Video, Mobile, Solutions and Next Thoughts?


Something I’ve been mulling over for the last few months is the best delivery model/method etc., for making my movies, films, productions, documentaries, clips etc. easily aquired by the mobile web user. I currently have more ways to deliver a video on the web than I can count. But what I don’t have is a really slick interface that allows me to post all my vids and provide the user with a variety of ways to download them in the appropriate format; from full HD QT vid, a BRD file if they wanted to, .M4V files for the PS3 users, and little H.264 files for the phone people. Whatever…I want to be able to provide it.

To my knowledge, no current online video host provider has this feature. YouTube formats videos for proper viewing on mobile media, but not to download. I want to freely give my stuff away. Share it, use it, talk about it.

I’m not a programmer at all. I have the full sweet of Adobe apps so perhaps a dabble in Flash here or Adobe Air there. But it’ll just make my head swim. I’d like to provide an interface that I’d host on my own site that would provide all the necessary information on a film/short etc., and all the links to share, download, and love on. A sweet little app I can do my editing of content locally, then update automatically with the web app would be sweet.

I don’t have any solutions yet, but I’m working on it. Do you?

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  • Jay, I've been a huge fan of Blip.tv for this reason - multi-format support, and a decent API. We're playing around with it at palau.org, building a better video front-end for our needs with Blip serving up the files.

    I've been able to associate .mp4, .m4v for iPod & ATV, .wmv for windows users or Silverlight players, and multiple bitrate-versions of FLV for web playback with a single 'entry'. This has been useful for web embedding, as well as serving up proper MP4s for podcasting. HD and iPod sizes are no problem. Vimeo is great - if you like FLV, which isn't always the best flavor.

    Not a huge fan of the AIR apps, personally. Flash - or even Silverlight, which does a great job with video performance - is probably your best bet for a distribution/playback interface.

    I do like SlideShowPro's widget (requires a little Flash knowledge), and you should definitely check out the JW player (http://www.longtailvideo.com/) - lots of flexibility and plugins.
  • Have you checked out TubeMogul.com?
  • Yes, couldn't figure out how to use it, though I only spent 5 minutes with it. I heard it's like Ping.fm for videos (upload once, distribute to many). In practice, I have to upload separately to YouTube, Blip and Facebook because, well, they're not super elegant. >:(
  • Great comments! I am not familiar with Blip.tv. It seemed to be more of a
    place to host your show. I'm not really a programming so I'd rather stay
    away from programming, but I'll take a peek into each one. It sounds like
    we're dabbling in the same places, but you're a bit ahead of me yet.
  • Blip.tv (and others like it) provide both the hosting (the video clip itself) and the playback layer (which is our problem). Understanding that distinction is key, because you can do different things on the playback layer (your essential question) apart from the hosting layer.

    Heh... not an hour after I wrote this, I got some irate emails for the inappropriate show recommendations they were showing after our videos (embedded, of course, on our site at palau.org). Working on the problem.
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