Hey Meryem

Yeah I've actually written a little script vor it and I think its do-able in the time left........so lets see if.....!

I take the open sign up is still.....'open'. If I have it all planned tonight I'll sign up tomorrow and get things moving.

As far as the UWOL.......can't wait to get stuck in, I will formalise my ideas and post them into this thread.

Ok then....back to the writing :) phew!!

so, one suggestion is that we use divx's stage6 to post our videos.

pros:
upload quality is excellent (best-looking of any content community out there, i'm told....)
upload quality is excellent
upload quality is excellent

cons:
requires free download of divx viewer to view videos
requires encoding in divx proprietary codec (which is also downloadable but free)
less general exposure than what we will get using youtube

any feedback on this?

you can check out their content community at:

http://stage6.divx.com/

here's a good UWOL-ish link to try, for sampling purposes, (of course you have to download the player first....)

Galapagos Underwater
http://stage6.divx.com/members/200478/videos/1024453

My vote would be to use YouTube.

The reason is this: YouTube is simple, anyone can use it without having to download anything. I personally have had troubles with Divx on certain machines in the past (and therefore tend to shy away from using anything with the Divx logo).

Of course, as I mentioned before, people could always post links to the Divx or any other hosted higher-quality movie - in addition to the YouTube link. I just think that the YouTube plan would work the simplest to keep track of everything and keep it all in one place, without much hassle.

I'll check out the divx stage6 cause I really, really, really don't want to put any of my stuff on YouTube.

Question...does the stage6 stuff have to be uploaded to the stage6 site or can we encode it and upload it to our own site?
Really don't want to be uploading stuff to a divx site either. :)

In the end I may just do something out of competition and put it on my site in QuickTime.

kevin, i totally understand your concerns--in fact, i share them which is why i am keeping an eye out for alternatives, but it would only have to be up long enough for the judging, which will probably be completed in about 5 days. we can delete any works which participants don't want to leave up beyond the scope of the contest.

So you think our works would be safe for 5 days? No one could copy and distribute them in that time. Personally, I wouldn't put my work on Youtube, and I'm not willing to download anymore new software to view video, as I have far too many already.

When I started entering these contests I bought webspace. For aproximately $65.00/year, it was of the best investments I have made. Why don't you buy webspace for the hosting? Could easily be paid for out of sign-up fees.

Ask the very gracious Mr. Hurd to host them, and only allow posting by those who have paid and entered, should be able to be enable or disabled by control. Could even be shut down at the deadline! At the end of the contest they could be deleted and those who wish to post them else where could do that. If fees are needed, by DVInfo.net, then apply the fees we pay to enter.

In the long run we do not need to have our entries posted forever, just for the duration of the contest. Then, we can handle the posting from there on out.

Just a suggestion.

Mike

Hey Meryem,
Are you talking for YouTube or for stage6?
If we can take the stage6 stuff down after the judging I'd vote for that route.

I looked at some friends footage they put up via YouTube and to say the quality was poor is an understatement. :)

Meryem, Mike,
Heck, give me a domain name to register and I'll go out and get it and pay for the hosting out of my own pocket if it means everyone can put up a high quality flick!

I have offered to donate many times if that's what it takes. How do you set-up access? I'm no web expert by any means, and had enough trouble getting my own set-up.

Not necessarly true about the quality part though, as you run into download times that are long, but sure better anyway.

Mike

Well, hosting still doesn't solve the format issue but it can be set up to allow access to those who need it.

I think the real issue is what format the films will be in.

Once that's figured out I'd be more than happy to put my money where my mouth is and host the site if need be.

I know I entered a competition on another board with a 50meg file size limit and the quality was great. Not great for those who have dialup though. :)

what a terrific offer. if you're serious about it, i'll take you up on it. how about:

underwateroverland.com
uwolchallenge.com

those are both good and probably not taken....

we accept all voluntary offers.

i'm no web guru by any means. but if you can set this up for us, it would be fabulous, solve that issue to everyone's satisfaction, and give us a centralized site. this seems to be the one thing that causes dissent, and if someone is willing to step up and solve the problem, i am willing to accept the help. that would be wonderful!

i think encoding should be something universal, which means flash, sorenson, or mp4, at least that's my limited understanding....someone with more knowledge about this should chime in. just don't start up the whole .wmv versus h.264 thingie. that never goes anywhere....those should both be off the list!

I registered both domain names.
Everyone can vote on which one they prefer or I can register another one.

Anyone have a preference on who to host with? Most of my stuff is hosted with GoDaddy but I don't have a problem hosting somewhere else if that's what everyone wants.

I have about 7 free hosting credits with GoDaddy right now. They each have a Data Transfer Rate of 250,000 MB and a Total Disk Space of 5,000 MB.

But, I don;t have a problem adding more to it or going to another host.
We can do either a Linux or Windows server.

If we get a consent on the hosting maybe we can get someone with some graphic artist talent to design some things for the site.

Meryem, once we get going you can set it all up how you want it to go and run it however anyone wants.

I'll just volunteer the space and foot the bill. :)

whoa, that was incredibly speedy! nice. thanks, kevin.

can you outline a procedure on how we can all upload into this same space? we have to make this fairly simple, for web dunces like me.

People can be given the password and can upload via FTP and once the deadline is here the password can be changed.

That sounds great. The last hurdle is deciding if everyone has to use the same program for encoding. Don't think this is feasible. Just like the DV challenge, everyone should be responsible to post their movie in a format that most if not all can see.

For example, the latest QT format has problems working with some programs. If you post your movie with it the movie may not be seen. I know I had problems with the latest QT when I used PPro 1.5, but I think it is OK with PPro 2.0. Mine movies are generally better in a Windows codec.

Where do I send my money to help pay for the site? Can you give specific server info I can understand, I’m an IDIOT?

Even if I never enter a movie, I will help when I can.

Mike