[Frameworks] Uploading long dv video online, youtube, etc.

Fri Apr 18 18:38:05 UTC 2014

People used to get discouraged by iDVD for the same reason - it would render and then burn in one step, so the 8-hour render would happen and then sometime it would burn the disc for another hour in there.  So if it failed when you came to check the next morning, you would have to troubleshoot - out of HD space?  Bad disc?  etc etc.with no clues.

What is the error message that comes up when it fails?

First rule of troubleshooting: isolate the problem.  You said you had no trouble uploading short clips at your "computer guy's place" - that's TWO changes, not one.  One, you tried shorter clips, and two, you used a different internet connection.  And maybe other changes. (Did you use his computer?)  Test one change at a time.  I.e. can you upload shorter clips from home?  Can you upload 90 minutes from his place?

I highly recommend exporting the file (with good compression, h264 as people have said) and then uploading it as two separate steps.  That way you can isolate problems and see how big the file is, etc, check the file on your own hard drive to see if it's actually the right size, shape etc. and plays properly.  Extra bonus, you now have a playable version of your film that you can burn to a DVD-r, DVD, or otherwise keep ahold of.

If your hard drive is formatted in fat-32, for instance, you can't create files bigger than 2 Gb.  That would cause it to fail.

What are your computer's specs:  Operating system?  Memory?  Hard drive size?  Is your hard drive full? Etc.  If you can't answer these questions, you should expect to encounter many head-scratchers in your video career.

Have you checked this:

https://support.google.com/youtube/topic/2888603?hl=en

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On Mar 18, 2014, at 17:20 , Michele Smith <wovenfilms at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Oh, and thank you Chris as well.
> 
> Power Director takes around 9 hours to render it, so I assumed that was compressing it. That is longer than when I used my 2003 Mac from what I recall.
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> On Tue, 3/18/14, David Tetzlaff <djtet53 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Subject: Re: [Frameworks] Uploading long dv video online, youtube, etc.
> To: "Experimental Film Discussion List" <frameworks at jonasmekasfilms.com>, "Michele Smith" <wovenfilms at yahoo.com>
> Date: Tuesday, March 18, 2014, 7:48 PM
> 
>> I'm using cyber direct power
> director, a pretty basic software. You can upload directly
> online, which I have had no problem doing until now, with
> the longer work. My tech abilities are not much far more
> advanced than on/off.
> 
> Alas, in today's mediascape 'on/off' doesn't cut it. If you
> want to distribute work in video anywhere, be it online or
> festivals or whatnot, you need to know some basic things
> about digital video technology. Google is your friend. At a
> minimum, you need to know the difference between a container
> and a codec, and the differences between different codecs
> used for video work. 
> 
> Your editing program probably has you working in whatever
> codec your camera records in: DV, HDV, AVCHD... The default
> output codec will be whatever was used in the project
> timeline, and that's going to be too big, at too high a data
> rate, for an effective upload of a longer piece to YouTube
> or other web hosts.
> 
> As others have noted, you should transcode your finished
> piece into the H264 codec before uploading it to the web.
> H264 is a compression format, and there are different
> software tools for creating H264 streams from your finished
> video. These are called 'encoders' and they're not separate
> programs, but are components built-in to either a specific
> program or a system-wide video tool. I'd guess PowerDirector
> has an H264 encoder built-in. If you have Quicktime on your
> PC and export your file as QT, you have a choice to encode
> it with Quicktime's H264 encoder. The thing is, all H264
> encoders are not created equal -- some work much better than
> others, producing better-looking results with smaller file
> sizes. Apple's H264 encoder is notoriously mediocre -- it
> doesn't suck, but it's not at the top of the heap. 
> 
> What you want is a freeware software encoder called x264.
> It's a little geeky, and as a Mac person, I have no idea how
> to install it on a PC. You might be able to access it
> directly from within PowerDirector once you get it
> installed, or not. Your best bet is to DL the freeware video
> transcoder Handbrake, which has x264 built in. That way you
> don't have to mess with anything else. (The Handbrake
> installer will prompt you to DL any external files it needs,
> just say 'OK', if/when it asks permission.) Once you have
> that installed, output your film from PowerDirector in it's
> native codec and container, and then transcode it for the
> web with Handbrake. x264 has LOTS of settings, almost all of
> which you can ignore. All you need to do in the x264
> settings within Handbrake is set the frame-rate to whatever
> the project is in (29.97 or 23.98 unless you're in Europe),
> and select one of the quality presets: choose 'Slow' or
> 'Slower' unless you're really anal-retentive about image
> quality and are willing to wait a very long time for the
> transcode to finish, in which case you can use 'Very Slow'.
> Then in the Handbrake settings make sure the output
> resolution is set to whatever you want -- usually whatever
> you worked in: 1920x1080 or 1280x720 for HD. If your
> original is Interlaced (1080i) convert it to Progressive,
> which will play better on a computer screen. Another option
> you might want to use eventually is "Limit Data Rate" but
> just go with the default for now. 
> 
> You'll need to specify a container format to save the
> Handbrake file (.MP4 .MOV .MKV...). AFAIK, YouTube's
> ingestion system is agnostic in regard to containers and
> will take anything you might choose. I use .MP4 because
> it'll play on pretty much any platform or player software.
> (Most Macs aren't equipped to play .MKV and a lot of PCs
> aren't equipped to play .MOV).
> 
> I just went to YouTube and typed 'handbrake tutorial' in the
> search field, which yielded "About 58,300 results". Some of
> these are probably lousy or even wrong, but if you start
> with the ones with the most page views you can probably get
> some decent guidance.
> 
> One benefit of making your own H264 file before upping to
> YouTube is you'll know what it's going to look like on the
> web, as YT will do little or nothing to the actual video
> data. If you upload something in a less-compressed codec,
> YouTube will automatically transcode it based on their own
> algorithms, which can yield yucky-looking results in some
> cases...
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