Embedded video

OK, we've added a "video" BBcode to embed video from the following video hosting sites:

• youtube
• googlevideo
• dailymotion
• metacafe
• myspace
• starsclips
• yahoo
• photobucket
• filefront
• stage6
• veoh
• vidilife
• gametrailers
• vidiac
• gamespot
• megavideo
• vimeo
• gamevideos
• tu.tv
• godtube

There's no support for our own SkiTube service...not yet. All you need to do is insert the URL of the video within the "video" BBcode tags.

For example, inserting the following BBcode:


will generate this:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNNRmxIxvgU[/video]

Thanks for setting this up Marc. Instead of incorporating any sort of flash player into my own website and dealing with the inevitable upgrades and whatever else goes along with that, I just used your new "video" BBcode to insert my video. I had no idea what video hosting site to choose (thanks for the list), and was initially going to just go with YouTube because I'd heard of it and it seemed to be the most popular. After a little more investigation, I realized why all the YouTube videos I've seen have been at a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels: Regardless of what you give them in terms of video size/quality, they all get sized down to that. That seems like a big waste of perfectly good resolution in a video, especially with the compression and storage space available nowadays. So, I checked out some of the other options in your list and Vimeo looked good. They actually suggested uploading videos at 640 x 480 resolution, with recommended data rates of 1,800 mb/sec. They also serve HD video, which suggested that their quality was decent. They recommended compression with the H.264 codec, which I'd heard was good, so after years and years of compressing my videos with the Sorenson 3 codec, I finally broke down and tried out the H.264. Wow, H.264 is great! It seems to be able to create movies of the same video and audio quality as Sorenson 3 at basically 1/3 the data rate. Unfortunately, even Vimeo still serves my movie at only 400 x 300 resolution, but at least it's better than YouTube's 320 x 240. The only site I've seen so far that serves at a resolution higher than Vimeo for standard definition video is Revver, which does 480 x 360 but apparently puts ads in your movies to cover their costs. Anyway, I've at least got the full-resolution (640 x 480 pixels, 30 fps) video up on my website, which is now 1/3 the file size thanks to H.264, and I'll be using H.264 for all my videos now. My next video camera will most certainly be an HD one, so it sounds like the H.264 will work well for compression of any HD footage as it seems to be popular with the HD video crowd.

Anyway, thanks again for the "video" BBcode, I figured I'd update the FT community with my experiences using it.

[video]http://www.vimeo.com/1376066[/video]

-J

Glad it worked out! Resolution is something but isn't everything -- in addition to 320x240 res, I've found that YouTube's compression just plain yields crappy looking video. Brightcove had the best that I found, but they're no longer allowing public uploads. They do still allow consumer video through channel partners, however, thus our SkiTube service through Brightcove does still allow public uploads.

Really, though, just so you know that Flash video player I recommended is brainless to implement. Upgrading merely means replacing the SWF file on your server with the new one. It's soooooo easy.

In any event, allowing public access to that on the FTO server has security risks, which isn't something I was willing to do, hence the video BBCode. The author of that BBcode is adding additional video hosts to the script regularly, so as I upgrade the mod there will be additional hosts available. I'm hoping that he adds Brightcove shortly to allow folks here to simply upload to SkiTube and embed it within Liftlines.