Format and distribution of films

[Moog]

Hi guys,

I was just thinking about the happy day when all the Lovefest films roll in.
Things just didn't work out for me to get a film going this time - but next time gadget!!

Anyway, I was thinking about how, in the past, I've never got through everyones entries, because it's such a pain to download them all - which is a real shame because I'm sure I've missed out on some great films.

So how about this for a solution.
Someone should make a nice, chunky, big torrent file, so we can just set it off overnight and - bingo. a nice lot of films to wade through the next day!

And you know, we could take it one step further than that - (stick with me on this, cos you're gonna wince in a second) - if there was the option to have all the films downloadable as DIVX as an alternative, then that lends itself much better to being able to watch them on your living room TV.
For example, It's possible now to simply chuck your divx on a dvd-rom or a usb device, throw them into your XBOX360 and viola - no more hunching over a computer.

I know we generally don't like divx, but man, how cool would it be just to settle down on your comfy sofa and plough through the fest movies.

thoughts???

moog

[mikkowilson]

Interesting ideas moog. Hmm...


I watched most of, umm, DramaFest on a modded Xbox, and it was really a fun way to watch with some friends in the living room. We where mirror providors, so we just grabbed the lot overnight using an FTP sync with the server.


- Mikko

[Andrew Brinkhaus]

Maybe we could get something like that going, with a public link?

[Robbie Comeau]

I only have Sega :( Can I do it with that?

[Moog]

Heh - I bet there IS a mod out there somewhere Robbie - gamer geeks are VERY dedicated people ;)

[wilx]

Good idea - it can seem a bit of a chore to download each individual film;
Either having them all together in one downloadable torrent, or having them
available to view online as flash video so you can just watch the films immediately - all in one place (or both) might make the process a bit less hassle.

[RossShep]

Personally I'd love it if we could download as DivX. My main issue with submitting for the All Hallows fest was that no one got to look at any of the films full size (720, 1080 whatever they may be....)

As this is a camera forum, we're all image geeks and want to see our films as close to uncompressed as possible when they go online.

DivX would allow us to share our films in a great capacity, bigger, better quality and at very small file sizes.

Come on - we all download other stuff in DivX format and know how great that codec is!!:laugh::laugh:

[Wild Imagination Films]

I have to agree with the statements regarding the chore of downloading each film and watching it, then repeating the process. I don't know how many great projects I've missed because I got tired of sitting there watching not so great ones.

[mikkowilson]

This is really good discussion guys.
We are definitely taking all these requests into consideration.

We are however faced with some technical realities - most based on experience...

Having multiple formats can create viewing issues; hence why we now require the platform independent h.264, which is a very popular format with good support, and a good quality/compression ratio. Many other formats are either (relatively) platform specific, and/or difficult to encode at high quality.
Using one - tried and tested - format gives consistency.

If we had multiple formats available, then that would mean more encoding requirements for the film makers - or a *huge* amount of work for the Fest organisation team - and they would be limited by not having access to the raw originals.
Plus that would mean multiple copies of all files to host and prep for delivery. Which brings us to the other major issue...


Server space and bandwidth is limited; the fest happens on such a fast schedule, and there are so many entrants, that the amount of data shuffled around over a period of just a couple of days is actually quite astounding.
The full distribution for HallowsFest was about 1.6GB (for 41 films)
The heart of the distribution system for HallowsFest passed through over 15 gigs of material, just populating the actual download-mirror servers in just a matter of hours - and that's before downloading even began. Those download servers are provided, completely voluntarily, by DVXuser members.
And here's the download stats for HallowsFest: http://www.dvxfest.com/allhallowsfest/mirror_stat.php

As you can see, that's a lot of data to move around. And Larry has done a fantastic job building a system to do it. But adding multiple versions at varying qualities to the system could multiply those bandwidth figures.



So you can see why we are being a little cautious; We want to provide a fast that is as fast and easy for everyone to view at the highest quality, while keeping everyone on a fair playing filed and within the capabilities of the technology.


But, all that said; yes, we are definitely looking at ways to improve the whole fest over all - for example we may be offering a single .zip option for downloading the films this round on a trial basis. (Of course one large zip has it's won issues; it has to be manually made, if the download fails you can loose a lot of time re-downloading everything, etc..) - so keep those ideas coming. :thumbsup:


- Mikko

[Moog]

Hmmm - goog point on the data transfers Mikko, I'd not thought of that.
I have *some* space on my web-thingy, and would offer it If it would help, but I don't know the first thing about how to go about it.

You mentioned the problem with a zip file failing, true this IS an issue, but there are two easy ways round this to consider, the first (and best) would be to set up a torrent. That way, you also take pressure off your servers as the file is seeded by more users. I expect the majority of forum users have access to torrent software. The second way is using download manager software. Theres free stuff all over the place, so if your download fails, you can just pick it up again from that point.

I wonder if any other DVX user folks have any ideas about how we could sucessfully host DIXV as well, without blowing up the forum. :)

Really looking forward to seeing the flicks.