Maybe someone could ask Sofo to give VV3 users some space at their web-hosting server? yeah I know this idea is far reached...just a thought :)

i second that
i would love to see others peoples work
when i go to photography website -- people post there pictures all the time so they can be critqued.
i've leaned a lot from studying other peoples pictures and the comments about there pictures.
i can't imagine how much i would learn from posting my own video -- in addition to learning from other peoples too.
GG--count me in--i'll buy the plugin.
also, when you go to spotted eagles website, you can download veg files form him
i got my "cnn" scroll this way
sbsbsbsbsbsbsbsbsbsb

Well, we already have an Acid Planet. Maybe it's time for a Vegas Planet? Could be very interesting, yes?

- Nick

For goodness sake, don't call it Vegas Planet. Too many risque connotations. Too much possiblity of the wrong kind of post. SoFo Planet? Not catchy, I know.

Space is definately not a problem for me since i own my own server. I've got 12GB free on the web drive right now, and i'm planning on expanding that another 60GB soon. The problem is bandwidth. Video files are HUGE compared to just about any other type of file. While i have plenty of space for thousands of sample files, the problem is getting them from the server over the connection line in the quantities and speed that people may desire. I've got an 896K line and this allows a maximum of about 9GB of data transfer per day. The average sample video i've got on my server is about 6MB. This means that these files can be fetched about 1500 times per day. So far that sounds good, right?

Well, that figure assumes that people view the files evenly 'round the clock. But in reality they tend to be viewed in bunches. Someone finds the site while surfing on their lunch break and decides to download a couple dozen files as fast as possible to watch later. Of course, 50 other people are also on their lunch break finding the files at the same time. Oops. If people are sufing with cable modems at 300K, then three files downloading simultaneously is the limit the server's connection can handle. On top of that, there are at least 100 other sites hosted on this server too, and it's nice to leave some bandwidth for them as well. And then there's eMail, shell sessions, ftp accesses, software updates, etc. It's a pretty busy line.

So far i've been ok with it since not that many people download that many files all at once. Overall my server is using about 1/6th of the available connection speed. The video sharing site on it's own accounts for about 80 to 95% of this! The only real problems i've had with it are when several people (all of them found it through the dvworld forum in Taiwan) used some sort of automated download software to try to grab all 80 or so sample videos at once. This pretty much trashed the line, which didn't please the bank i share it with. Major Oops. I've had to deny access to a few IP address blocks that abuse it this way.

Now, if we wanted a site where large numbers of users wanted to upload and share lots of files, obviously a much higher connection speed will be necessary. I've got a great deal on my current connection and pay incredibly little for it. Normally i'd probably have to pay about $400/month, but several favors got called in and a few other fortunate circumstances all combined to reduce my bill to a small fraction of that. The next step up would be a full T-1 line at about 1500K, and in most places that would run around $1000/month. Even that would be less that double the speed i have now. After that we go to T-3 lines or Optical fibre and quickly pass $3000/month. Anyone want to take that on? Even a company that already has high speed internet connection would probably have to increase their bandwidth to take on this project.

Obviously the only way for this sort of site to exist would be with commercial/corporate backing. It would have to be a money maker in some way to pay for itself, either through advertising, membership fees, or in perceived increase of value to the company hosting it. True, .veg project files alone are a lot smaller than media files. But just .veg files aren't always that helpful. Lots of times you do need the media as well to make sense of what's going on. How many people at ACID Planet post only the .acd file?

So, basically, i think this sort of project is a good idea (which is why i'm doing what little i've got hosted so far), but the time isn't ripe yet for a Vegas Planet site. Give it a couple more years when OC-48 lines are running into every neighborhood for the price of cable and phone lines today, and then you'll see online video blossom.

Thanks, Chien, for a very well thought out discussion of the problem. Quite enlighting.

GG,
Has anyone at sofo replied to satish on whether VV4 will give plugins access to timeline video data? So that plugins don't need to "cache video frames". Or has there been a reasonable work around been achieved by either.
Just got the latest build of winmorph and will tweak tomorrow. Studying the tutorials right now. Thanks for the hustle on the 3D plugin dude...cool stuff. Later.

How about a "VIDEO PLUGIN WRAPPER" that allows plugins that work in adobe premier/AE to work in vegas...ie: VST-DX wrapper for audio plugins...just a thought. Not sure if possible or worth while. Later.

W,

"For goodness sake, don't call it Vegas Planet. Too many risque connotations. Too much possiblity of the wrong kind of post."

