HQ before editing as that makes the process quicker. Again output can be whatever you need.

The Canon 5D Mk II records at a frame rate of 30fps & 1920x1080p so I am not sure why you output at 25fps & 1440x1080i. SmugMug will crunch that down to 1280x720 in any case so why not output at that size before upload?

We output from the NLE at full native HD 1920x1080p & then use MPEG Streamclip to reduce the bit rate to about 10Mbps so that the file size is kept below the SmugMug limit of 500MB. SmugMug will then produce files of 1920x1080p at about 7+Mbps, 1280x720p at about 3.2Mbps etc

Cheers

Nigel

[RustyB]

..

Added “Replace Video Preview Image” tool so you can now tell us what your videos should look like before your fans click Play. Upload a jpeg that matches the resolution of your video (e.g. 1280×720).

Cool new function...I'm really diggin' it. Makes my galleries/blog embeds look great.

However, I do notice that it only displays the replacement image about 50% of the time. The other half of the time it just defaults back to a frame of the video. Wierd. :cry

[rmarch]

Just thought I would post a quick note in this thread, to another post I just made about sorting videos by date taken.

http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1483853&postcount=17

Turns out that uploading a thumbnail will effectively associate exif information with a video. If you auto sort a gallery on date taken, it now correctly sorts the video based on the date taken field of the uploaded thumbnail! Great.

So far this has not made the video show up in the timeline view (but sometimes that seems to take a bit of time to re index), so fingers crossed. Also would still be nice to set date taken directly on a video without needing to upload a thumbnail, but this is a great start.

[smuggerbugger]

sped up video processing significantly? I uploaded 3 videos yesterday (.mp4 format at size 864X480 and 55MB) and they are still not showing up. They still show the processing image icon. How long does it take to process these videos? They are uploaded in a gallery that I already have a video uploaded to that works. Am I doing something wrong?

[nigelbb]

sped up video processing significantly? I uploaded 3 videos yesterday (.mp4 format at size 864X480 and 55MB) and they are still not showing up. They still show the processing image icon. How long does it take to process these videos? They are uploaded in a gallery that I already have a video uploaded to that works. Am I doing something wrong?You should contact SmugMug support as that is not normal behaviour.

BTW 864X480 is a weird resolution so maybe that has something to do with it.

[Malte]

sped up video processing significantly? I uploaded 3 videos yesterday (.mp4 format at size 864X480 and 55MB) and they are still not showing up. They still show the processing image icon. How long does it take to process these videos? They are uploaded in a gallery that I already have a video uploaded to that works. Am I doing something wrong?

That was a hiccup, delete those and reupload, and it will work fine.

Malte

[smuggerbugger]

Thanks guys! I did try uploading again with no luck. I changed the file name with no luck. I also uploaded another video with no luck. The videos I uploaded originally finally showed up to view 2 days later. I have no idea what happened but I'm not to impressed with the time it took to upload and also not to impressed with how smugmug hashed the video with its resize engine. It made it noticeably pixelated from the original. It was animoto's hi-res file. The animoto version looks way better but I don't like how limited you are with displaying your video with animoto. Thats why I wish smugmug would work for me. If I'm doing something wrong let me know.

[SamirD]

The processing time is usually not that slow.

I played with Animoto for a bit and there was a thread on which method of getting the video from Animoto to SM resulted in the best quality. I don't know it off the top of my head, but I'll search for it if you really want me to...

[tulsa]

"we are working on fixing the problem" - Smugmug Support
( Almost a month now )
perhaps you can help here?

[huseyin]

Is there any reason why we cannot buffer from the middle of the video?
It is really painful to wait for the whole video to buffer if we just want to show a portion of it. I am sure it also costs SM money due to bandwidth. Are there any plans to update/modify the video playback function?

[SamirD]

Is there any reason why we cannot buffer from the middle of the video?
It is really painful to wait for the whole video to buffer if we just want to show a portion of it. I am sure it also costs SM money due to bandwidth. Are there any plans to update/modify the video playback function?You know, I've always wondered this too. :scratch

[rainforest1155]

Would you mind adding that suggestion to our feedback pages:
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug
? Thanks!

[terribleprocess]

By any chance,
I’m looking for video window (approx. 25%) within my home page that already has a stretchy slide show. Anyone know the code to add a video loop component within an existing slide show? Or, on the other hand, back to the starting board, the code to accomplish both tasks at once?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
Thanks<o:p></o:p>

[huseyin]

Would you mind adding that suggestion to our feedback pages:
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug
? Thanks!

I will add this but I don't know how to explain it to get the other users attention... Will try

I just tried smugmug app on Galaxy Nexus that I was trying, and it does allow you to seek or fast forward to a point in the video, so it looks like you already have a player that does this, but it is not incorporated to the website, instead it works fine in the Android video player. I believe it is not a limitation of Smugmug but the player SM chose to display videos.