| Would you submit?!? |
| cbx | In the next 2 to 3 months I am planning on expanding my site to a much larger web site, (2gig storage, unlimmited transfer) that will hopefully become a popular community site for VB, DirectX and gamming.
The community site will be uniuqe in that community members will create desktop screen capture videos on a particular VB, DirectX or gamming topic and then submit them to the site. The site will also provide fourms, and hopfully include a member/video ranking system so community members can rate other members videos, for quality, usefullness, and content etc.
I have recently discovered that it is possible to zip a 30 minute video file down to about 5Mb when using the "Windows Media Video 9 Screen". There would be upload restrictions of course. About 5Mb max file size.
It is an idea I have had for some time and having been monitoring the progress of the [url]http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/[/url] web site in action for some time now. I am convinced that this type of community site would become quite popular.
As for the software needed to capture and encode the videos, instructions on where to download and how to use free screen capture software, would be provided.
The site would also sell cd/dvd discs of all the videos on the site, and the proceeds of that would go into a pot for things like contests, and giveaways, or potentally go towards assisting in site fees. (Site fees will only become a concern if the site become to popular [:p])
So my question is this. If there was such a community site would you or anyone you know create videos and submit them to the site?
If a picture is worth a 1000 words, that would make video worthy of 24000+ words a second! |
| Scorpion_Blood | awsome ;) we can submit anything related to vb, dx and games... i just dont understand some things like, submiting a video of what? tutorials? or how-tos? i like the idea ;) |
| cbx | quote:
Originally posted by Scorpion_Blood
awsome ;) we can submit anything related to vb, dx and games... i just dont understand some things like, submiting a video of what? tutorials? or how-tos? i like the idea ;)
It could be a tutorial, how to, walkthrough, or disscussion. Also note that Video may not be the only form of submission. I am also considering having the option to sumit just audio, or audio with a slide show (maybe powerpoint, maybe custom made)
It could be a video about vb5/6 or vb.net and teach you about the vb language or cirtian ide features, or even best practices.
Or it could be about directx 7+ demonstrating how to use things like the stencil buffer, or how to do bump mapping, or teach you about pixel/vertex shaders, recover from device lost states etc.
It could also be about gamming, like how to implement cirtian types of artificial intellegence, How to structure your game or game engine, even teach you about phisics. Or even just on game theory alone. Mabe even understanding how to read a cirtian file format.
The videos will have to meet a set of minimum requirements, like for example if the user is using a mic to speak, they must make sure that they speak in a clear voice, and that the audio recording is of good quality, with little or no scratchy pops, and or background static etc. Those kinds of things.
I am pondering if the submission system should be "managed" or "unmanaged".
What I mean by "managed" is that when a user submits a video, it will be reviewed and a decision will be made weather or not it is of sufficient quality, content etc, to then be posted on the site.
In a "unmanaged" scenerio users will submit there videos without any oversite, to there work. The problem with this is that videos that are sumitted may not be of any real value, or be of poor quality, or may just simply contain someones offensive rant. Also in a "unmanaged" scenario you may get too many people submitting too many similar videos, like beginer videos of how to create a device. Having too many videos of the same topic would take too much storage space as well as cause potential bandwidth issues.
Right now I am standing firm on a "managed" submission system, so that the quality of the videos submitted will not only be of benifit to the vb/directx/gamming community, but it will also boost the look and feel of the site if the content that is provided on it is of good quality etc. |
| sdw | What do videos have to offer that tutorials do not? |
| cbx | quote:
Originally posted by sdw
<br>What do videos have to offer that tutorials do not?
Created by: X Quote - "TV allows human thought to be pulled onto the physical realm giving it object".
People read tutorials sometimes they still can't understand fully what the tutorial is trying to explain.
Video is much more laid back, and hands off. Allows for a more personalized presentation. Some people enjoy watching rather then doing or participating.
Heck many reasons! If only to be uniuqe!?! And set the site apart from everyone elses. It has never been done before!?!
If a picture is worth a 1000 words, that would make video worthy of 24000+ words a second! Kinda says it all.
Exertp from my links page - "How does one define the value of a web site... By it's graphics,... What net based technology it makes use of (Macromedia Flash, ASP.NET etc),... Originality,... Or by it's content. The answer should be obvious ... Content. What truly makes a web site good is it's content. " |
| Lachlan87 | " a picture is worth a 1000 words, that would make video worthy of 24000+ words a second!" is a little misleading, because each frame in a video has vast amounts of unnecessary or redundant information.
Nevertheless, your point still holds: Many people are visual learners. I have a brother who would probably learn better from a video than a book, and my Dad used to review his English papers by having them read aloud to him.
