The SmugMug Video Help Thread

[Andy]

<object width="425" height="240"><param name="movie" value="http://cdn.smugmug.com/ria/ShizVidz-2008042602.swf" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="flashVars" value="s=ZT0xJmk9MjE5MjU2NTQ4Jms9VGtIZ1ImYT0zNzk5MjcyX1ZyWGpOJnU9Y21hY2ZvcnVt" /><embed src="http://cdn.smugmug.com/ria/ShizVidz-2008042602.swf" flashVars="s=ZT0xJmk9MjE5MjU2NTQ4Jms9VGtIZ1ImYT0zNzk5MjcyX1ZyWGpOJnU9Y21hY2ZvcnVt" width="425" height="240" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always"></embed></object>
Nov 9, 2007: SmugMug is out with the awesome <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/">H.264 video format</a> that works on both the web and consumer devices (like the <a href="http://www.apple.com/webapps/entertainment/smugmug.html">iPhone</a>).

SmugMug's <a href="http://www.smugmug.com/help/video">video help section</a> should answer most questions. This thread is is for the gnarly ones. http://www.advrider.com/forums/images/smilies/jjen.gif

UPDATE: Feb 25, 2008 - we have a new Video Forum (http://www.dgrin.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46)! Check it out if you need help creating & editing your masterpiece, want to talk video gear and shooting tips, and more :barb

[Mike Lane]

SmugMug is out with the awesome H.264 video format (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/) that works on both the web and consumer devices (like the iPhone (http://www.apple.com/webapps/entertainment/smugmug.html)).

SmugMug's video help section (http://www.smugmug.com/help/video) should answer most questions. This thread is is for the gnarly ones. http://www.advrider.com/forums/images/smilies/jjen.gif

Hey! I know those two! :ivar

[richW]

Hey! I know those two! :ivarI'm sure the 'little one' has one of the best looking sites on SmugMug. :D

[darryl]

Hey! When Did You Add H.264 Support!!!?!?!?! Halloween??? Why Wasn't This Shouted From The Rooftops Like I'm Doing Right Now!?!??!!

[Sheaf]

Hey! When Did You Add H.264 Support!!!?!?!?! Halloween??? Why Wasn't This Shouted From The Rooftops Like I'm Doing Right Now!?!??!!

We were close to getting it around Halloween (thus the date of Andy's post), but it was actually released about an hour ago.

[darryl]

Did Andy somehow hide his post? Or did it just get buried and I missed it because it was Halloween and I was busy passing out candy to all of the 14 kids that came by?

This thread should be sticky. Or it should be renamed: "OMGWTFBBQ! SmugMug now does video right!"

(Well, let me go upload and see. ;-)

Wow!!! Can you tell I'm excited!??!?!

[scwalter]

The text in the flyout seems to extend beyond the box.

-Scott

[Baldy]

Did Andy somehow hide his post?It was hidden, waiting for video to go live. It took lots and lots of testing. :whew

[darryl]

I am *so* stoked! Waiting for my first video to upload now. Thank god for fast DSL.

(I *just* went through the hoops of having another parent in my son's school upload his photo to my Phanfare account just so I could try to embed the video in a captio on the school's SmugMug site. He shot in 640x480, and the stupid Phanfare player won't resize properly, so blah blah hack at the Flash params blah blah. I can't wait to have video integrated right into SmugMug. No... I did wait, along with everyone else.)

[darryl]

Any file size limits? Or strictly limits on length by minute?

Also, interesting choice of "preview frame". What is that -- random? It's like the 10th second out of a 15-second clip. Odd.

http://gladlee.smugmug.com/gallery/3711094#219256471

Also, huh -- Lightbox instead of embedded (compare to clip that precedes the one above). Guess that lets you skirt around the layouts getting too screwy, especially with all of the newfangled widescreen video cameras out there.

Will have to play more tomorrow. But I'm very very pleased. Thanks guys!!

[Andy]

The text in the flyout seems to extend beyond the box.

-Scott
Yeah, only if you use the photoBar bottom javascript thing - we'll see what can be done, but we can't make any promises right now. We'll talk internally and let you guys know as soon as we have something to say about it.

In the meantime, you can have the default photobar, which will format and display perfectly.

[Lou Gonzalez]

Is there a way to embed this video into a web page? Or a blog? I'd love to add some video entries into my blog where the video plays right there in the web page.

Please let me know.

Thanks!

[jfriend]

FYI to those interested in video, we've been discussing HD-capable video cameras and the software to process that video over here (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=74766).

[DavidTO]

I'll offer up the best software I know of to compress video for upload, simple, fast and wonderful: VisualHub (http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/). Mac only.

[DavidTO]

Got my first video (http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/gallery/3800406#219333206-A-LB) up with the new video goodness. It's not HD, or anything, but I'm loving the new feature.

I have one question, or maybe a feature request: I'd love to be able to set the poster frame for the thumb. Is that possible now? Or should I mosey over to the feature requests thread and mention it there? :ear

[Andy]

Got my first video (http://davidrosenthal.smugmug.com/gallery/3800406#219333206-A-LB) up with the new video goodness. It's not HD, or anything, but I'm loving the new feature.

I have one question, or maybe a feature request: I'd love to be able to set the poster frame for the thumb. Is that possible now? Or should I mosey over to the feature requests thread and mention it there? :ear
Yeah, I dunno how our Sorcerers would do that, but I'm in favor of it :D

[darryl]

Huh, the Play button is offset in this 320x240 video:

http://gladlee.smugmug.com/gallery/3711094#219256471
(Screencap attached)

Same thing in another video in a private gallery.

You guys seemed to be optimized for widescreen videos. :}

[darryl]

Also, check out the crazy color-mismatch that happens in this video when I play it on an Ubuntu Linux (7.0.4) box with Firefox 2.0.0.8, and the Totem Plug-In (which apparently acts like a QuickTime plug-in):

Toxic water!!

[darryl]

Which begs the question -- what if a viewer doesn't have the QuickTime plug-in installed? I guess it just tells you to install it?

Testing now.

[Lou Gonzalez]

Is there a way to embed this video into a web page? Or a blog? I'd love to add some video entries into my blog where the video plays right there in the web page.

Please let me know.

Thanks!

Would really love an answer to this question... even if the answer is no. :D

[Andy]

Huh, the Play button is offset in this 320x240 video:

http://gladlee.smugmug.com/gallery/3711094#219256471
(Screencap attached)

Same thing in another video in a private gallery.

You guys seemed to be optimized for widescreen videos. :}

Darryl, change to this link (thus removing any and all of your customizing and hacks):

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/3711094#219256471

It works fine :thumb

http://myskitch.com/awilliamsny/g___d_s_gallery___photos___santa_cruz_-_powered_by_smugmug-20071109-135234.jpg

So, there's something in your code causing it, post in the customizing forum for help in finding it, thanks!

[Andy]

Would really love an answer to this question... even if the answer is no. :D
Lou, we've all been up for days and nights getting this out the door... hang in there okay, thanks :D

[darryl]

Darryl, change to this link (thus removing any and all of your customizing and hacks):

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/3711094#219256471

It works fine :thumb

(snip)

So, there's something in your code causing it, post in the customizing forum for help in finding it, thanks!


Weird. It's not in my CSS. I used the webdevloper plug-in to clear it out and the button is still misaligned. Nothing in the Javascript either. Ok, I'll ask over on customization.

[bigwebguy]

[quote=Andy]Darryl, change to this link (thus removing any and all of your customizing and hacks):

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/3711094#219256471

It works fine :thumb

(snip)

Weird. It's not in my CSS. I used the webdevloper plug-in to clear it out and the button is still misaligned. Nothing in the Javascript either. Ok, I'll ask over on customization.The play button is centered to the photo area, not the photo. Some themes left align the photo so if you have a small video the play button won't line up.

you can fix that in your customization or choose a different theme.

[darryl]

The play button is centered to the photo area, not the photo. Some themes left align the photo so if you have a small video the play button won't line up.

you can fix that in your customization or choose a different theme.

Thanks!!

The fix is:

/* Fix for video play button being off-centered in certain themes */
#displayPhoto .photo {text-align : center}

[Baldy]

Would really love an answer to this question... even if the answer is no. :DHi Lou,

Sorry we've been uncharacteristically slow to answer you.

Everyone has probably noticed that we're being pretty low profile about this release -- no announcement in the control panel, no messages to everyone at SmugMug, no press releases, etc.

Reason is we want to make sure we understand what we're facing for support hero and bit-pumping resources before setting our servers on fire. YouTube torched their servers in an amazing way with very low resolution videos and we offer many times the bit rates of them.

This release was also mostly about the back end to get video running, user interface not so much.

How's that for a non-answer answer?

Thanks,
Baldy

[jfriend]

I applaud the choice of H.264 as the HD video format.

But, why require QuickTime? Why not let us use Flash? The site already depends upon Flash for the new slideshows and there is a version of Flash that also supports H.264. It seems like it would have made sense to not add yet another download and install for some folks and Flash is much more widely installed in web browsers than QuickTime.

[darryl]

Uh, didn't Baldy just say in the post above yours that UI changes are on the way?

I can't imagine that Don was all excited (http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2007/08/21/finally-flash-supports-h264-video/) about H.264 in Flash for nothing. :}

Hell, I'm just happy we can now upload without having to convert to MPEG-1. That's a *huge* step forward.

[jfriend]

Uh, didn't Baldy just say in the post above yours that UI changes are on the way?

I can't imagine that Don was all excited (http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2007/08/21/finally-flash-supports-h264-video/) about H.264 in Flash for nothing. :}

Hell, I'm just happy we can now upload without having to convert to MPEG-1. That's a *huge* step forward.

Baldy's post didn't say anything about an answer to my question. Yes, it said they didn't focus much on the front-end UI yet. But, it didn't say whether they were going to support or prefer Flash and thus that's why I asked. I've also seen someone in dpreview asking "why Smugmug is using QuickTime" so I was looking for more info for that discussion.

