More words about moving pictures .
Greetings,
It's been a week since we've unleashed our video encoder on the world, and during that time many of you have found your way to encoding and posting entries with the new tool. I did promise an in depth guide. Then it struck me that the process flows well. So, I want to hear from you if you've found that not to be the case. Rather than rewrite the help file, I’ll go into the feature in a little more depth.
Which formats are supported?
Nearly any format your Windows 2k / XP or Vista can display is fair game for the encoder. You should be able to encode from WMV, QuickTime, AVI, Mpeg-1,-2,-4, DV within an AVI container, FLV, and .3gp (common to many mobile phones ). You can also use most USB and Firewire web cameras, including DV cameras to record directly to your Blogcast.
What format am I getting?
We are creating Flash video .FLV VP6-E for Flash video.
Why Flash
The overwhelming majority of people that watch videos on line, do so at their computer. Even people that own portable players with a video feature predominantly consume video on their main system. Chances are that your viewers already have flash installed or have a system capable of running it.
Is this a podcast?
Great question. The answer is a qualified maybe. There are few mobile devices that can play FLV presently, but realistically flash video is not yet a portable format. We already have support for mp4’s within Quick Blogcast, so the people that wish to have a video in a format that can be downloaded are already covered by our existing features. While the links to the movies are syndicated, the files themselves are not.
TIPS
Don't encode the entire video when you're trying out the quality settings, unless it's a really short video.
When you have a long video set a start and end point about 20-30 seconds apart over the “busiest” part of the video. (Find the most movement within the video).
For most talking heads against a steady background, you can get away with the lowest quality setting for the small and medium sizes.
Can we ask questions?
Please do.
Hi, How soon will it be possible for a Visitor to your site [or similar] to be able to illustrate their comment with a YouTube video as per this blog software ... http://forums.finalgear.com/test-forum/embedded-video-test-thread-14892.html ... Warm thanks; Nick
Greetings Nick,
While we have that feature for the owner of the site we've not yet extended that through to the visitor site. It's certainly a useful idea and when we extend the abilities on the visitor side will certainly be taken into consideration. I'm afraid the URL in the post results in a file not found.
Regards
John
QBC team
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Hi, John, most appreciated. The link now seems to be working ... please click it again? (A) How soon do You think such a 'Visitor' update will be available via GoDaddy? (B) Is there a 'Visitor/super' QBC version available, for extra fee$, right NOW? (C) Also how possible is it to copy all of the comments from 1 or more specific Visitor from 1 QBC to a new QBC and retain the time & date & structure of the entries in the new QBC? ... Warm thanks; Nick Gracey, WATerian
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Greetings Nick,
There's no date set, or even rough date , for the inclusion of greater visitor side functionality but It's very unlikely we'd make that a charged item. E.g We have no super version. There are only two levels free and paid. Once you get to paid we add more space, bandwidth, take out the adverts and then add in a neat vlog tool. Apart from that it's the same for everyone. The reassignment of comments is not possible apart from exporting the comments and then reimporting them, the same post would need to be present for it to show. E.g You can export posts, categories/ comments and put them in a new blog but not selectively without - a lot- of manual intervention.
Regards
Regards
John
QBC team.
How long should it take to encode a 20 minute video from wmv? A progress bar would be great...also, didn't know what you meant by "Don't encode the entire video when you're trying out the quality settings, unless it's a really short video."
Greetings,
I'm afraid the answer is going to be vague since there are so many factors involved that make even an educated guess covers such a range that minutes to over an hour could both be correct answers.
E.g the CPU speed, amount of ram, free disk space , programs running on your system and that's all prior to getting into the encoding of the 20 minute video. I'll certainly look into the addition of a progress bar / timer.
What I meant regarding using a short clip for test encoding is this.
After you have loaded your video file, prior to encode, we have a slider bar which you can use to select a start and end point. E.g my suggestion is to select a small part of the program that contains the most movement and then encode it. E.g it could take hours to try out all the settings with a 40 minute file so it makes sense to try a sample first prior to committing to a long wait. On my machine it often takes me 8 minutes to render 3-4 minutes of DV video using Quicktime, Windows Media Encoder / Moviemaker and it's about the same for the vlog tool on it's highest quality setting.
Regards
John
QBC Team.
Thanks for the reply John. It actually has a progress bar...turns out I was locked up on something else. I figured it out and it moves along pretty well once you get the hang of it...I usually just ftp my vids to a server and link but decided to try this...it's pretty good. Thanks again.
Greetings,
I'm glad it's working out well for you. I was embarking on a test to see if it wasn't showing in certain browsers.
Regards
John
QBC team.
I do most of the work for the blogcast and I am having trouble making the link to the photobucket feed work as advertised. Any help or suggestions (other than to use the online file folder). Thanks in advance
Hi Pete,
After adding the Photobucket service to Quick Blogcast Site,
You can find more information about how to add photobucket service to Quick Blocast at http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=3402#photobucket .
Thanks
Quick BlogcastTeam
Thanks for sharing the link with us!