quicktime video hosting

Hi, does anyone know of a good quicktime video hosting service ? Ive tried Vimeo and the bottom line is I hate flash video, and I dont want to waste my time trying to create the ultimate QT movie just so their converter can make me an awful flash version of it. I just want to stream a quicktime video because quicktime is simply a much superior format. I want to export an h.264 movie from Compressor and I want to stream it. Im getting really annoyed trawling the web to find everything has changed to this tacky flash format which just doesn't deliver. Im even prepared to pay for a service. Can anyone recommend any sites ?

Thanks

If your prepared to pay, why not pay for your own web hosting - you've then got complete control from start to finnish in delivering your video - i doubt you'll find a QT hosting service in the same like as the likes of youtube etc etc

I now use RapidWeaver for website design.

gmc205, report back if you find a web hosting that supports quicktime video streaming. I use webmasters.com and it doesn't work very good at all for streaming QT videos. It shuts down all the time and I have to go in to the control panel and restart it. Here 's an over overview of Darwin Streaming Server which is needed to do "true streaming QT videos:

Conventional HTTP streaming requires each file to be fully downloaded prior to playing. That may work well with small files, but with larger ones taking 10 minutes or more to download, it is no longer practical. Helix and Darwin streaming servers allow any size files to start playing immediately when they are accessed, without the initial download. Benefits of true streaming include much faster loading speeds, bandwidth savings, and more efficient resource usage. With true streaming, bandwidth usage stops when a user closes a file, so if someone watches 5 minutes of a 100MB video, bandwidth is only used for the data sent during those 5 minutes, while with HTTP streaming, the entire 100MB would be used regardless of how long the video was watched, since it had to be downloaded first in its entirety.

Restarting Darwin Streaming Server:

If for some reason Darwin supported media files stop responding (this should never happen, but anything is possible), you should restart the Darwin Streaming Server to make sure it has not crashed. To Restart the Darwin Streaming Server, click on the "Restart" button next to Darwin Streaming Server above.

I like this part "this should never happen". Well it always happens to me... Something to look out for when picking a host server.

YouTube?

As for Vimeo, they're offering HD as well. But that's more of a social movie site. For free, you can start your own YouTube channel or embed your movie links on your own website. I did, and all my shorts will be on there eventually.

Flash 9 is also H.264, nothing shabby about that.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:

Apply your default audio transition instantly
with Command-Option - T !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Unfortunately there's a little misinformation here.

Quicktime is not a video format. It's what the nerds call a "container format." A Quicktime file can contain any number of different types of video, from 4:4:4 RGB to DV or DVCPRO all the way down to obsolete formats like H.263.

Pretty much the worldwide standard for SD-or-better video delivery over the Internet is H.264. This is where the confusion comes in: H.264 is used by both Quicktime and Flash.

So to say that "Quicktime is simply a superior format" is misleading in the extreme. Quicktime isn't a format, and to the extent that both Quicktime and Flash can use H.264, Quicktime isn't inherently superior at all in terms of picture quality.

Vimeo offers both free and paid video hosting; the paid version costs $60 a year, and gets you more space and a few more features. Vimeo uses H.264 delivered via Flash, and lets you make your original Quicktime available for download.

Yeah, I did the whole vimeo HD thing, expoted my (Z1 shot footage) as per their instructions after having comformed my pal 25 fps footage to 24fps via Cinema tools ( because Vimeo is designed to convert to flash 24fps. My first effort looked great but stuttered like hell so i lowered their suggested data rate of 3000 to 2000, now my footage looked like crap and still stuttered after their flash conversion process.

Then I tried Clipland Pro, they give you a portfolio page for free where you can upload all your different movies. When you play one of your QT movies it plays back in a player size of 854x450 so i decided to make my movie that size. As it is playing the original QT movie it is the full quality you designed it for, unfortunately as you would expect of a video of that size, it isnt guaranteed to play back smoothly all the time but it does do a pretty good job, a hell of alot better than Vimeo. You can somehow get it encoded by them to appear on their showreel pages at a smaller size which streams perfectly, but I cant work out how to do that and im not really comfortable having my reel beside the likes of Pontiac for the whole world to see. Im not up there with the pros yet.

I have been using ICDSoft for years & recommend them highly:

[icdsoft.com]

$72 per year Universal account / $120 per year Business Account / Multiple FTP Sub accounts / Unlimited email accounts / $5 annual domain registration / 24-7 Tech Support / Full compliment of stat reports on your site's activity & a buttload more.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

[Quicktime is not a video format. It's what the nerds call a "container format." A Quicktime file can contain any number of different types of video, from 4:4:4 RGB to DV or DVCPRO all the way down to obsolete formats like H.263. ]

That's always worth reminding folks-- it's formally called a "media architecture," but container spells it out, IMHO.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:

Apply your default audio transition instantly
with Command-Option - T !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

The word I was taught is "wrapper". Quicktime & AVI are "wrappers" & the codecs are the formats.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Here's an experimental HD720 piece that I encoded directly out of FCP as h.264. Then I set up a Flash player to play it - the video was not re-encoded by Flash. If you have 2kbps, a monitor large enough, and a relatively new machine, it plays quite well (remember it's only 2000kbps). It uses standard web hosting and "html streaming" (not streamed at all, but uses progressive download.):

www.hd-vo.com

---

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

Looks great on my 24" Dell, Travis. I was thinking of going the Flash way for my clips to be shown on the web. Thanks for sharing...

For Vimeo I usually convert my 1080p25 to 2000K 720p24 in Compressor.

It deals with the soundtrack properly - slowing it down to match the video, but maintains the pitch.

2000K is enough for Vimeo, as the HD data rate is a little too conservative for these times.

I haven't had any stuttering or skipping using this method.

Vimeo have been hinting at 25p HD for a while yet, so keep checking if you can stand the relatively low data rate.

YouTube is much fussier when it comes to submitting HD files. It chokes on H.264 720p25. It much prefers an MPEG-4 wrapper.

___________________________________________________
Alexandre Gollner,
Editor, Zone 2-North West, London

alex4d on twitter, facebook, .wordpress.com + .com

Here is a qt h264 400x225 30fps (formerly hdv 1080i60) video hosted via godaddy.com that is just simple drag and drop, then a link sent via email, or dropped into iweb or other pages. (you will have to correct the link below)

h ttp://www.freedomfilm dot com/downloads/DHIntro2.mov

Any thoughts on quality and download time? Should I go bigger? I have been hosting these myself to avoid issues with conversion and encoding via youtube etc.

I am considering trying "private settings" for youtube's new "HD'ish" video hosting where the video would be set to hidden for the purpose of searching, related videos, etc, but I would allow embedding. Looked at Vimeo, but didn't want to pay for the service when my godaddy hosting allows me to host whatever I want it seems...