[CIMC-work] correspondence from Portland Indymedia on internet video and 1.2 millions hits a month

[Thomas Yun]

Hello, collective,

this is correspondence from Portland Indymedia about how they put large
video files on the internet.

Of note for the general collective, they got 1.2 million hits last month.

paz,
t
y

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: hey there!
From:    videoresistance at riseup.net
Date:    Sat, April 10, 2004 7:23 am
To:      "Thomas Yun" <mayday at riseup.net>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey Thomas,

Cool to hear back from you. I was wondering if I was going to get a reply.
Thanks for the comment on our website. A lot of time, energy, discussion,
and hard work went into it. It's been paying off too, last month we got
over 1.2 million visits to our site!

Anyway about video...

You don't need a high speed connection to check out the videos on our
site. we have two versions (sq) stand quality and (hq) high quality. The
standard quality version runs about 2.4 megs a minute and the higher
quality version about 11.0 megs a minute in terms of how compressed they
are.

We decided to go with open source as much as we could. Since we did that,
our choice of video codec's became Vp3, and with audio we went with Mp3
(because its more universal and widely used, in regaurds to mp3).

It was decided that it was important to just get the message out and show
the video. Quality was a major concern, but we realized it didn't need to
be perfect. Something that has hindered video from going up on the web in
the past because of others opinions about that (which if addressed by
anyone over there tell them what I said). Once you download and see the
video's you'll understand. It works out rad.

The higher quality version is (at least) VHS quality which is good enough
to be transfered onto a tape from a computer, burned to a cd, burned to a
dvd, dubbed to a tape into a camera, and shown at video showings for
example. Its really flexible, which makes it so fun to work with and
anyone can do it (DIY, its the way to go)!

Bandwidth was another major issue as you may already know. How do you get
files hundreds of megs in size to not bog down the site server(s)? T1
connection anyone? No. There is no need to go that far. Some may say
otherwise but you don't need to waste money on bandwidth. Sure it would be
easier to do that, but you spend money that way. When tech and video sat
down to talk about how we would get our video out there on the web V2V was
just starting to hit it off and seemed to be a really cool choice to post
video and just link it to our site. Well... a few months of contact issues
over e-mail, the V2V site going down all the time, and at the beginning
only 20 gigs of space on their server, things were limiting to say the
least (although it has grown and gotten better since that time).

So that choice went out the window. Although its still good, when it
works. Here is there address: http://www.v2v.cc

Now what? That was the question alright, so we decided to take matters
into our own hands. The video and audio codec's were chosen. The methods
to capture, encode, and format the video's picked out. All we needed was a
way to share the video over the net. Many sharing programs were though of
and our conclusion was lets use as many of them as possible. They are all
pretty much peer-to-peer networks. Programs like Bit Torrent for example
are great to use.

This is how it works... someone takes the formatted video all ready to go
and seeds it (a connection to a computer that has the video for everyones
access). Then someone can download from that computer, using bandwidth
between the two. The video is downloaded and the person who downloaded it
can watch it (as long as they have the right codecs).
Now lets say you have 100 people downloading all at once. Well... this is
where people worry because they thhink it will bog down their server. Well
no worries because all those people downloading are all sharing the video
with each other, increasing their download speed. Also the more people
that have the video can choose to seed it, making downloads even more
faster to start off with. Its a an awesome system when you have a mad dash
of downloads. We have had over 50,000 downloads on Bit Torrent alone since
the start of March I believe. Now just think about all the other places
that could be sharing that we can't keep track of! The numbers are amazing
to think about. A cable or dsl connection or better are best when seeding
(sharing) videos, so just keep that in mind. You can do it on any computer
though.

A guide to show people how to do all this is in the works, so other IMC's
like your's can use this to post video on the web, as well as your
television access show. Just another way to use this system. There is a
lot more to it but that's all I feel like going over right now, hehe. If
you have any more questions let me know.

Our video page address is:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/static/pdxvideo.shtml

Our online video guide is:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/static/videoguide.shtml

Our list of online video's are at:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/videos/

We can exchange video if you like, just give me an address and I'll send a
tape witch a bunch of stuff on it.

Oh by the way... did I meet you in Sacramento? I was there doing video and
I think i talked to you one night as the space was closing. Big guy with
black hair, walking around bare foot? heh, I just recall someone from
where you are being there.

I'll be sure to check out the television show on my friends high-speed
connection.

Awesome to hear back from you. Sorry if the e-mail is too long,  hehe.

Solidarity,

blank

http://portland.indymedia.org

> Hey, Blank,
>
> Thomas Yun from Chicago Indymedia here.
>
> thanks for the comment on the skillshare.  I personally plan on talking
about using Quicktime Pro to compress video and using mp3 audio.  The
skillshare will be organized collectively, so whoever has something to
share or wants to learn something will get to participate.
>
> Your website is beautiful.  I'll have to check out some of your videos
from a high-speed connection.  I'd like to know more about your
> video-sharing methods.  Chicago, we upload video to our server, which
right now has a 50 mb file size limit.
>
> We don't have an organized video page to speak of.  We produce a
television show.  You can check out a segment from our latest episode
at: http://chicago.indymedia.org/media/all/display/9561/index.php
>
> btw, check out our May Day Art Party page:
> http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/39359/index.php
>
> if you would like to submit something that would be great.  We could
swap tapes.  Right now we have footage from m20 in Atlanta and I'm
working on getting stuff from San Francisco.
>
> paz,
> t
> y
>
> --
> http://tigger.uic.edu/~tyun/mayday
> created on May Day 1973.
>




-- 
http://tigger.uic.edu/~tyun/mayday
created on May Day 1973.