[darryl]

I guess I was trying to lRiEnAeDs. :-}

[darryl]

Oh, a feature request:

It'd be nice if the thumbnails for videos showed a tiny play button on them or something else to indicate that they were videos, not photos. Better still, maybe a little icon and the length of video, like so (screencap of a Phanfare site).

[DavidTO]

How do you prevent download of the video? I can't seem to make Save Video go away.

[onethumb]

I applaud the choice of H.264 as the HD video format.

But, why require QuickTime? Why not let us use Flash? The site already depends upon Flash for the new slideshows and there is a version of Flash that also supports H.264. It seems like it would have made sense to not add yet another download and install for some folks and Flash is much more widely installed in web browsers than QuickTime.

There's no shipping version of Flash that supports H.264, I'm afraid. And we won't require our customers to manually install beta software.

But don't for one second think that today's release and my blog post (http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2007/08/21/finally-flash-supports-h264-video/) are unrelated. :)

[jfriend]

There's no shipping version of Flash that supports H.264, I'm afraid. And we won't require our customers to manually install beta software.

But don't for one second think that today's release and my blog post (http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2007/08/21/finally-flash-supports-h264-video/) are unrelated. :)

OK, thanks for the confirmation. I'll wait patiently.

You could detect that the H.264 compatible version of Flash was there and use it if there, but fallback to QuickTime if not. I have both on my system and it's using QuickTime which is not my favorite.

[Andy]

Baldy's post didn't say anything about an answer to my question. Yes, it said they didn't focus much on the front-end UI yet. But, it didn't say whether they were going to support or prefer Flash and thus that's why I asked. I've also seen someone in dpreview asking "why Smugmug is using QuickTime" so I was looking for more info for that discussion.
John can you shoot me the link?

[jfriend]

John can you shoot me the link?

I posted the latest public info I had there. The thread is here (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1018&thread=25538199). It's a Smugmug vs. Zenfolio thread and I decided to mention the new video support as one new thing in favor of Smugmug.

[DavidTO]

Would really love an answer to this question... even if the answer is no. :D


Hey, Lou. Just gotta say, I grew up in Rochester. Haven't been back for hmm... 19 years? :thumb

[Andy]

How do you prevent download of the video? I can't seem to make Save Video go away.
Yeah I believe you can't prevent it from being saved in the player, too... Is that important :ear

[DavidTO]

Yeah I believe you can't prevent it from being saved in the player, too... Is that important :ear


Quicktime videos can be protected from saving, in general. I have no idea of that's how you would control it on the back end.

Yes, for me it's a deal breaker.

EDIT: At least with the player you can only download if you have QT Pro. A good start would be to have the ability to toggle the Save Movie in the flyout. At least then you wouldn't be advertising it.

[davidweaver]

Quicktime videos can be protected from saving, in general. I have no idea of that's how you would control it on the back end.

Yes, for me it's a deal breaker.

EDIT: At least with the player you can only download if you have QT Pro. A good start would be to have the ability to toggle the Save Movie in the flyout. At least then you wouldn't be advertising it.


Is it really an issue at all? It's fairly easy to capture/download video from most sources. Same for still images too, but it takes a little more work than simply "print screen". You could always watermark it, and copyright notice is fine in the trailing credits.

I'm glad SM offers this improved video. It will be nice to add a few of the very few videos I've done as portfolio floatsam.

[DavidTO]

Is it really an issue at all? It's fairly easy to capture/download video from most sources. Same for still images too, but it takes a little more work than simply "print screen". You could always watermark it, and copyright notice is fine in the trailing credits.

I'm glad SM offers this improved video. It will be nice to add a few of the very few videos I've done as portfolio floatsam.


Like I said, at least being able to toggle the big "save movie" flyout would be nice. That would deter 90%. Or at least it wouldn't imply that I condone downloading my videos. Make sense?

[Andy]

Like I said, at least being able to toggle the big "save movie" flyout would be nice. That would deter 90%. Or at least it wouldn't imply that I condone downloading my videos. Make sense?in the meantime, you could add this to your CSS for your movies galleries:

.gallery_3800406 .photoSizes {display: none;}

[DavidTO]

in the meantime, you could add this to your CSS for your movies galleries:

.gallery_3800406 .photoSizes {display: none;}


Thanks, Andy. That's awesome. :thumb

[DavidTO]

So far, I'm thinking that the best layout to present videos in is Traditional. You get a thumbnail and the caption below, so it's easy to identify the videos as to what they are. With SmugMug view, for instance, you'd need to click on each video to see what it's called. For me, anyway, the caption is really important to the presentation, it describes what the video is. I think that's more important with video than with a single still image, which is mostly self-evident. But the one frame of the video thumb may be meaningless.

But, there is one big problem with viewing videos in Traditional. There's no way (that I can find) to get the video viewed in LightBox. If I could present the thumbs in Traditional, and then have the video viewd in LightBox, I would be very, very happy. :ear

[ian408]

This is so cool. I'm gonna have to get a video camera now :thumb

[DodgeV83]

If we upload our own h.264 videos, will they still be re-encoded? I'm guessing we were given a TIME limit (5 minutes) and not a FILE SIZE limit (16MB for example), because you're going to be re-encoding the video no matter what format/file size video we upload.

If an uploaded h.264 video will NOT be re-encoded, whats the highest bit-rate or file size you support?

~Rob

[Andy]

If we upload our own h.264 videos, will they still be re-encoded? I'm guessing we were given a TIME limit (5 minutes) and not a FILE SIZE limit (16MB for example), because you're going to be re-encoding the video no matter what format/file size video we upload.

If an uploaded h.264 video will NOT be re-encoded, whats the highest bit-rate or file size you support?

~RobWait. That's it? :lol3 We almost named this the DodgeV83 release :D :wave

[DodgeV83]

Wait. That's it? :lol3 We almost named this the DodgeV83 release :D :wave

:D I made that post after jumping around for an hour, unable to contain my excitement :barb :ivar :ivar :barb I really REALLY didn't expect you guys to come up with a solution for HD Video! :jawdrop

I'm testing it out right now, and of course I'm going to make a detailed *review* thread about my findings, but it looks amazing so far :thumb

[PBolchover]

Generally, apart from the fact that I can't get it to work (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=76142), it looks very good.

(To me, having thumbnails flagged as videos would be very desirable.)

In terms of generating thumbnails, the perfect application would
1) Allow the user to choose which frame from the video should be used
2) Allow the user to zoom in
3) Give the option of putting a "play button" on the thumbnail

However, this could be very CPU intensive, so how about
* Allowing the user to upload a separate image, to use as the thumbnail for the video.
This would allow the user to do 1), 2) and 3) on their own computer, and let smugmug simply display the thumbnail.

[cabbey]

(To me, having thumbnails flagged as videos would be very desirable.)

In terms of generating thumbnails, the perfect application would
1) Allow the user to choose which frame from the video should be used
2) Allow the user to zoom in
3) Give the option of putting a "play button" on the thumbnail

However, this could be very CPU intensive, so how about
* Allowing the user to upload a separate image, to use as the thumbnail for the video.
This would allow the user to do 1), 2) and 3) on their own computer, and let smugmug simply display the thumbnail.

:agree wow, I came in here with the intent of basically witting the same thing, so instead I'll just go AOL mode and say "me too".

[CleeFelty]

Thought I'd throw this out there. Please forgive the video-novice question!

Will this new video program support upload the .3g2 files that come off some cell phones? I tried, but got an error message. Maybe wishful thinking, but I thought I'd check if maybe it was me?

BTW - just got a new Canon SD P&S and am psyched I won't have to host those larger video files off-site! Thank you to all involved in the hardwork :clap

[darryl]

BTW - just got a new Canon SD P&S and am psyched I won't have to host those larger video files off-site! Thank you to all involved in the hardwork :clap

Just don't let those videos run too long. The limit for Power accounts is 2.5 min, for Pro accounts it's 5 min. :-/

[bigwebguy]

Just don't let those videos run too long. The limit for Power accounts is 2.5 min, for Pro accounts it's 5 min. :-/dunno if Canon has changed this, but my olde Canon A80 has a 2 min limit on videos.

[DodgeV83]

dunno if Canon has changed this, but my olde Canon A80 has a 2 min limit on videos.

They have :)

[Andy]

Just don't let those videos run too long. The limit for Power accounts is 2.5 min, for Pro accounts it's 5 min. :-/
5mins of hi-def goodness, why not a happy face? :)

[jtb]

I was just thinking the other day, "I really want my family to see some vidclips, guess I'll be stuck using Google", then I was hunting around smugmug and saw that you can upload any format now!!

YOU GUYS ROCK!!!!

Thanks again!

-- Jesse

[CleeFelty]

No worries - I've trained myself to keep clips to about 1 minute anyways from the old days of 8MB/Mpeg-1 conversion. This is a great improvement for me - what lucky timing to get a new camera!

If anyone knows what I might do with sharing .3g2 clips, preferably on SmugMug, let me/all know! :dunno

Just don't let those videos run too long. The limit for Power accounts is 2.5 min, for Pro accounts it's 5 min. :-/

[DodgeV83]

No worries - I've trained myself to keep clips to about 1 minute anyways from the old days of 8MB/Mpeg-1 conversion. This is a great improvement for me - what lucky timing to get a new camera!

If anyone knows what I might do with sharing .3g2 clips, preferably on SmugMug, let me/all know! :dunno

Just convert them to another format before uploading. If your computer can play them, you should be able to convert them.

[darryl]

5mins of hi-def goodness, why not a happy face? :)

The Internets (or maybe it's just all of my old computers) are too slow to handle hi-def anything. But they *can* handle 5-10 minute 320x240 clips of concerts where I can bring my Canon S3.

Also, I'm fortunate to be able to afford a Pro account. A normal Power account only gets 2.5 minutes. I'm thinking of those folks too.

[devbobo]

No worries - I've trained myself to keep clips to about 1 minute anyways from the old days of 8MB/Mpeg-1 conversion. This is a great improvement for me - what lucky timing to get a new camera!

If anyone knows what I might do with sharing .3g2 clips, preferably on SmugMug, let me/all know! :dunno

Hi CleeFelty,

No, it doesn't appear that we can decode 3g2 video.

