Video Hosting Services question

[zandperl]

Google Video is going to cease hosting new videos, so I need a new service to compress and host videos for my classes. Unfortunately Wikipedia's comparison charts of video services doesn't list all the things I want to know about. Here's what I'm looking for; 1-5 are required characteristics, "preferred" are additional characteristics I really

Comments

[gemini6ice]

Rapidshare and the like are sketchy and try to force users to subscribe to "premium" service.

Concerning #2 and #3, are you looking to be able to play them IN a browser, like youtube or vimeo, or is it okay for students to simply DOWNLOAD a .avi/.mpg video and play it?

Can your school provide webspace for you?

[zandperl]

Can your school provide webspace for you?

I have been hosting 30MB-300MB files on the campus servers. However some students use dial-up and old computers and need smaller files (3MB-30MB). I do not have any software that can do a good job of compressing the file to a smaller size while retaining resonable resolution. The main purpose of such service is for compression of the file.

Concerning #2 and #3, are you looking to be able to play them IN a browser, like youtube or vimeo, or is it okay for students to simply DOWNLOAD a .avi/.mpg video and play it?

I don't much care, so long as the file is compressed for faster download, and yet retains enough resolution to read bullets in a PowerPoint slide. (I just uploaded a file to Vimeo and it's got stunning resolution as compared to that of Google Video, but the bandwidth limit is not useful.)

Got any ideas?

[gemini6ice]

Are you converting these PPTs into videos? You could provide them as PDFs instead. Or are these videos created by other people? In any case, making a video of slides is a tremendous waste of filesize. :/

I always thought their main points were the hosting, not the compression. I believe youtube offers a premium service that doesn't have video-length limits.

[zandperl]

In any case, making a video of slides is a tremendous waste of filesize. :/

Not if I'm recording a voiceover it's not. I'm teaching an online class, and rather than forcing students to read pages and pages of notes, I'm recording video lectures akin to what they would receive in a traditional on-ground course.

Here's an example of what I'm doing. It's called "screencasting" and is used to record lectures for students, or to give tutorials on how to use different types of software.

vnc2swf

[idolstar]

One suggestion I have is to use vnc2swf to record your screencast directly into flash and then you can merge in an audio track. It makes fairly small files for smaller files and streams fairly well.

[idolstar]

forgot the link: http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/