No baby sitting.

[ryans]

It would be nice if you can just upload the movie and then that's it. No waiting for transcoding etc. It's like we have to baby sit the movie. If users can just upload it and then the script does the rest that would be a lot easier.

[ryans]

I say this because i've had a few videos already stop in the middle or my browser crashed...

[powerjames]

Ryan,

There are advantages and disadvantages. If you just allow uploading raw movies and do encoding "later", two things happen.

1-It can take HOURS for the servers to encode the video.
2-You have to upload, in many cases, a 100-300 mb video, which can take hours itself.

The way our system is setup, once the upload goes through, it's available immediately.

When it crashes, are you doing things on your computer? You're best off letting it upload without touching it.

[ryans]

I don't think it's the app crashing my browser. Windows just sucks in general. :). What i'm saying is If I upload the video then the server just kicks and and does the rest in the background, still making it immediately available when the server is done doing it's thing. Regardless if I close my browser or not.

[powerjames]

That would be perfect if it was possible Ryan.

The problem is that it takes time to encode videos, and the way the system is built right now, each individual uploader's computers are doing the encoding. So if 100 people are uploading, 100 computer are doing the work, meaning the encoded files, when uploaded, are live within 10 minutes.

If you upload a 100 mb file to the server, it will take 2-3 hours to encode, because that server is encoding 100 other videos at the same time.

[gomxracing]

to me a bit to work out the system (my box doing the transcoding)
i keep an eye on machine load (task manager) because i am that way..

but i like it... i have a decent (stout) machine and it does ok....
not a problem encoding.
and i james i see your reasoning behind it all........
no issues here.....

the codec pack....... and the flash 9 .seems like a bigger deal to the "novice" user to me..... if they dont understand it.

but all in all so far so good

chris

[powerjames]

We've defintely taken a different route than others.

There are advantages and disadvantages for sure. There is no doubt that the YouTube/Streetfire method is easier for the novice user. However, the problem is that Streetfire has had 2-3 day encoding "wait times" because videos back up in their encoding queue.

We avoid that, but have a slightly harder initial process for the user.

[pavemen]

i dont mind this setup. its fairly easy to operate, jsut drag a movie file into the encoder. make your start/stop edits and press go. pretty easy actually. i have had no complaints from my users and a few are pretty computer illiterate