best workflow to download, edit, upload 600 video files

[Ali Jafri]

Hi people. In a bit of a fix and need some help with this.

There are 600 .MOV files of around 50Mb and 5min each on a website that I need to download, edit, render to flv, and upload to a video sharing site such as youtube.

Before I start on this heavy task I wanted to see what you guys think the best workflow should be. Is there any way I can batch download from the site? I want to download them in serial fashion meaning one by one rather than all together. That way I can start editing and rendering them out immediately. I also want to batch render them in large chunks. Then I have to batch upload them to Youtube.

Anyone got a good, workable, intelligent way of doing this? I'd love to know!

Thanks!

[David Stoneburner]

I have used a product a long time ago called Star Downloader. It helps to break up files for faster downloads but it may also do batch downloading. Might be worth checking out.

[Ervin Farkas]

Sounds like you DO have full access to the website, in which case you can use an FTP program to download one file after the other and get to work right away. A very good and free FTP client is File Zilla.

As far as batch encoding, several encoders can do that, I would recommend Procoder.

I am not sure there is an automated way to upload to Youtube. Also, I am not sure Flash is your best option, Youtube will do some further transcoding of your files anyway, you may want to do some testing and find out what format yields best quality (some other threads on this DVD forum may help with that decision).

[Ali Jafri]

Ervin, thanks for the advice. Are you sure FLV files aren't the best option for youtube? Anyone know of the best codec for uploading onto youtube?

[Ervin Farkas]

Probably the best source of information for Youtube is... Youtube itself. Watch this video and adapt their method to yours.

YouTube - How to Get "Watch in High Quality" on Your YouTube Videos

[Ali Jafri]

Ervin, my research leads me to believe that Youtube uses H.264 as its streaming format in a flash based player. I would think its best to try and avoid any further transcoding by youtube for the best quality. I wouldn't think its best to upload a divx file only for it to be coded yet again to h.264.

Also, the site that has all the links to download the video isn't an FTP site. Its a regular http. Is there a way I can use an FTP client for a regular page? Any other way to do this? Anybody?

[Ervin Farkas]

The guy gives you options, quote: "Divx, Xvid, or the super awesome h.264". So basically he is saying the exact same thing you say; I think he just describest that workflow for xvid because it's easy and it's using free tools.

I also use h.264 behind a flash player for my videos, so yeah, go for that!

[Josh Mellicker]

I would recommend using DV Kitchen to batch encode the files to 480x360 (or 480x270 if 16:9) H.264 files at 1000 - 1200 kbps for the best quality.

[Ali Jafri]

Josh, I checked out DV Kitchen and it really is something I would love to get my hands on. It was most distressing to learn that its only out for the Mac. Anyone know of any other PC-based software that does the same thing? I already have Procoder so I'm not only looking for a batch transcoding solution. I also want to download and upload from an http site. Any ideas? Anyone?