Sorry.

David

[CSwinton]

So, if I'm exporting a video for upload from either QuickTime or Adobe Premiere Elements, what video quality % would you recommend? I'm new to H.264 encoding and was wondering if people had a good starting point. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be using 100%, as my ~3 min video turned into a ~400-500mb file -- not a fun upload. At 50% it still looked good and was 140mb. What quality setting or compression amount is used when the video is converted on the smugmug side?
Anyone have any recommendations? :scratch

[mbrady]

Oh, a feature request:

It'd be nice if the thumbnails for videos showed a tiny play button on them or something else to indicate that they were videos, not photos. Better still, maybe a little icon and the length of video, like so (screencap of a Phanfare site).


I would like to second this request!

[mjohnsonperl]

Here is a nice video converter I've been using called SUPER. (Windows Only)
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

This program converts just about any video format into any other video format, and it can do it all in batch, so if you have 40 video files you want converted... load it up and process them all with the same settings.

Thier website is horrible, but the program works really well. Finding the download is extreamly painful. You can go to the very bottom of this page: http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html and look for a small link at the very bottom called "Start Downloading SUPER ©". On the next page at the top of the page, right below the big red box there is a link called "download and use". Click that and on the next page at the very bottom of the page there is a download link in small text called "Download SUPER © setup file". This should actually download the program. A direct link to anything on this site doesn't seem to work.

Since getting to the download is so rediculous I cut out most of the work by just putting the setup download on my server for you guys, but you might need the above instructions to get updates in the future.
DOWNLOAD: http://digitalmediashelf.com/temp/SUPERsetup.exe


I have a Sony Handycam DCR-SR200 that has an internal hard drive records straight to MPEG-2, and I just plug the camera into my computer and move the files off. Problem I've run into with sites like YouTube or Facebook is that they only play them with a Flash player, and I've had a lot of issues with the widescreen video clips the camera takes getting stretched after uploaded to most major video sites. I've had to add the step of letterboxing all my video clips before I upload them to avoid the streched look. Since SmugMug supports H.264, this will eliminate the step, make the videos look much better, and I can manage everything from one site.

The news of this is huge, and I'm excited! :thumb

Now I'm going to try and figure out how this works with API stuff, and the SyncMug program I've been working on. I know my SyncMug app will download the video files that were stored as MPEG-1... so the testing will begin...

[Jill Bazeley]

So, if I'm exporting a video for upload from either QuickTime or Adobe Premiere Elements, what video quality % would you recommend? I'm new to H.264 encoding and was wondering if people had a good starting point....
...Anyone have any recommendations? :scratch
I, too, could use advice on proper exporting from Premiere Elements. I tried asking my teenagers (the usual experts) and they were stumped. :dunno

Cameron, I visited your site and love its simple, clean design.

Andy, you should ask Sony, Panasonic, el al for a kickback as it looks like we'll all be upgrading our video capabilities now.

[darryl]

Gah! The whole point of SmugMug accepting video in any format and converting it for you is that you don't have to worry about formats or quality.

The idea (I believe) is to be able to do something with all those MVI_1234.AVI files that end up on your camera amongst all of your IMG_1235.JPG files.

And now you can just drag them into the Simple Uploader all together. Hooray.

If you are doing heavy editing (Really? Of a 2.5-5min clip?), then I guess you have to do an export. But unless your source is DV, can't you just save in the same format, to minimize quality degradation?

If not, you should encode the video in whatever format you want (ah, except 3GP2, apparently). I can't recall -- is SmugMug smart enough to recognize an H.264/AAC-encoded video and not re-encode it on their end?

Use the highest quality you can that produces a file size that you are comfortable waiting to upload. I do most of my video uploading overnight. But then, Phanfare has 10-minute limits on their video, so my uploads (MJPEG-encoded AVIs straight from my Canon S3) are *huge*.

[Sheaf]

Well it still matters, Darryl. SmugVideo is not meant to be archival storage. We do not store the original video.

So if people want quicker uploads without much loss in quality, uploading a somewhat compressed copy is a viable solution.

[Jill Bazeley]

Well, yes, I plan to edit in Premiere Elements - 2.5 minutes is an eternity when you consider the old generalization that 7 seconds is a pleasing length between edits.

And as for my query about the best type of export, I am indeed concerned about the speed of the uploads. Smugmug graciously soaked up and converted the AVIs I sent, but I waited forever to view my "masterpieces." I'm happy to encode on this end, if I can do it easily enough and if it doesn't set up a double encoding situation that reduces quality.

[Sheaf]

Well, yes, I plan to edit in Premiere Elements - 2.5 minutes is an eternity when you consider the old generalization that 7 seconds is a pleasing length between edits.

And as for my query about the best type of export, I am indeed concerned about the speed of the uploads. Smugmug graciously soaked up and converted the AVIs I sent, but I waited forever to view my "masterpieces." I'm happy to encode on this end, if I can do it easily enough and if it doesn't set up a double encoding situation that reduces quality.

I wish I could help you there and perhaps someone else has some advice. Compressing JPEG's is one thing (and actually quite a conundrum since different software often compresses on different scales), but video just makes it considerably more difficult.

You might want to take a fairly short clip and try compressing it a few different ways to see how much the file size is reduced and if there is any loss of quality when it is uploaded to SmugMug.

[mjohnsonperl]

I took a 2 minuite video clip from my HandyCam that was originally captured as MPEG2. The file size was 130Mb. I used SUPER to convert it to H.264 using a 1248Kb/s video compression, and 64Kb/s for the audio compression, and it reduced the 2 minute file to a size of 30Mb, which is much more manageable to upload. I didn't notice a lot of video degridation, but my source wasn't the best to compare with... and at a glance I thought it was a decent starting point. My source resolution was 720x480 and when it was compressed I didn't change the resolution.

[TrueBob]

<<Nov 9, 2007: SmugMug is out with the awesome H.264 video format (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/) that works on both the web and consumer devices (like the iPhone (http://www.apple.com/webapps/entertainment/smugmug.html)). SmugMug's video help section (http://www.smugmug.com/help/video) should answer most questions. This thread is is for the gnarly ones. http://www.advrider.com/forums/images/smilies/jjen.gif >>

What a nice surprise :)

Am I correct that pre-existing MPG1 videos in galleries, while using a QuickTime playback have not been 'converted'?

Will they remain as is, or be convereted, or perhaps a 'Video Tool' set under the Photo Tools similar to recoloring that would let us pick to convert from MPG1 to H.264? (Or is there no advantage to that in the 'already there' videos?

Bob Buckland ?:-)
http://TrueBob.smugmug.com

[now if my photos just showed up on search engines as fast as my dGrin forum postings <G>] ;)

[TrueBob]

In the past, I could somewhat track how many 'plays' a video [MPEG1] received by drilling down into the stats and looking at the count for 'Original' for a given thumbnail.

With the addition of the two new video sizes, will the stats graphs and the drilldown include the two Video 'sizes' (Web/DVD) as individual listings to help monitor how well posted videos do as far as viewing popularity?

Will folks be able to 'vote' on Video popuplarity and if so will those be in the SmugMug 'today' popular pictures list, or a separate 'popular video' page?


Bob Buckland ?:-)
http://TrueBob.smugmug.com

[SunGlo]

I recently uploaded a 3 minute DVD video to try-out the video display feature. I must say I am "gob smacked". What an awesome feature. The display and sound quality are outstanding.

One big disappointment came when I went to click the play button and a menu popped up displaying "Save Movie". I set the gallery to "protect", why am I receiving this option? Also, after the presentation has completed, I can right-click and save the movie to disk.

Why is the protect option not working on this gallery? I had to set the gallery to private to somewhat protect my work. Is there a work-around for this problem

Gallery link ===> http://sunglo.smugmug.com/gallery/3841746

Website URLs ===> www.sunglo.smugmug.com (http://www.sunglo.smugmug.com)
www.sunglophoto.com (http://www.sunglophoto.com)

Have fun,

Phil

[plympton]

Anyone know of a good method to BATCH convert (Mac or Windows, heck even Linux) that will convert a whole directory tree of files?

To be nice to the poor SM servers, I plan on pre-converting to h.264 from my ungainly AVI's ahead of time if I can. :-)

-Dan

[SunGlo]

I recently uploaded a 3 minute DVD video to try-out the video display feature. I must say I am "gob smacked". What an awesome feature. The display and sound quality are outstanding.

One big disappointment came when I went to click the play button and a menu popped up displaying "Save Movie". I set the gallery to "protect", why am I receiving this option? Also, after the presentation has completed, I can right-click and save the movie to disk.

Why is the protect option not working on this gallery? I had to set the gallery to private to somewhat protect my work. Is there a work-around for this problem

Gallery link ===> http://sunglo.smugmug.com/gallery/3841746

Website URLs ===> www.sunglo.smugmug.com (http://www.sunglo.smugmug.com)
www.sunglophoto.com (http://www.sunglophoto.com)

Have fun,

Phil

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make the gallery image protection option also work for uploaded videos?

[Andy]

There is no protection for movies, has never been, on SmugMug.

You could try this :D

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=678614#post678614
(just a few post above )

[updeinva]

I am very, very much digging the new video feature. What a great addition. I know it is in it's early stage, but a few things I would love to see (some have already been mentioned) implemented are:

1. The ability to embed the video into another site or blog.

2. The ability to place a video in place of a banner on my smugmug homepage (if this is possible, could someone please share how).

3. A play button that shows up on the video thumbnail.

Great job to all who helped bring high quality video to smugmug.

[SunGlo]

There is no protection for movies, has never been, on SmugMug.

You could try this :D

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=678614#post678614
(just a few post above )

Thanks Andy.

[Jill Bazeley]

This is just a quick update about exports since I was yapping about using Adobe Premiere Elements to edit and convert before uploading. Premiere Elements 2, which is the version I have, does not convert to MPEG-4. Therefore, I chose to turn my test .avi into a .wmv file and upload that to Smugmug. The video itself is extremely poor quality because of multiple issues on this end, but appears not to have suffered much at all from the second conversion. Even better, it only took two minutes to upload! I'm now eager to get my hands on Premiere Elements 3 to see what happens with an actual MPEG-4. The current version of Premiere Elements is "4" but seems not to offer great advantages over "3." (I don't plan to try any other video editing software as I feel all the users in the household are better off with the "devil we know." )

[Lou Gonzalez]

Hi Lou,

Sorry we've been uncharacteristically slow to answer you.

