Rant: The Vid Bitch Cometh

[thefourthvine]

I've been many things in my time: a fan fic bitch, a word bitch, an obsessive bitch. And now, having been converted to the wonderful world of fan vids, I'm preparing to be a vid bitch. (No, actually, I don't think I ever am something other than a bitch of some sort. It's a gift. Of a kind.)

Comments

[boniblithe]

If you have to choose between file size and vid clarity, go for the latter;

File size and clarity are usually interrelated: the more frames-per-second and higher resoultion you save at, the larger file size you end up with. Even compressing nicely with the fancy schmancy DiVX codecs can only get your file so small. With animation file sizes are larger because quality is easy to lose very quickly if you overcompress or try to scrunch the pictures too much. Live action is more forgiving.

So as a *general* rule better quality = somewhat larger size. Where this becomes an issue for people is with paying for hosting bandwidth (my site uses on average 25 GB of bandwidth a month, with a surge up to as much as 40GB when a new vid is uploaded) ... obviously smaller files wind up resulting in less cost. And for people not on high-speed connections, downloading a larger file is an exercise in either frustration or impossibility. A vidder has to weigh a choice between larger file size and better quality against the potential loss of a significant portion of the viewing audience who can't download the vid. I made a vid size of 45 MB once and my email box was filled with complaints about the file size (so I put up a 10 MB smaller version alongside).

So ... online vids have their niche, but the only true way to get the best quality and most reliable accessibility is to see if the vidder can send you a tape or DVD. Barring that, with online vids, you get what you can get :)

[boniblithe]

Shalott and Melina's "The Mountain" can be found at Shalott's vid website.

Also, I wanted to say, this may be my favorite vid EVER.

[thefourthvine]

I actually do try to get DVDs from vidders when I can, because I am compulsive that way. But, failing that, I'll cheerfully download huge vids. I actually prefer them to smaller ones, because I know from the file size that at least I won't be staring at little tiny pixilated people doing something mysterious with - is that a book? Is that the killer VHS video from The Ring? Is it, wait, is it the One Ring? Ah. From context, I deduce that it must be the Time Turner. I hate that.

However, I'm sure sooner or later I'll encounter a giant file that nonetheless yields a totally unwatchable vid. I mean, I've already encountered every other sign of the Coming Vid Apocalypse, including the Really Bad Vid by an Otherwise Brilliant Vidder and the Really Good Vid Using the Same 15 Frames Over and Over.

(It occurs to me that probably by the time the Coming Vid Apocalypse gets here we will be calling it the Vidocalypse. And we will probably have a LJ community for helpful updates and squeeing about it. I love fans.)

Um. Getting back to the point of your comment: I, for one, thank you for making really huge files available online. I know it takes up bandwidth that some folks can ill afford to sacrifice, but the difference for the home viewers? Absolutely incredible. I'm sort of astonished that people complain to vidders about file size, but I should've remembered that this is fandom, and people complain about *everything* here. Witness, for example, my post.