I don't like to be naive, but I guess I must be, so I have to ask. What risque connotations? I guess if you can't say them right out here in the forum, you could s-p-e-l-l &nbsp them, in case children are watching. [grin] Is Acid Planet having "the wrong kind" of posts? Are there risque Acid Planet connotations? Is risque necessarily bad? I kind of liked the name of Vegas Planet as a sister site for Acid Planet. Sort of like Planet Hollywood. But the comment about bandwidth is valid. Maybe this is an idea before its time.

-- seeker --

"The tutorial I did last year shows how to use a Deform filter with Track Motion and Pan/Crop"

I am new to VV, can you point me to the tutorial it sounds interesting.

Thanks, Paul

I'll have to agree with Seeker on this one. It can't be much more risqué than AcidPlanet. I can't remember how many times I've accidentally "dropped" the "acid" joke when discussing course material with the music department chair at my college. Honestly, to the faculty it's like a joke that never stops being funny. "Oh yes, let's show the students how to use Acid in the Music Technology class," or, "Why yes, I love using Acid when writing music for Composition." Okay so it’s no hysterical, but they’re the weird eccentric types anyway.

Anyway, I really think this would be a fun idea. People could post both audio and video creations. There could be contests where a certain website posts 10 different videos and one song, and we'd have to mix up a music video. Or perhaps someone would provide an animation and we'd have to create a soundtrack and SFX. It certainly wouldn't have the universal appeal of music, but I still think it'd be rather popular. I mean, there are hundreds of underground websites where users post their own music videos and montages... why not have a place where they're be some corporate backing? Sure, copyright and bandwidth would be an issue, but you have to start somewhere, right?

Just a thought,
Nick

What if we don't post finished videos (copyright, size, bandwidth problems), but, instead post .zip and .veg files with project info. The size of the files could be limited as you don't really need huge clips to demonstrate a technique. For example, Gary and Marty's tutorials are very small in size and I would think it woudl be a "good" think for SoFo to have them on their site. If the site was geared more towards the raw project stuff it would take less space. I don't know of any .AVI or .VEG or .ZIP viruses so that probably isn't an issue.

<Johnny 5 Voice>More input</Johnny 5 Voice>

Tom

The VV users site I have in mind wouldn't host videos so much as it would be ground-zero for news, links, and tutorials. But it could host .veg files, like someone mentioned above, that use only generated media and still graphics. I love what Chienworks has done with the video hosting, but the perfect counterpart to that would be an information site.

Luxo

So tell me what sorts of information you all would like to have and what sort of format would be useful. My video site didn't have the notes forum when it first opened; that was added later. I can always add on other features as well.

For me it is all about user created tutorials. Both MartyH and GG have great tutorials as well as the SOFO tutorials and the ones on the COW. It would be great if they could all be posted on one site. Also having an easy way for users to post a tutorial would be great. Maybe having a standard format that if you want to post a tutorial then you would have to follow the agreed upon format so that they all look the same and users can become comfortable with going through them.

Having a realtime chat would be cool in the way that we could actually work through certain problems together in realtime.

Also having little competitions would be a blast and challenge all of our creativity. There doesn't have to be any prizes associated, just the recognition.

And of course, sharing our videos and projects would be the ultimate. I do fully understand the bandwidth and cost concerns though. (side thought-has anyone checked out AlamDV2's online community? they have like 300+ videos posted there. Does anyone know how they get around the known issues with video sharing?)

And of course I would be more than happy to pay, even a monthly fee to be able to access such a online community. (I'd pay up to $30 per month if needed)

My pennies -Shon

Funny thing,

we are just about to have such a web-site here in Germany. The need here is probably even bit bigger than it is in the U.S because we have no german manual, no german help file for Vegas Video at all. But the interest in Vegas Video is exploding! Many of the newbies give up after a few days because they are left alone without any help (though of course we try to give any help possible in a german video forum).

So some guys (me included) decided to make right such a learners and beginners homepage. We're still working on the layout but we have gathered some turorials already and the homepage might soon be online.

It would be absolutely great if we could have kind of partnership - with permission to share and maybe even to copy and translate tutorials, screenshots, .veg-files and fx-chains from each other helping us saving time and helping new users to have a quick growing helpers-site.

What do ya think?

Marco

Sounds great. If I have anything to do with such a site in the US, we'll definitely hook up. Just tonight I was thinking an interesting thing for this web site to host is regular (bi-weekly?) contests. I don't know if there would even be prizes (maybe SF could donate some stuff) but it would certainly be educational at the very least. For instance, post a one-minute song and have everyone create a music video using only generated media. Then the .veg files could be released for anyone to download and disect. Don't know how they'd be judged or by whom, but certainly we could find a decent, fair jury. :-)

Luxo