Everyone has probably noticed that we're being pretty low profile about this release -- no announcement in the control panel, no messages to everyone at SmugMug, no press releases, etc.

Reason is we want to make sure we understand what we're facing for support hero and bit-pumping resources before setting our servers on fire. YouTube torched their servers in an amazing way with very low resolution videos and we offer many times the bit rates of them.

This release was also mostly about the back end to get video running, user interface not so much.

How's that for a non-answer answer?

Thanks,
Baldy

Wow! That is the best non-answer I've seen in a very long time! LOL

Keep us updated on the embed feature (if its even in the mix yet). Then I'm sold!

[darryl]

Anyone know of a good method to BATCH convert (Mac or Windows, heck even Linux) that will convert a whole directory tree of files?

To be nice to the poor SM servers, I plan on pre-converting to h.264 from my ungainly AVI's ahead of time if I can. :-)

-Dan

Hey Dan, funny seeing you here. :-}

Before H.264, I used ffmpeg to convert my honking big AVIs to MPEG-1 files. For some reason SmugMug thought they were invalid, but after erroring out, the videos still showed up later.

At any rate, ffmpeg is the way to go for automated conversion on Linux, assuming SmugMug is a little more tolerant of the H.264 files that it produces. I used the following settings for converting to MP4 to upload to the YouChoob:

ffmpeg -i foo.avi -r 30.00 -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 512 -sameq foo.mp4

I was *very* pleased with the results, even after the YouChoob conversion. Oh, you'll have to go through the hassle of recompiling ffmpeg w/ AAC, as I think licensing restrictions prevent Ubuntu and other distributions from including it in their packaged versions. :-P

[sellis]

I tried to upload a .wmv today before hitting the road and it didn't seem to work. Did I do something wrong or does this format not support .wmv's?

I tried to read all eight pages of this thread, I hope this hasn't been answered already.

[devbobo]

I tried to upload a .wmv today before hitting the road and it didn't seem to work. Did I do something wrong or does this format not support .wmv's?

I tried to read all eight pages of this thread, I hope this hasn't been answered already.

sellis,

it depends on the codec used to encode the wmv, do you know what codec is used ?

:ear

Cheers,

David

[sellis]

sellis,

it depends on the codec used to encode the wmv, do you know what codec is used ?

:ear

Cheers,

David

I haven't a clue. I used a video file I had made a few months ago just as a test. I used Photoshop Elements 4.0 and exported as a dvd file. The details window says Windows Media Video V7 if that helps.

I'm going to try some other settings, I randomly picked this particular one as a test.

Thanks,
Sam

[sellis]

sellis,

it depends on the codec used to encode the wmv, do you know what codec is used ?

:ear

Cheers,

David

I also just noticed that it is 9 minutes long and the limit is 5 minutes.

[photogmomma]

On a side note, I was very pleased when SmugBrowser (plugin for FF) uploaded my AVIs without choking!

Although my AVIs are mostly really low quality, they did GREAT when uploaded - much better than the previous ones I uploaded after converting.

Only "gripe" is that I'd love it if SM would just truncate anything that's too long at the 2.5 or 5 minute mark so I at least get most of my video up without having to do any post with it. (I have some crummy programs and dont' have time to research.)

Overall, though, I'm absolutely thrilled! I'll be using this a LOT for my personal stuff and when it gets upgraded for pro, I'll be doing that, too!

Oh, another FR: it would be awesome if you could allow us to sell the video as a DVD for clients to purchase. They purchase, it gets shipped to them on DVD all pretty and nice! :D Just a thought!

[Skippy]

I recently uploaded a 3 minute DVD video to try-out the video display feature. I must say I am "gob smacked". What an awesome feature. The display and sound quality are outstanding.

One big disappointment came when I went to click the play button and a menu popped up displaying "Save Movie". I set the gallery to "protect", why am I receiving this option? Also, after the presentation has completed, I can right-click and save the movie to disk.

Why is the protect option not working on this gallery? I had to set the gallery to private to somewhat protect my work. Is there a work-around for this problem

Gallery link ===> http://sunglo.smugmug.com/gallery/3841746

Website URLs ===> www.sunglo.smugmug.com (http://www.sunglo.smugmug.com)
www.sunglophoto.com (http://www.sunglophoto.com)

Have fun,

Phil

I'm gob smacked too Phil your video clip is awesome.
What a beautiful sound track you added to that :clap
I'm truly impressed :thumb ..... Skipppy :D
.

[cabbey]

Anyone know of a good method to BATCH convert (Mac or Windows, heck even Linux) that will convert a whole directory tree of files?

To be nice to the poor SM servers, I plan on pre-converting to h.264 from my ungainly AVI's ahead of time if I can. :-)

-Dan

ffmpeg built with the right options should be able to do it. There's a shareware gui wrapper on mac os/x called ffmpegX, you can use it to figure out the convoluted command line options needed to get the output you want. (ps ax from a command prompt will show you what it's doing... it's stuck in a bit of shell script, but should be pretty easy to unwrap). I'm using a set of scripts interchangably between mac and linux to manipulate some files here for storage to optical media. You might be able to find a windows build somewhere... but why bother? just boot a linux live cd if you need that processor. :)

[GJMPhoto]

I'm sure there are multiple reasons for this, but just in case one of them is "resolvable", I'll try asking here:

I created a .wmv clip that runs perfectly smoothly natively. I uploaded it to : http://www.garymorgenphotography.com/gallery/3587501

The quality of the smug-version is SOOO Much better than the previous Google Video and YouTube versions...however, the video jumps and stutters sometimes.

Any idea of what might be causing this and if there's something I can do to smooth it out?

Thanks,
- Gary.

[SunGlo]

I'm gob smacked too Phil your video clip is awesome.
What a beautiful sound track you added to that :clap
I'm truly impressed :thumb ..... Skipppy :D
.

Thanks Skippy. I've produced DVD's for customers in the past, but this is the first one I've shortened and made public. The original file was over 250 MB and took 45 minutes to upload on DSL, but well worth the effort. This is an awesome SmugMug feature. I just wish they could provide the same level of protection that they do with images. Thanks again.

[peestandingup]

I'm testing it out right now, and of course I'm going to make a detailed *review* thread about my findings, but it looks amazing so far :thumbDodge, going by our past conversations, I thought your head would explode seeing that they arent using WMV. :rofl

[wellman]

in the meantime, you could add this to your CSS for your movies galleries:

.gallery_3800406 .photoSizes {display: none;}

How I missed this, I don't know. Incredible! :ivar

Quick question. I have the save movie thing disabled, and I have photorank turned off. That leaves me with a blank slidy thing coming out. How again do I turn that off? Thanks.

Again, w00t! :barb

[Sheaf]

How I missed this, I don't know. Incredible! :ivar

Quick question. I have the save movie thing disabled, and I have photorank turned off. That leaves me with a blank slidy thing coming out. How again do I turn that off? Thanks.

Again, w00t! :barb
For all galleries (Warning: loss of functionality), javascript:

showPhotoBar = false;

For an individual gallery, check out http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=70064&highlight=photobar .

[wellman]

For all galleries (Warning: loss of functionality), javascript:

showPhotoBar = false;

For an individual gallery, check out http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=70064&highlight=photobar .

Worked a treat. Thank you very much. :thumb

[pilotdave]

I guess this is more of a feature request...

Allow longer videos!

I have a video that's something like 5:15. It's starting off as a nicely compressed WMV file.... about 20 megs. But nope, can't upload it. I can't shorten it.... I'm trying to share it, not a shorter version of it.

I find this new video system to be a bust. I don't want to share 20 second videos that are 300 megs. I'd rather see a file size limit than a length limit. I'll live with lower quality if I need to upload a longer video.

Maybe it's just me, but more often than not, I can't even get videos to play all the way through. They just stop loading at some random point.

The new system is slick, but off the mark for my needs.

Dave

[brianshiro]

Is there a way to add the play button onto the video thumbnails, so one can know at a glance which ones are video? Phanfare does this very well, and they also show a text string with the movie length on the thumbnail too.

[Andy]

Is there a way to add the play button onto the video thumbnails, so one can know at a glance which ones are video? Phanfare does this very well, and they also show a text string with the movie length on the thumbnail too.
:wave welcome, and thanks for the suggestion :) Others have asked, too. We'll see what we can do.

[Andy]

I guess this is more of a feature request...

Allow longer videos!

I have a video that's something like 5:15. It's starting off as a nicely compressed WMV file.... about 20 megs. But nope, can't upload it. I can't shorten it.... I'm trying to share it, not a shorter version of it.

I find this new video system to be a bust. I don't want to share 20 second videos that are 300 megs. I'd rather see a file size limit than a length limit. I'll live with lower quality if I need to upload a longer video.

Maybe it's just me, but more often than not, I can't even get videos to play all the way through. They just stop loading at some random point.

The new system is slick, but off the mark for my needs.

DaveOuch, sorry we missed the mark for you, Dave! This is a big deal for us, you can imagine the complexity involved. We had to put some kind of limits. You're sure there's no way you can edit your movie to be 16 seconds shorter? :dunno

I wish I had a better, different answer for you, I really do :(

[RichardsPictures]

Is there a way to stop the white fade at the end? I want the last part to be the final frame of my video. Other than that, awsome service. Wish I would have gone pro a while ago.

I've been a member since Nov 2003 and a forum member since 2005...and this is one of my first issues w/ SmugMug.

[brianshiro]

I need to rotate a video from landscape to portrait. Is this possible in smugmug?

[pilotdave]

Ouch, sorry we missed the mark for you, Dave! This is a big deal for us, you can imagine the complexity involved. We had to put some kind of limits. You're sure there's no way you can edit your movie to be 16 seconds shorter? :dunno

I wish I had a better, different answer for you, I really do :(

It's not that I couldn't shorten the video, it's that I was trying to share a video that I had made as a segment of a longer video (the rest being made by someone else). The video was the length of a particular song. So I could have cut the end off, but then I wouldn't be sharing the whole thing.