As weird as it may seem to those of use who don't learn that way. . . It does actually help many people. |
| Eric Coleman | You should consider putting some type of watermark or use some type of digital coypyright protection for the files. It's a bit easier to do with video than it is with text. I find VBgamer's content all over the web, and it really bother's me that people steal this knowledge and then lie to other people as though they created it. Just the other day I found a submission on planet source code where someone took Adam Hoult's code to read different image format and then posted it as their own. They only removed the copyright information. Of course, reporting that the code is stolen on that website doesn't do a damn thing. I also found one of the articles from VBgamer posted on a Chinese website. I'm sure there were more, but I don't speak Chinese so I couldn't determined anything from how the files were named. And then there is a website in Germany that leeches files from this website. Over 90% of the bandwidth for this website was wasted on that one website because it was leeching files.
One thing you need to learn from this is to protect your content! |
| cbx | quote:
Originally posted by Eric Coleman
... One thing you need to learn from this is to protect your content!
As part of the tutorial to setup and use desktop screen capture software, I had also planned to mention how to embed a watermark for users works.
The free software I will be reccomending is CamStudio (NOT Camtasia Studio), and Windows Media Encoder 9 Series to encode the avi to wmv.
CamStudio does not support watermarks directly, but you can work around that having a well placed and transparent screen annonation.
[url]http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&q=Camstudio&spell=1[/url] Second link down
[url]http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/default.aspx[/url]
Both are free, but I should also note that I don't think CamStudio is supported anymore. It looks like Macromedia bought the rights to it from render software and renamed it RoboDemo. But it still works great. You will need to install 1 of 2 codecs to capture the dektop video. Either TechSmith's codec, (TechSmith makers of CamtasiaStudio) or the CamStudio Lossless Codec.
[url]http://www.rendersoftware.com/[/url]
Free!, Free! It's all free! |
| Iodiplin | 2 GB = 2048 MB - 20 MB (approx. basic site files) = approx. 406 submissions at 5 MB each. If popular, you'll be paying a good $60+ a month for bandwidth and space. |
| cbx | quote:
Originally posted by Iodiplin
2 GB = 2048 MB - 20 MB (approx. basic site files) = approx. 406 submissions at 5 MB each. If popular, you'll be paying a good $60+ a month for bandwidth and space.
Actually I will only be paying $95 US a year!
[url]http://www.brinkster.com/Hosting/Professional.aspx[/url]
I am going to start with the Profesional package first, then if the site becomes too popular I can still upgrade to a developer package.
1gig divided by 5mb average submission size = about 200 submissions. 200 submissions multiplied by an average video length of about 15 to 20 min = 3400 minutes or 56.666 hours of video.
I don't expect the site to become popular overnight, so it will take time for people to submit videos and such. If the site starts to run ut of storage space then I am considering putting the submissions into a rotation so that only a cirtian number of videos will be availible on the site at one time, and say a week later they will be swapped out with different submissions. (automated process)
I am more concerned about bandwidth transfer issues then I am with storage. |
| Eric Coleman | With a 30 GB bandwidth limit per month, that averages to only 200 downloads a day for 5 MB video files. 200 Downloads isn't very many at all. You may want to consider adding a registration feture to help limit the number of downloaded files. |
| cbx | quote:
Originally posted by Eric Coleman
With a 30 GB bandwidth limit per month, that averages to only 200 downloads a day for 5 MB video files. 200 Downloads isn't very many at all. You may want to consider adding a registration feture to help limit the number of downloaded files.
True, and I may do that, but the video submissions will not all be 5mb. 5mb is just the max file size (5 to 6mb = about 30min video), One of the not so strict requirements of submission will be to ask the submitter to try and limit there video to 5 min or less. So that the video is as brief and to the point as possible. I myself hate having to listen thru a video where the author does more talking then demonstrating what the video was created for in the first place.
They will be allowed to submit a 30min video if the topic they are talking about merits it.
If I put a limit on file size uploads to 5 or 6 mb that should be enough to zip and store a 5 to 15 min video, any source code for the project, as well as any other required/nessary files. |
| Almar Joling | I've been leeching a site a few times as well. Like VoodooVB (not that much files)/Unlimited Realities/ the old truevision site.
Why?
Because I do not want to have another "blackhole" situation. There's still a lot of stuff lost. I'm sure I have most of it, since back in the day I downloaded so many stuff (like I still have Jump point ion, menace 3d, etc). One day I guess I can put it online or something, but it's dated anyway.
I don't leech VbGamer though (I know VVB is on vbgamer's server, but like I said: it isn't that big), because I trust Eric that VBGamer won't be VB-centralled or blackholed :). (Just make a backup every now and then? Thanks. :))
And pscode.com is full with people who are stealing stuff, It has been for years... |