I'm really liking the video upload feature guys. I think it has tremendous potential. I mean, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video has got to be worth at ten thousand. I think it will seriously increase the amount of accurate, concise information exchange we have available here.
BUT
The 20 MB file size is a little cumbersome for most users to get around I think. The ability to embed videos from hosted services is beneficial in its own right, but I think a lot of members won't trust off-site hosting services as much as they would 420Mag, and so it will prevent a lot of members from utilizing it to upload their own private videos where they would share unseen techniques and methods.
I mean, just imagine a situation where you've got a user that has clawed leaves. He wants to know why they're clawing, and everyone assumes nitrogen. Well, if this user uploads a video, and we all see his leaves whipping around in a violent wind storm, then that opens up the seldom diagnosed wind-burn angle. There could be any number of scenarios like this where a video would lead to a far quicker and fare more concise diagnosis of a plant problem.
Not to criticize without solutions, I've found that x264 transcoding of video files before uploading them provides a substantial amount of video compression and should enable people to upload high quality, high resolution video at reasonable lengths of time. I don't think anyone needs to be making their own podcast videos, but 1-2 minutes seems achievable. Longer videos could just be transcoded to a lower bitrate and left without close-ups. I just don't know that many people are going to have the tech savvy to know how to adjust their camera settings or use transcoders to compress their video, so I worry that this feature won't be widely adopted.
I think this has the potential to be the best new feature of 420Mag, and the only thing that's really needed is some more support in terms of showing users how to edit their video pre-upload to fit the 20 MB size limit. I'm pretty familiar with using transcoding software (and know of a good open source, multi-platform application for it) and can give some little mini how-to's around here and there. I'd really like to see a guide in the Member Resources area so that this feature reaches a heavy level of adoption. I don't mind volunteering some of my time to help.
Good work, guys!
moments (I thought that emoticon was back but I don't see them. I wish there was a way to have more white space around the animated ones. I personally find it harder to find the ones I want. I do like that they're part of the post now and that it can be automatically removed when you don't want it but I digress.
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