I understand that this is complicated. I actually run a video sharing website aside from my smugmug site. Pretty ironic that I like to use smugmug for video sharing over my other site, but only for videos I don't want public... but the difference is that I can't do private galleries on my video site. That's something I was working on years ago and never completed... so I appreciate smugmug even more.

I know when you convert videos from one format to another, things get complicated. File sizes of the uploaded videos don't matter. But maybe you can set a longer time limit for videos uploaded at "web" resolution only. You guys pay for file size, not for video length. I know when I upload a 320x240 video and no "DVD" size is created, a much longer video could be stored for the same price. It's just more complicated to program it, but I can't imagine why it would be THAT complicated.

I'd like to be able to sacrifice quality and upload 10 minute videos. On the web, there will always be a comprimise between quality and file size for videos.

I also wish videos were available in other formats or flash. I always seem to find that the users of my video site prefer almost anything to quicktime-formats. Flash is so universal at this point... might not work well for the HD-quality videos though I guess.

Dave

[Andy]

I need to rotate a video from landscape to portrait. Is this possible in smugmug?No, I'm sorry it is not.

[Andy]

Is there a way to stop the white fade at the end? I want the last part to be the final frame of my video. Other than that, awsome service. Wish I would have gone pro a while ago.

I've been a member since Nov 2003 and a forum member since 2005...and this is one of my first issues w/ SmugMug.
Sure, but this is done in your video editing itself, not on SmugMug....

[JDSX]

Hi. I’m new to the world of video having just purchased a Canon HG-10. In its highest quality setting it records at 1440x1080 which I convert to mpeg-2 from mt2s. I upgraded my account and started uploading the videos but they all look squeezed in. How do I prevent this?

[Ben]

Hi. I’m new to the world of video having just purchased a Canon HG-10. In its highest quality setting it records at 1440x1080 which I convert to mpeg-2 from mt2s. I upgraded my account and started uploading the videos but they all look squeezed in. How do I prevent this?

The video output from your camera should actually be 1920x1080, so if you are converting to 1440x1080, that would explain the problem right there.

The HG10 is recording in 1080i HD, at 1440x1080 at all compression settings. As is the case with most 1080i camcorders, only 1440 pixels per scanline are written to disk to save space, anamorphically squeezed from this HG10's 1920x1080 sensors to 1440x1080 on disk, and then stretched back out for the full 1920x1080i when it's played back.

Does that make sense?

[JDSX]

The video output from your camera should actually be 1920x1080, so if you are converting to 1440x1080, that would explain the problem right there.

Does that make sense?
Unfortunately it's not true. I called Canon about that when I saw the files were coming from the camera at 1440x1080 and it turns out they expect the HDTV to upscale it when viewing from the camera via HDMI. It looks fine when I play it at 1440x1080 too, it's only when I upload to Smugmug that it distorts.

[PBolchover]

It sounds as if you are suffering from the non-square pixel issue...

[JDSX]

It sounds as if you are suffering from the non-square pixel issue...
Honestly I'm suffering from the whole quagmire that is video. Codecs, bitrates, tons of quirks, and more formats than there are companies to produce them.

[JDSX]

Ben, you gave me the answer in a way. I have to first upscale the videos back to 1920x1080 before uploading them. I tested and it works.

On a different note, I skimmed this thread but wasn't sure if it was established what happens when a user tries to view a video and doesn't have quicktime installed. Is there a prompt? One of my family members said he's unable to see videos and I thought that might be the problem.

[SunGlo]

Ben, you gave me the answer in a way. I have to first upscale the videos back to 1920x1080 before uploading them. I tested and it works.

On a different note, I skimmed this thread but wasn't sure if it was established what happens when a user tries to view a video and doesn't have quicktime installed. Is there a prompt? One of my family members said he's unable to see videos and I thought that might be the problem.

Some of my users were notified they needed QuickTime and others were not. I think the ones that were not notified needed to upgrade to the latest version. I included instructions and a link to download QuickTime with my "view my video" emails.

Have fun,

Phil

Video link ===> http://sunglo.smugmug.com/gallery/3841746

[JDSX]

Some of my users were notified they needed QuickTime and others were not. I think the ones that were not notified needed to upgrade to the latest version. I included instructions and a link to download QuickTime with my "view my video" emails.

Have fun,

Phil

Video link ===> http://sunglo.smugmug.com/gallery/3841746
I would rate that a very big problem for Smugmug. A gallery specifically attracts many unsophisticated visitors (elderly relatives, etc.) who can't be expected to go searching for special installs. They expect things to either be immediately viewable or specific intuitive prompts to make things viewable (such as they'd see for viewing Flash).

On a different note, does anyone know optimal settings I should use for the SUPER application to convert to the compressed format for upload?

[colourbox]

Does this announcement provide the final H.264 support that SmugMug needs to completely change over to Flash video and dump the requirement for a QuickTime plug-in?

Flash Player Update 3 (Final) (http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2007/12/flash_player_9_update_3_final.html)

Just curious :)

[BrianLowther]

I love the new video support.

I have found a little problem.

I uploaded an .avi move for testing.
It has been coverted and displays in my gallery no problem.
When I use the Save Movie option (web or DVD) from PhotoRank and save ( instead of opening directly in quicktime) the file extension is . AVI.
The QuickTime player won't load the downloaded movie.

If I change the extension to .mp4 everything is good to go.

Brian

[Pamela]

I just uploaded a movie made mp4 / to a gallery.
It downloaded and said upload completed. But I cant find it.

Can someone help me with this?


Thank you

Pamela

Edit: I actually downloaded a m4v version / I also just realized that movie was 5.53 minutes long. Is that why it isnt working?

[Sheaf]

Edit: I actually downloaded a m4v version / I also just realized that movie was 5.53 minutes long. Is that why it isnt working?

Most likely, yes. We currently have a limit of 5 minutes for Pro's and 2.5 minutes for Power users.

[Elmakias]

I uploaded a 5 minute video. How long should it take to recode this thing?
Its been over an hour...and its in the right format i checked and double checked.
I have done this before successfully, cept the videos were only 3 mintues long, i am the pro user, so i should be fine with 5 mins.

//adam

[Sheaf]

I uploaded a 5 minute video. How long should it take to recode this thing?
Its been over an hour...and its in the right format i checked and double checked.
I have done this before successfully, cept the videos were only 3 mintues long, i am the pro user, so i should be fine with 5 mins.

//adam

Generally they will render within about 15 minutes, but it could conceivably take longer during a very busy time. You would be amazed how much processing power/time it takes to do these videos at 1280x720.

Can you give me a link to the video?

[JoeyandJinja]

Hi!

I've read through the thread and can't figure out what I did wrong. I uploaded a 2 minute video (Power User) and the upload completed fine, but nothing is appearing in my gallery, even though it has been almost 24 hours. I used the Simple Uploader and the upload dialogue indicated the upload was complete. The gallery remained on "Processing image" for a while, eventually I refreshed and now the gallery just says Empty Gallery.

What did I do wrong? Thanks!

http://www.joeyandjinja.smugmug.com/gallery/3956600

[chrishathaway]

First of all, thank you so much for the new video features... truly an answer to my prayers.

Unfortunately, I'm having some trouble uploading AVI files from my Canon PowerShot A560. I don't do anything besides copy them from my SD card, but when I upload them to a gallery, I look in the upload log, and I get "Tried and failed 10 times :(".

I have a feeling I know what the problem is, but I'm not sure how to fix it. When trying to do some converting using ffmpeg on these same files, I get the following response:


ffmpeg -sameq -i MVI_0484.AVI MVI_0484.mpeg
FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-pthreads --enable-vorbis --enable-libogg --enable-a52 --enable-dts --enable-libgsm --enable-dc1394 --disable-debug --enable-shared --prefix=/usr
libavutil version: 0d.49.0.0
libavcodec version: 0d.51.11.0
libavformat version: 0d.50.5.0
built on Jan 28 2007 22:48:38, gcc: 4.1.2 20070106 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-21ubuntu7)
Input #0, avi, from 'MVI_0484.AVI':
Duration: 00:00:27.9, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 13385 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mjpeg, yuvj422p, 640x480, 30.00 fps(r)
Stream #0.1: Audio: pcm_u8, 11024 Hz, mono, 88 kb/s
Output #0, mpeg, to 'MVI_0484.mpeg':
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg1video, yuv420p, 640x480, q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 30.00 fps(c)
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp2, 11024 Hz, mono, 64 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
[mp2 @ 0xb7ebe508]Sampling rate 11024 is not allowed in mp2
Error while opening codec for output stream #0.1 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height
It seems to me that it's simply a weird audio sampling rate that is causing the problem. Is there an easy way I can resample the audio to something more compatible, using a simple command line tool like ffmpeg or mencoder? Or do you think there is some deeper issue here?

Thanks ahead of time for any help you could provide.

[Ben]

We just fixed some rendering issues. If you had a problem video from the last few days, please try and upload it again and let us know if it processes or not. Thanks!

[devbobo]

Hi. I've just uploaded three videos and I don't see any indication in the gallery that I've uploaded them at all. I understand that it takes awhile to process videos. That said, does that mean you don't see anything at all during the processing time or is it like other sites where you see a message that says "processing video" or a video icon or something? Just not sure if it's working and I should just be patient or if it didn't work at all and I need to upload again.

Thank you.

