Youtube and Flickr Failures in uploading video

I read some old posts on Google and conflicting posts about whether a person can upload a long video to Youtube. Apparently back in 1996 some users were allowed the ability to convert their accounts to director accounts, and then a bunch of Youtube users started to upload movies to Youtube. This causes Youtube to stop allowing director accounts. Although you can still change you're channel accounts to "director" which is useless and means nothing. I uploaded a ripped version of Astronomy For Everyone to Youtube and the video was uploaded, but was quickly taken down as being over the 10 minute limit. I read another post somewhere out there that you could upload video to Google video (this may have been an old post) or Flickr. I have a flickr account so I tried Flickr. It took the entire long upload. Then when trying to play back the video, Flickr will only show the first 90 seconds. Flickr is a photo type of site primarily and supposedly wanted to limit bandwidth for their primary users or something like that. Who knows.

I've read in one post that google video may be the answer but it compresses the video and makes it look pretty poor in quality. Why would someone not just put the entire show out there on an FTP site and some space they rented? Well youtube and perhaps Flickr optimizes the video for playback over slower connections. If you upload a video of a large Quicktime on some site, it may be 200 megabytes or more in size. (In the case of one video clip I recall Dr. Timothy Dey mentioning it was something in the 1 gig range to download.) This is a lot to ask for internet users. If you have a marginal connection or not a lot of time to sit and wait for a download you may want something more compressed. You tube does a good job at providing multiple resolutions support in a streaming format.

The limitations can be a pain. What does this mean for people who want to create a cable show for distribution and put it on Youtube. If you have an end product that is on DVD and want people to simply rip that DVD in segments to files for Youtube upload the chapters should be less than 10 minutes in size. You're show should have good 10 minute or less breaks in it's construction. This kind of stuff was done all the time for sitcom segments so it's something you can plan for when you're creating a show.

But since the "Astronomy For Everyone" show doesn't have sub-ten minute chapters. I'll have to do more work with that video, perhaps importing it to a different editing system and then exporting out segments before uploading them to You Tube. This is a lot more work than a simple rip and post. So I probably won't be doing this.

There are a couple of other things that could be done perhaps to improve the show. But I know these things are put on by volunteers and I don't know if I really have the time to be involved enough to make those minor improvement suggestions and corrections. There were a couple of minor mistakes in the discussion, not a really big deal in that episode. Something I might catch if I was a director of the show or involved in the taping. But not any real deal breakers. The other thing they might be able to figure out and correct is some of the graphics on the show. Some look a bit out of perspective on the DVD. I thought my rip settings were wrong, but some of the clips and graphics were a little out of shape, and looked oblong instead of round. The logo and some shots of the moon for example. But most clips are normal. This looks to be a problem that can happen if you're mixing wide screen footage and normal (older 4:3) format footage. If you try to render 16:9 graphics into a 4:3 frame you may end up squeezing the footage and ending up with tall characters or in the case of the FAAC logo in the show an ellipse. It's a minor thing. Something they may correct or may choose to leave alone.