I will use SmartSound too (to the best of my limited abilities!)

Meryem,

I hate to whine but...

I'd like to play, but I'm going to be in Costa Rica for a month (leaving Jan 9th). Is there any chance of an early submission? If not, no biggie, but I'd just like to be part of the first ever UWOL. I could just post it under my youtube account for fun.

yes, of course, you can use royalty-free music. you need permission or to have purchased a license with it. a couple of resources for free music:

freeplaymusic.com
sonnyboo.com

ken, early submissions are easily arranged. i can give you (or anyone who signs up) early access to uploading to the page. that should not be a problem.

I am new to this website, and have been very impressed with all the information available here. It seems like a very friendly and helpful space, and I've especially enjoyed this forum, since my interest is particularly in nature videography. The UWOL Challenge sounds great. It will help motivate and inspire me. I'll be following eagerly for updates. Thanks.

Welcome to DVINFO.net Ruth! Its great to have you join in on the fun! You will be glad that you singed up, I am sure of it. :D

Best of luck!
~Gabriel

Welcome Ruth!
I look forward to seeing some of your work.

Hey guys.....Not seen much happen on this thread for a day or two!

Just wondering whether we have a topic yet ??? I'm itching to know whats being considered????

Mat

We are in the middle of DV Challange #7, so I don't think you will see this start soon. They are not going to compete with each other. And, there will need to be some time in between them.

Standby to standby.

Mike

Like Tom Petty said "The waiting is the hardest part." :)

hi mat: yes, the thread was pretty lively while we were working out the details of how to proceed. there's still time for feedback, so if you have a good idea, post it! we will be able to incorporate new suggestions throughout the process. a fresh thread for signing up for our January 1 start date will appear in about two weeks or so, so patience!

right now, i'm sweating my way through the DV Challenge, i suggest that if you are aching to shoot something, that you sign up for it....it's an open sign-up this time, and the thread is here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=81014

i'm sure there is a way to shoe-horn some nature shooting into the topic, which is "Memories"....

oh, and welcome to the forum, ruth. i'm always happy to meet other women who are out there schlepping heavy gear through the wilder-wild.....

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

Mike,
I agree, format is the big hurdle.
Course, I just did a test where I encoded a short file in both QT7 and WMV formats. I uploaded them both to another site I host on GoDaddy. Downloaded them around 100KB/Sec and played them both on my Mac and they both played fine with Flip4Mac WMV installed.

So, even though I'm Mac based, I wouldn't put up a fuss if I had to put up a WMV file for judging.

Most FTP programs are pretty easy. You enter in the domain name, the user id and password then drag over the file you want to upload.
Fairly basic. I'm sure it would be pretty easy to be talked through.
I can help anyone Mac based.
I'm sure there's someone who'd be willing to help the PC masses as well.

Don't sweat the $'s. I just believe in this project and want to see it get off the ground. So anything I can do to help out, I will.

I just get confused with all of the port settings and such. Would be happy to help in any way that an idiot can.

Mike

Are you Mac or PC based?
I use CyberDuck on my Mac and there's no need for port settings etc. Open it up, enter the domain name, user id and password and you're in.

PC and no snide comments please!!!!! :) I actually think that age has more to do with it, mine not the computers! Oh, I'm using Filezilla!

Mike

Mike,
I looked at the screenshot on the Filezilla page. Looks allot more complex than CyberDuck.
I'll set up a hosting site for a domain I don;t use and you can play around with uploading and downloading stuff.
I'll try to help you as much as I can but being Mac based, I can't walk you through FileZilla.

But, if you've used it before it should be a walk in the park.

flip4mac is not free, so wmv is out as a format--it works on my machine but only barely. h.264 is out because it seems to anger the PC people. this has to be easy for everyone, or it defeats its own purpose, which means being able to provide two sets of explicit step-by-step instructions for web dunces like me, one for mac folks and one for PC people, and also being able to agree upon a universal formats standard.

people volunteering to kick in some resources is lovely, but i'm not interested in charging anyone fees or incurring participants' costs for downloading proprietary software. that's not really the dvinfo spirit.

lisa's point would still apply. you can post to our group site using the chosen universal format, and provide links to the higher quality versions. can all the major NLEs output to sorenson 3 or mp4? i think those are the logical choices, and even if they are lower quality than .wmv or h.264, it is light years better than the compression schemes of the popular content communities.....