Maria

Maria,

As a power user, you are limited to uploading up to 2.5 mins of video. If you check your upload log in the control panel, you will see "upload problem: video longer than 150 seconds"

Cheers,

David

[DoctorIt]

Hey sorcerers, I'm having a bit of a problem that I can't explain or rectify: the videos I upload won't play, they cause Firefox to throw up a missing plugin message, prompting me to install QT...

but it's already installed :scratch

what's even more strange, is that pre-existing videos in the same gallery (mpg's I uploaded months ago, before the new hotness) load up in lightbox just fine and play via QT.
:dunno

For example, this one seems to upload fine, preview in Smugmug style seems fine, but when I hit play, it goes to LB and throws that error.
http://doctorit.smugmug.com/gallery/2478719/1/130029035#231062386

I even tried converting it myself in QTpro to see if it was a file error, so here is the same vid, compressed by QTpro already before uploading to the same gallery - same error:
http://doctorit.smugmug.com/gallery/2478719/1/130029035#231062455

And here is another video in that same gallery, old mpg, that plays just fine:
http://doctorit.smugmug.com/gallery/2478719/1/130029035#130028983

[DavidTO]

It plays fine in Safari, Doc. Must be your FF installation or settings.

[DoctorIt]

It plays fine in Safari, Doc. Must be your FF installation or settings.Weird. this is FF on a PC, btw. I reinstalled QT, and played with the plugin settings many times. Just so strange that in some instances, plugin works fine, and in this one, it doesn't.

[Xani]

We just fixed some rendering issues. If you had a problem video from the last few days, please try and upload it again and let us know if it processes or not. Thanks!

Hi Ben, I uploaded 3 videos this morning and they wouldn't work. I saw your message that there were rendering issues so I just uploaded one of them again and I still can't get it to play. Any advice?

[devbobo]

Hi Ben, I uploaded 3 videos this morning and they wouldn't work. I saw your message that there were rendering issues so I just uploaded one of them again and I still can't get it to play. Any advice?

Xani,

All of them play fine for me. What OS and browser are you using ? Have you tried upgrading your version of QuickTime ?

Cheers,

David

[Xani]

Xani,

All of them play fine for me. What OS and browser are you using ? Have you tried upgrading your version of QuickTime ?

Cheers,

David

Hi David, Your suggestion with upgrading QuickTime worked! Many Thanks :clap

Xani

[Rando]

Any chance of an iMovie 08 export plugin?

[scoodog]

Cheers to the crew at smugmug for the new video capability! VERY NICE and very much appreciated.

SMUG ROCKS!

Scoodog:clap

[albumflip]

Does this announcement provide the final H.264 support that SmugMug needs to completely change over to Flash video and dump the requirement for a QuickTime plug-in?

Flash Player Update 3 (Final) (http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2007/12/flash_player_9_update_3_final.html)

Just curious :)

I agree this would be nice...

[Andy]

Oh, a feature request:

It'd be nice if the thumbnails for videos showed a tiny play button on them or something else to indicate that they were videos, not photos.
The button is now on the thumbnails :thumb

[colourbox]

I agree this would be nice...

Nobody's replied to that post yet...hm.

Even with Smugmug's new H.264 support, the last set of videos I embedded using vimeo.com because I didn't want to put Windows users through the QuickTime download and install step. (That, and because vimeo has customizable thumbnails and sizes.)

[PBolchover]

The button is now on the thumbnails :thumb

Thanks! :clap

[albumflip]

Ok, I need help.

I have video that I have taken with my DV camera and it's in widescreen 16:9 format. I have edited it down and put a nice little title on it. I have tried saving the video as many different file formats while making sure each one is 16:9 format. When I upload to smugmug, the video ends up playing as standard format and it is stretched and out of proportion. Can you tell me what format I should be creating my videos in so that I can get them to be widescreen format on smugmug? I don't understand why they aren't showing up widescreen after uploading.

These are the settings of the last video I created and uploaded that showed up as standard instead of widescreen:
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
Frame-based
(DVD-NTSC), 16:9
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 8000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 384 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 3/2(L,C,R,SL,SR)

Thanks,
Jeff

[PBolchover]

I have video that I have taken with my DV camera and it's in widescreen 16:9 format. I have edited it down and put a nice little title on it. I have tried saving the video as many different file formats while making sure each one is 16:9 format. When I upload to smugmug, the video ends up playing as standard format and it is stretched and out of proportion. Can you tell me what format I should be creating my videos in so that I can get them to be widescreen format on smugmug? I don't understand why they aren't showing up widescreen after uploading.


It sounds as if you are saving the file in an anamorphic format, and smugmug can't decode the anamorphic flag to stretch the video horizontally. Are you able to save the video in a letter-boxed format? This will remove the need for smugmug to do any stretching.

[albumflip]

It sounds as if you are saving the file in an anamorphic format, and smugmug can't decode the anamorphic flag to stretch the video horizontally. Are you able to save the video in a letter-boxed format? This will remove the need for smugmug to do any stretching.

Not sure how to specify letterbox. I'm using Ulead VideoStudio. Anyway a little of an update: I used Pinnacle VideoSpin (free program) just to test out different formats. They have an option to save as Divx. So I did and it looks perfect on SmugMug with no black borders on top and bottom and also not stretched. It saves with a size of 720x400 (not 480). So why is 720 x 400 the magic size? Is this normal? I'm so exhausted. I'd rather not have to save from Ulead and then again from VideoSpin just to get the right size. I just wish I could dial in exactly what settings to use in Ulead when saving my video.

Here are my examples:
http://albumflip.smugmug.com/gallery/3981471/1#233181310

Number 3 on that page is an example of the video (saved as MPEG 720x480) that was shot in widescreen but after uploading to smugmug, it's stretched.
Number 4 on that page is exactly what I want. Widescreen with no black spaces. (saved as Divx 720x400)
Numbers 1 & 2 were shot in standard screen, so they show up ok.

[PBolchover]

why is 720 x 400 the magic size
720 / 400 = 1.8
which is almost exactly the same as
16 / 9 = 1.78

[PBolchover]

It looks as if the difference in the two outputs is because Video Studio is assuming that the video is going to be displayed on a TV. And on a TV, pixels are _not_ square: a 16:9 NTSC image (e.g. from a DVD) has a pixel aspect ratio of 1.2121:1

[albumflip]

ok I found that Ulead has an option to uncheck "perform non-square pixel rendering", so I unchecked it. I'm testing now. Still confused.

I don't have to use Ulead. I've played with SUPER and still couldn't get it the way I wanted. Anyone recommend a program for editing widescreen DV videos?

[DodgeV83]

Nobody's replied to that post yet...hm.

Even with Smugmug's new H.264 support, the last set of videos I embedded using vimeo.com because I didn't want to put Windows users through the QuickTime download and install step. (That, and because vimeo has customizable thumbnails and sizes.)

Yes that is the Flash update which would work with Smugmug's h.264 format. Now all they need to do is change the code so the newest Flash is called to action, instead of Quicktime.

Maybe a pop-up for users who don't have the latest flash? *Click Here to update Flash to support h.264, or click Here to view in Quicktime* ?

Either way this is impeccable timing on Smugmug's part! Implementing H.264 about a month before Flash started supporting it. So they'd have all the kinks worked out before the official Flash h.264 debut.

Bravo!

[Katt]

How fantastic! Yaaaayyyyy :clap

[dancorder]

It's currently crashing both Firefox 2.0.0.8 and IE 7.0.5730.13 for me if I view either the video linked to by the news post or the first one in this thread (I haven't tried any others). I have Quicktime 7.2 and on Windows XP pro.

One time I got a message saying that my plugin had gone wrong the other times it just says firefox has crashed.

If there's any other information I can get to diagnose this let me know.

Edit: It works fine at work with Quicktime 7.3, I'm quite happy to believe that's it's just some strangeness on my home computer if you don't get any other reports like this. I'm planning to re-install it in the next couple of weeks anyway :)

[bnlearle]

I uploaded a high-res video but it only plays in a small window. How do I make it so it can be viewed at full-screen? Here's the link.

http://bobbyearle.smugmug.com/gallery/4016721/1/233804600#233804600

Thanks!

[hodson]

I've tried uploading a video to SmugMug from my Photoshop Elements 6.0. It won't let me because I've "selected an unsupported file".

Is this an issue with PSE or with SmugMug. I suspect it is with PSE. Does SmugMug need to inform Adobe that they now accept video files? It would be nice if this was fixed before PSE7.

FH3

[alfieri]

It's currently crashing both Firefox 2.0.0.8 and IE 7.0.5730.13 for me if I view either the video linked to by the news post or the first one in this thread (I haven't tried any others). I have Quicktime 7.2 and on Windows XP pro.

One time I got a message saying that my plugin had gone wrong the other times it just says firefox has crashed.

If there's any other information I can get to diagnose this let me know.

Edit: It works fine at work with Quicktime 7.3, I'm quite happy to believe that's it's just some strangeness on my home computer if you don't get any other reports like this. I'm planning to re-install it in the next couple of weeks anyway :)

i had the same thing happen. i downloaded quicktime 7.3.1 and it works fine now.

[Lou Gonzalez]

Would really love an answer to this question... even if the answer is no. :D

Ok so I never got an answer on this... is there a way to embed videos into a web page/blog yet?

Anybody?

[ksnyderphoto]

Help... I uploaded a video file that I made in proshow... it opens in a small window.. I thought it would be full screen? And it won't play. It just opens to the first slide and doesn't progress.

Am I doing something wrong? Maybe I need to choose a different file type in ProShow? The vile type just shows "movie clip". I have no idea what kind of file that is... Yikes! :dunno

oops.... here's the link.... http://ksnyderphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/4021256#234042586

[SunGlo]

Help... I uploaded a video file that I made in proshow... it opens in a small window.. I thought it would be full screen? And it won't play. It just opens to the first slide and doesn't progress.

Am I doing something wrong? Maybe I need to choose a different file type in ProShow? The vile type just shows "movie clip". I have no idea what kind of file that is... Yikes! :dunno

oops.... here's the link.... http://ksnyderphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/4021256#234042586

This video was created in Proshow Producer.
http://www.sunglophoto.com/gallery/3841746#222246654-A-LB


Seclect Create Output, then Video File, then DVD. Seclect options; Quality - High Quality Maximum and Encoding - High Quality. If you are using a 16:9 aspect ratio, you may want to consider using square pixels instead.

I don't think any uploaded files appear in "full screen", but I could be wrong.

Have fun,

Phil

[craig24]

Does anyone have recommendations for export settings for a high def movie from iMovie? Thank you in advance.

