Aral Balkan

I stumbled upon this interesting video while poking through Viddler, a video sharing site like YouTube.

I am going to be using Viddler to host the new screencasts for SWX as it lets you upload higher quality videos than the other sites I've evaluated and doesn't restrict you on resolution. I also love the ability to add timecoded comments.

Update: Ooh, right after I posted this, I got the following error on Viddler.com: "The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later." Makes me a bit hesitant now of putting the SWX videos up there.

Update: To get the best quality when embedding a video, you should embed it so that it displays at its original resolution (so there's no scaling-induced artifacts). Viddler doesn't make that easy. The way I did it for the video above was to click the View in Original Size button and then use Snapz Pro X to measure the size of the video (which came out to 474 x 355) and measure the height of the control bar at the bottom (41 pixels), to get dimensions of 474 x 396. I replaced the erroneous dimenions that Viddler automatically writes into the embedding code with these to get the video to play at (at least very close to) its correct dimensions.

Update: ROTFL! After all that, I notice that the author of the video was kind enough to post the dimensions of the video in the video description (but did I read that, noooo!) :) So, I was close, the actual dimensions are 476 x 356. Again, Viddler should at least make this information available. Ideally, it should give you the option of automatically setting the video to its original size in the embedding code.

Update: And, finally, the "blog this" feature on the site isn't really usable for me as it doesn't use progressive enhancement. So I manually altered the post to use SWFObject.

Comments

• Interesting. I like the time coded comments feature, which is much like in Google Video where you can bookmark times when commenting, except of course its all illustrated in the player rather than separately. :) Sadly though, i don't see any support for subtitles (i have only seen Google Video support this so far), which would come in handy when catering for people with hearing problems, or of course when people talking in the actual video are very hard to comprehend (e.g. due to bad quality, mumbling, and so on). ( Although of course, i guess one could use the time coded comments feature to add in some rudimentary captions, but that is a hack at best :( )

  by James Urquhart on 2007-07-10 12:15:48

• Thanks for giving Viddler a try, and for your suggestions. Perhaps you could take some time to detail exactly how you'd see some of this work better by jotting down your thoughts in our Feature Requests forum? That way we can address what you'd like adjusted. Thanks again!

  by Colin Devroe on 2007-07-10 13:21:22

• Hi Colin, Done! I added a feature request to your forum here: http://www.viddler.com/forums/features/263/ One thing I forgot to mention there: The player chrome seems to take quite a while to load (especially on the slower broadband connection I have at this cafe right now). How large is it? I'm wondering if there isn't anything that can be done to optimize it a bit. Otherwise, Viddler is great -- my initial tests came out at pristine quality and I'm going to be placing the new SWX screencasts there. Thanks for taking the time to respond and do let me know if you need any further clarifications on my enhancement requests.

  by Aral on 2007-07-10 13:48:13

• Aral - also worth noting - when it comes to video sharing sites and uploading content its best to remember that you'll get better results if you DONT upload content which has already been compressed in some other way (ie QucikTime, WMV, Real etc). When a codec has already had a go at compressing a file it confuses the hell out of the SDK which encodes it to SWF/FLV If you can use uncompressed AVI's, MPEGs and remember that they should also always be de-interlaced

  by pete on 2007-07-10 13:55:23

• Hi Pete, Thanks for the tips -- you're absolutely right (about a decade of video production experience in a former life has made me painfully aware of such things!) :) Unfortunately, it is a trade-off. Viddler has a very high size limit (500MB) compared to the other video sites but you still really can't stay under that with uncompressed footage. I've had good results with the Animation encoder for screencasts.

  by Aral on 2007-07-10 14:03:56

• Heya Aral, I realize your post was less about the actual video you were sharing and more about the sharing service, but I wanted to comment on the video itself. We actually just completed an _official_ remix of the original Did You Know video -- I have blogged about it here: http://www.jonnymac.com/blog/2007/06/22/did-you-know-20-video-presentation-released/ Since the original was released about a year ago, a lot of people have created spin-offs/remixes, but the original authors (Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod) wanted to release a version with updated facts and though provoking questions at the end. I should note that this new version is also released under the a creative commons license, so any remixes are more than welcomed. In terms of the video player, I have uploaded this to about 15 different services, and have found that the best video quality has come from Google Video. I was actually surprised because, as you know, Google owns YouTube and I would expect them to pull from the same video source (or for video.google.com to redirect to youtube). Anyways, glad you enjoyed the video, remix or otherwise, as the message is an important one to get out.

  by Jon MacDonald on 2007-07-10 16:07:39

• [...] Aral Balkan - ‘Did You Know?’ The Remix Notes on embedding videos correctly (i.e., correct aspect ratio) with Viddler. Not as straightforward as it sounds! Was searching for this and took me a while even though I wrote it, hence the delicious link. (tags: viddler embed "aspect ratio" size width height) The Links for 2008-12-25 article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License. [...]

  by Aral Balkan - Links for 2008-12-25 on 2008-12-25 23:03:18