The Flip4Mac viewer is free. You only need to pay a fee if you want to edit WMV files etc.

I'd be happy to do the step by steps for Macs with CyberDuck It's free so it won't cost Mac users a dime to use if they don't already know or use a different FTP program.

Sorenson3 is fine with me.

on my old, lower end mac (1GB powerbook), which is equivalent to what many players may be using to edit DV, wmv playback on flip4mac is stuttery.

cyberduck is dunce-proof and is what i use, so if you could do a step-by-step using cyberduck for mac users, that should suffice. great free program.

since i'm not a PC person, can someone volunteer to put something similar together for PC users? internet explorer has built-in FTP, doesn't it? that's pretty universal. we'll have to play with these instructions a bit and bullet-proof them, but i think it would be great to have a single site for viewers to visit and also to settle on a universal format.

can anyone think of a reason *not* to use sorenson 3? now's the time to hammer out these things! is it a good output option for all of the major and minor NLEs? i can only speak for FCP and little iMovie.....

i'm quite intent on the dunce-proofing. one of the reasons i signed up for my first-ever DV Challenge was to push myself to learn a little bit about web delivery. we want complete beginners to be able to play, too.

FTP and more
 

As far as PC FTP. Yes, IE has it built in (very easy to use). There is also the program i've been using for many many many years - WS-FTP. The Lite version has always been free, I think i started using it in '95.

I could write something up for using the IE ftp though, since that is built into Windows and is (in my opinion) the easiest thing out there for simple FTP on a PC.

In catching up on the messages in this thread, I got to thinking. Meryem - might want to bug Chris about creating a subforum for the contest. I think that would keep it cleaner, especially once the thing gets going.

One last thing, once things are decided upon - I'll volunteer to help build the website. I can even look into creating a file upload app so that we don't have to worry about FTP at all, can just do it through the web. I'll just need to know what languages GoDaddy hosting supports.

excellent, lisa, thank you for stepping up.

so lisa will design our site and make a bullet-proof set of upload instructions for PC users, and kevin is kicking in the domain name, hosting, and a bullet-proof set of upload instructions for mac users. this is taking shape nicely, thanks to you both for all your offers of assistance and for helping to solve the knottiest problem of all, the hosting and formatting.

i have already had a conversation with chris regarding permission to run the contest through his site, and he has already green-lighted it and offered additional resources, including developing a separate forum. i don't pretend to speak for him, but his M.O. is usually to observe the happenings and to make sure there is a real need first. i think if our first contest works out well, he will gladly make us a separate forum. (remember, this thread started as a feeler, to gauge interest....).

Hi guys....Hey all this sounds great!

Although it's been offered already, I'll be happy to help with the webpage design. I've been involved in quite a few over the years and I'd like to give a few hours to this.

Mat

Lisa, Mat, thanks for offering to help with the website.

As soon as we know which of the two domains we officially want to go with I'll get the site turned on, email you the login info and you guys can have at it. :)

let's go with uwolchallenge.com because if/when we do get a designated sub-forum, if this thing flies, then that will be its most likely abbreviated title....then the website can closely match the sub-forum....

mat, thanks for offering to pitch in. it will be awesome to see what you all (uwol) cook up...

Just a heads up. The domain has been setup and the hosting is happpening now. Meryem has the info so that'll be passed on to the web development team.
Once that's done I'll work on getting the FTP upload directory done and setting up the user name and password to enable everyone to upload their films to the site.

A Simple and Humble Solution, Perhaps?
 

Suppose everyone just mailed in a tape cassette and they were all uploaded in exactly the same way? If all entrants could just forego the perceived need to be computer-centric about it, the discussed inequalities could be eliminated. After all, we're making video, not demonstrating our level of cyber-sophistication. I believe that all film and video festivals offer the option of mailing-in film or tapes.

I'm not a Luddite-----I just like my VCRs better than my computer, for doing simple editing-----and everything I do is simple, by necessity.