[Sheaf]

Does anyone have recommendations for export settings for a high def movie from iMovie? Thank you in advance.

Which iMovie?

Here are some directions from Ben, our Product Manager:

iMovie '08
1) "Share" menu > Export Using Quicktime
2) Export: Movie to MPEG-4
3) Hit "options..."
4) Choose "File Format" as MP4
5) "Video Format" = H.264
6) Data Rate: (anywhere from 3200 to 5000 is probably fine)
7) Image Size: 1280x720 HD
8) Hit "Okay" and then name file and "save"

iMovie HD
1) File > Export
2) "Compress movie for:" Expert Settings
3) Click Share
4) It will open up the same Quicktime save interface as with iMovie 08. Same instructions from #2 on down from iMovie 08

I'm not sure we notified people, but you can use a simple feed to treat a video gallery as a podcast and import it into iTunes (and then of course to your iPod/iPhone/etc.).

smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=recentVideos&Data=NICKNAME&format=itunes

[Sheaf]

Ok so I never got an answer on this... is there a way to embed videos into a web page/blog yet?

Anybody?

Not yet, at least that I know about.

[Lou Gonzalez]

Not yet, at least that I know about.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I appreciate it.

[urbanaries]

Let me first say that I am SO excited about this development, and I want to give everyone a big pat on the back at Smugmug for what i know is MANY hours of blood sweat and tears to make it happen!!! :clap

I am dying to get my first one up! I created a 04:16 .WMV file using Microsoft Photo Story, and Old Faithful uploader said it uploaded fine to this gallery: http://lynnehulbertphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/4026371

But it renders as an empty gallery, do I just need to hold tight or should it tell me something is processing?

I have the latest version of QT installed for posterity.

[Sheaf]

I am dying to get my first one up! I created a 04:16 .WMV file using Microsoft Photo Story, and Old Faithful uploader said it uploaded fine to this gallery: http://lynnehulbertphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/4026371

But it renders as an empty gallery, do I just need to hold tight or should it tell me something is processing?

I have the latest version of QT installed for posterity.

It looks as though the codec used is not one we support (and we support almost all of them). A codec is basically the type of compression.

.WMV is just a container and can contain a number of different codecs (both audio and video). We support some of those codecs, but not all of them. Microsoft Photo Story 3 uses its own special codec, Windows Media Video 9 Image v2.

Unfortunately, that particular codec is a bit of a pain in the arse. It is only used by that one piece of software and requires a special decoder to play it since it generates video frames in real-time (and requires heavy processing to do so). To make matters worse, the latest WMV 9 Image codecs aren't compatible with the original WMV 9 Image codec. What fun!

Sorry, but we don't currently support it. It may be possible to convert them to a different codec, but I don't know of any way to do it personally.

[urbanaries]

Sorry, but we don't currently support it. It may be possible to convert them to a different codec, but I don't know of any way to do it personally.


Thanks for the answer. No fun to be excluded from the "99% of supported file types", but at least I know! :D

ETA: I've been evaluating slideshow software for some time. I like Memories on TV and ShowIt! But they both output Flash files. I am assuming from what I've read in the thread, that those files aren't in the 99% of accepted file types either. (Correct me if I'm wrong, please!) SO, could you recommend a slideshow program that outputs using a Smugmug friendly codec?

w00t, think I got it to work with a MemoriesOnTV file (can't figure out how to embed, maybe only Andy has that privilege? :scratch
http://www.lynnehulbert.com/gallery/4026371#234440148

[craig24]

Thank you! I have iMovie 08. Best wishes for an enjoyable holiday with plenty of filming and photographing.

Which iMovie?

Here are some directions from Ben, our Product Manager:

iMovie '08
1) "Share" menu > Export Using Quicktime
2) Export: Movie to MPEG-4
3) Hit "options..."
4) Choose "File Format" as MP4
5) "Video Format" = H.264
6) Data Rate: (anywhere from 3200 to 5000 is probably fine)
7) Image Size: 1280x720 HD
8) Hit "Okay" and then name file and "save"

iMovie HD
1) File > Export
2) "Compress movie for:" Expert Settings
3) Click Share
4) It will open up the same Quicktime save interface as with iMovie 08. Same instructions from #2 on down from iMovie 08

I'm not sure we notified people, but you can use a simple feed to treat a video gallery as a podcast and import it into iTunes (and then of course to your iPod/iPhone/etc.).

smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=recentVideos&Data=NICKNAME&format=itunes

[dancorder]

It's currently crashing both Firefox 2.0.0.8 and IE 7.0.5730.13 for me if I view either the video linked to by the news post or the first one in this thread (I haven't tried any others). I have Quicktime 7.2 and on Windows XP pro.

One time I got a message saying that my plugin had gone wrong the other times it just says firefox has crashed.

If there's any other information I can get to diagnose this let me know.

Edit: It works fine at work with Quicktime 7.3, I'm quite happy to believe that's it's just some strangeness on my home computer if you don't get any other reports like this. I'm planning to re-install it in the next couple of weeks anyway :)

For what it's worth I'm going to put this down to the "Upgrade to Quicktime 7.3" pop-up that appeared at the same time as I tried this feature. (i.e. it's all Apple's fault :D)

[wellman]

It looks as though the codec used is not one we support (and we support almost all of them). A codec is basically the type of compression.

.WMV is just a container and can contain a number of different codecs (both audio and video). We support some of those codecs, but not all of them. Microsoft Photo Story 3 uses its own special codec, Windows Media Video 9 Image v2.

Unfortunately, that particular codec is a bit of a pain in the arse. It is only used by that one piece of software and requires a special decoder to play it since it generates video frames in real-time (and requires heavy processing to do so). To make matters worse, the latest WMV 9 Image codecs aren't compatible with the original WMV 9 Image codec. What fun!

Sorry, but we don't currently support it. It may be possible to convert them to a different codec, but I don't know of any way to do it personally.

The Nero suite of products will convert a Photostory-generated WMV to MPEG-2. I use both, and put Photostory-generated videos on my home video DVDs quite often.

I wish the world would settle on h.264 and be done with it! :D

[andreas]

I just want to say "thank you"!
I tried all my latest divx encoded aquatic stuff and it works like a charme, at least if you have the quicktime plugin installed.

http://werth.smugmug.com/gallery/4015141

[Jason Dunn]

Which begs the question -- what if a viewer doesn't have the QuickTime plug-in installed? I guess it just tells you to install it?

And that, as they say, is the rub: users will get ugly "install component" messages, and they'll leave. I'm reading through all of the thread first to try and get a sense of the background thinking that went into this decision before I speak too much of my mind. ;-) Adobe Flash will eventually support h.264 natively (I just downloaded their update), but for right now this seems like a baffling and extremely poor choice. I see lots of "Yays!" but I think they're all from Mac users...:scratch Don't get me wrong, I love h.264 as a codec, but the world isn't ready for it to be a video standard yet. Adobe Flash, for all of it's low-bitrate nastyness, is the still standard for online video.

[Jason Dunn]

I applaud the choice of H.264 as the HD video format. But, why require QuickTime? Why not let us use Flash? The site already depends upon Flash for the new slideshows and there is a version of Flash that also supports H.264. It seems like it would have made sense to not add yet another download and install for some folks and Flash is much more widely installed in web browsers than QuickTime.

I was about to ask the same question: I installed the latest update to Adobe Flash, which adds h.264 support. So, good stuff, the choice to use h.264 isn't as completely insane as I first thought it was (although I still think it's a bit wonky because h.264 support in Flash isn't wide-spread yet). After installing the Flash update, I checked the sample page again...and still got the same nasty "plugin missing error". I know Smugmug has a high ratio of Mac users, but guys, the bulk of the world is still on Windows and does NOT have Quicktime installed. I don't have, nor do I want/need to have, Quicktime installed on all my computers.

So if this is really hard-coded to use Quicktime, I'm deeply disappointed in the Smugmug gang. It was one thing for the Mac bias to be evident with the gallery support for the iPhone, but video is a much bigger deal and impacts more people. Please tell me it isn't so! :huh

[Jason Dunn]

Premiere Elements 2, which is the version I have, does not convert to MPEG-4. ..I'm now eager to get my hands on Premiere Elements 3 to see what happens with an actual MPEG-4. The current version of Premiere Elements is "4" but seems not to offer great advantages over "3."

I upgraded from 3.0 to 4.0 a few months back, and 4.0 offers direct h.264 output - does 3.0? If not, that might be one good reason to upgrade. :D

[Jason Dunn]

I just wish they could provide the same level of protection that they do with images. Thanks again.

I'm not a Flash developer, but I'm 99% sure that if they switched from using Quicktime to Flash (which is a no-brainer IMO), they could create a very nice Flash player - without save option. A very determined individual could still grab the Flash file from their cache, or scrape it off the server, but it would discourage most people from taking the video.

Oh, and for all of you seeing "Save As", you're on a Mac and statisically in the minority in terms of who's going to be looking at your videos (if they're public). The PC version of Quicktime has no saving feature - unless you pay $29.99 for the Pro version. So the vast majority of the public will not be able to just grab your video.

The hard reality though is that, just like photos, if you put something out there for the public to see, there's no way of protecting it short of a watermark throughout every frame of the video. One option for enhanced security is to create hidden galleries, and only share the URLs with the friends and families that you want to see the videos.

Although now maybe my per-image/video security idea (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=71067) suddenly makes more sense to everyone (you'd make the videos hidden in the gallery unless the user entered in the password, which would unlock the extra content in the gallery). :D

[urbanaries]

Oh, and for all of you seeing "Save As", you're on a Mac and statisically in the minority in terms of who's going to be looking at your videos (if they're public). The PC version of Quicktime has no saving feature - unless you pay $29.99 for the Pro version. So the vast majority of the public will not be able to just grab your video.


I own two PCs, and I see the Save As on both in the flyout under my video. I'll be fixing that via CSS hopefully.

I don't own a Mac, but I've used iTunes (and thus, have had Quicktime installed) for years. Long before I even bought an iPod. Way longer than I've had a Flash player. :dunno

[Jason Dunn]

Allow longer videos! I have a video that's something like 5:15. It's starting off as a nicely compressed WMV file.... about 20 megs. But nope, can't upload it. I can't shorten it.... I'm trying to share it, not a shorter version of it... I'd rather see a file size limit than a length limit. I'll live with lower quality if I need to upload a longer video.

I'll echo this as well. On the one hand it's AMAZING that Smugmug is allowing upload and playback of HD video. That's just...stunning and awesome, especially when you consider they're not charging any more for the feature.

On the other hand, there's still a whole lot of SD content around - I have an HD video camera (Canon HV20) and don't use it a whole lot. When I'm on vacation, I'm more likely to take 640 x 480 videos with my Canon SD870. Five minutes of edited video is a fair amount, but not everyone is going to be a good enough video editor to trim down their videos.

What I'd prefer to see is a longer limit on standard-definition video files. Say, 15 or 20 minutes (you have to go beyond YouTube's 10 minute limit). Keep the 2.5 minute/5 minute limit for HD if you have to (I'm sure you had your reasons), but open it up more for the SD users.

As a perfect example of this, I had a friend pass away last week (cancer :cry) and I created a photo gallery of the 12" x 12" collages I made:

http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/4010782

What would be great would be if I could upload the 11 minute, 640 x 480, 2mbps video slideshow and have it be a part of that gallery. Part of the same experience - instead I had to upload it over at Blip.tv, because I'm certainly not going to hack it down to 5 minutes.

I applaud Smugmug for offering video to their customers, but I wonder how well this offering syncs with what we really wanted. If someone had said "Do you want 20 minute limits of SD video or awesome HD video with a 5 minute limit" I'd pick the SD video option...

[Jason Dunn]

It's currently crashing both Firefox 2.0.0.8 and IE 7.0.5730.13 for me if I view either the video linked to by the news post or the first one in this thread (I haven't tried any others). I have Quicktime 7.2 and on Windows XP pro.

And this is the #1 reason why requiring Quicktime to view the videos is a huge mistake: on Windows at least, Quicktime is kind of nasty...I avoid it whenever possible.

[Jason Dunn]

I own two PCs, and I see the Save As on both in the flyout under my video. I'll be fixing that via CSS hopefully.

Hmm. I've used Quicktime for years, and the basic free Windows version has never had the ability to save Quicktime files. Right now when I right-click on one of the Quicktime embedded videos, I see little "PRO" icons next to SAVE AS SOURCE and SAVE AS QUICKTIME MOVIE. This is what every Windows user is going to see if they have the free version of Quicktime installed.

I don't own a Mac, but I've used iTunes (and thus, have had Quicktime installed) for years. Long before I even bought an iPod. Way longer than I've had a Flash player.

True, Quicktime pre-dates Flash being used as a video player, but the installed base of Flash dwarfs Quicktime, or any other video solution. Flash video is the single biggest reason behind the explosion of YouTube, and user-generated video content.

*If* the Smugmug team is using Quicktime as a temporary solution until the final version of Flash 9 with h.264 support rolls out, then this makes sense - though it would be great if they told us that. If they're not going that route, and they're instead going to force people to use Quicktime...then I'm very baffled indeed. :huh

[bigwebguy]

*If* the Smugmug team is using Quicktime as a temporary solution until the final version of Flash 9 with h.264 support rolls out, then this makes sense - though it would be great if they told us that.

http://dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=678179&postcount=33

:deal

[urbanaries]

True, Quicktime pre-dates Flash being used as a video player, but the installed base of Flash dwarfs Quicktime, or any other video solution. Flash video is the single biggest reason behind the explosion of YouTube, and user-generated video content.


IDK, as a photographer who wants my images to look their best on the web, I take comfort in the fact that my image/video host isn't using YouTube as their measuring stick. :D

[Jason Dunn]

http://dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=678179&postcount=33

But...why be so coy and vague about it? The official video page (http://www.smugmug.com/help/video3) is what threw me off:

"No worries, 99% of the time we can convert from whatever you upload to the ever-so-cool h.264 format (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/), which works on iPods, iPhones, AppleTV, PlayStations, and many other consumer devices."

It might as well say "If you're using something with an Apple logo, cool! If not, go away."

If Flash is really the plan, I'd encourage (read: beg) you guys to explain that!

[Jason Dunn]

IDK, as a photographer who wants my images to look their best on the web, I take comfort in the fact that my image/video host isn't using YouTube as their measuring stick. :D

I don't disagree with you there - I loathe the nasty level of quality that YouTube uses, and hate how it makes my videos look. BUT...on the flip side, there always has to be a balance between quality and accessibility. If Smugmug were to switch to HD Photo (http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/01/microsofts-hd-photo-format-considered-for-new-jpeg-standard/) as their one and only option for displaying images, and people had to install a plug-in before they could see your images? Sure, the quality might be better than regular JPEG, but they'd be locking out 99% of the users who don't want to/can't install the HD Photo plugin. I view the current state with Quicktime being mandatory in the same way...though hopefully in the next 30 days or so it will all be Flash-based and much nicer for everyone. :D

[Sheaf]

But...why be so coy and vague about it?

If Flash is really the plan, I'd encourage (read: beg) you guys to explain that!

Because we rarely discuss features that are or are not in development unless we need customer feedback (like with SmugMungous).

We built our current Quicktime video offering before the Flash version with h.264 support was released. If we were interested in switching to Flash (coy or vague you say?), it would mostly be just a matter of building a really nice Flash video player into the SmugMug interface.

So if we were interested in doing it, it would be a good thing that we recently hired a very talented SmugSorcerer who built a great Flash slideshow and a wonderful Flash greeting card creator!

While I understand your passion, the version of Flash with h.264 support was only released a couple weeks ago. We're fast, but not that fast. If we were building Flash video integration, that is.

[Jason Dunn]

Since I'm late to testing this out, I've just noticed a problem. I took a short sample clip from my Canon HV20, imported using Windows Movie Maker, then output it as two separate WMV files; one 720p and one 1080p.

The 720p clip looks great:
http://jasondunn.smugmug.com/gallery/4030694/1#234627468-A-LB

The 1080p clip isn't in the right aspect ratio:
http://jasondunn.smugmug.com/gallery/4030694/1#234627999-A-LB

These were created using the defaults that ship with Movie Maker, so there's no option to change any settings, etc.

Any ideas?

[Sheaf]

What is the actual ratio of the second one? And does the file play normally on your computer before you send it to us?

[Jason Dunn]

What is the actual ratio of the second one? And does the file play normally on your computer before you send it to us?

The Windows Movie Maker template specifies 1440 x 1080, 16:9. The 1080p file plays back fine in Windows Media Player and it as the correct aspect ratio.

Here's the original if you want to take a look at it:
http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/files/movie-1080p.wmv

I think I saw someone else in this thread mention a problem with 1440 x 1080...ultimately this might not be a big deal because 1280 x 720 would be the preferred size anyway, but if someone happened to take the maximum resolution of their camera and it's 1440 x 1080 and not compatible with Smugmug...well that would be a bit frustrating. :D

[darryl]

On the other hand, there's still a whole lot of SD content around - I have an HD video camera (Canon HV20) and don't use it a whole lot. When I'm on vacation, I'm more likely to take 640 x 480 videos with my Canon SD870. Five minutes of edited video is a fair amount, but not everyone is going to be a good enough video editor to trim down their videos.

What I'd prefer to see is a longer limit on standard-definition video files. Say, 15 or 20 minutes (you have to go beyond YouTube's 10 minute limit). Keep the 2.5 minute/5 minute limit for HD if you have to (I'm sure you had your reasons), but open it up more for the SD users.

...

I applaud Smugmug for offering video to their customers, but I wonder how well this offering syncs with what we really wanted. If someone had said "Do you want 20 minute limits of SD video or awesome HD video with a 5 minute limit" I'd pick the SD video option...

What he said. You have to at least *match* YouTube and Phanfare's 10-minute limit for free/pricing that matches Power User pricing. Phanfare has a 10min/2GB limit on videos. That seems sensible, especially if your main concern is filespace usage.

I honestly don't see who is going to want to wait for an HD video that is only 5-minutes long to load. Or in my case, load and then play really crappily on my 3-4 year old computers. Little videos rule. Big videos suck.

Remember that we don't all have brand new computers, dual flat panel displays (ahem) and huge pipes to our houses. But we do (sometimes) shoot video > 5 minutes.

[Jason Dunn]

I honestly don't see who is going to want to wait for an HD video that is only 5-minutes long to load. Or in my case, load and then play really crappily on my 3-4 year old computers. Little videos rule. Big videos suck.

Heh...I don't know if I'd agree with that particular point! I love big videos (320 x 240 is just to tiny on a 24" wide LCD), and am VERY excited about the possibility of having someplace to host HD videos. So IMO Smugmug deserves a big round of applause for pushing the boundaries on bit rate and resolution.

What REALLY rules though is giving people the choice of what size of video to watch, and Smugmug has done that by having the smaller version. So I think they have that covered - your 3-4 year old computer should be able to handle a 320 x 240 h.264 video ok, shouldn't it?

Now that I understand their long-term game plan of actually using the Flash player instead of Quicktime, I think the only sticking point for me (and some others like yourself Darryl) is the time limit. Hopefully as people start to use this more they'll see how the server/bandwidth holds up and maybe up that limit for SD video once they see not everyone is uploading HD stuff... :wink

[Jason Dunn]

You have to at least *match* YouTube and Phanfare's 10-minute limit for free/pricing that matches Power User pricing. Phanfare has a 10min/2GB limit on videos. That seems sensible, especially if your main concern is filespace usage.

I hadn't looked at Phanfare in a while (I really do love Smugmug!), but I have to say I'm quite impressed by their video offering in terms of overall presentation:

http://www.phanfare.com/page/learnmore.html

I've always loved the Ken Burns-style zoom/pan over still photos, so to see it all combined with video...honestly gave me a little pang of jealousy! The way Phanfare combines everything together is really, really nice. And the video (looks like 640 x 480) looks pretty good. Not HD goodness, but much better than YouTube and quite good overall.